LES DENTS DU MIDI BY FERDINAND HODLER

FERDINAND HODLER (1853-1916) 

 Les Dents du Midi (3,114 m to 3,257 m -10,216 ft to10,685 ft) 

Switzerland

Painted in 1912, 1916 and 1917 

1.  In The Dents du Midi from Chesieres, 1912, oil on canvas,

2. The Dents du midi, 1916, oil on canvas  

3. Dents du Midi in clouds, 1917, Oil on canvas 

The mountain 

The Dents du Midi (Teeth of the south) (3,114 m to 3,257 m -10,216 ft to10,685 ft) are a mountain range, 3 kilometers long, located in the Chablais Alps in the canton of Valais in Switzerland. Overlooking the valley of Illiez and Rhône Valley on south, they face the lake Salanfe, an artificial reservoir, and are part of the geological whole massif Giffre.

The name "Dents du Midi" is recent. The people formerly called them "Dents Tsallen". It was only towards the end of the19e century that the name "Dents du Midi" came officially.

Each « tooth » had several names over the centuries and according to its geological evolution.

- The "Cime de l'Est" (3178 meters) called "Mont Novierre" before the mid-17th century, and "Mont Saint-Michel "after landslides in 1635 and 1636 and finally "Dent Noire" (until the 19th century).

- The "Dent Jaune" (3186 m) was called the "Dent Rouge" until 1879.

- The "Doigt de Champéry" (in 1882) and then the Doigt Salanfe (in 1886) turned just into "Les Doigts" (Fingers) (3205 m and 3210 m).

- The  "Haute Cime" (3257 m) also had many names : "Dent de l’Ouest" (until 1784)an then "Dent du Midi", "Dent de Tsallen" and "Dent de Challent."

- As for l’Eperon (3114 m) (The Spur), it is assumed that there were two peaks but a landslide in the Middle Ages significantly changed its crest.

- The Forteresse (3164 m) and the Cathedral (3160 m) have not changed names.

The evolution of this massif continues nowadays. So on the morning of 30 October 2006, a volume of 1 million m3 of rock broke away from the edge of the Haute Cime and slid down the slope to an altitude of about 3000 m. The event did not present danger to the nearby village of Val-d'Illiez but roads and trails were closed for security reasons. According to the cantonal geologist, the landslide was caused by the thawing of rocks, helped by warm summers of recent years.

The painter 
Ferdinand Hodler was one of the best-known Swiss painters of the 19th century. His early works were portraits, landscapes, and genre paintings in a realistic style. Later, he adopted a personal form of symbolism he called Parallelism.

In the last decade of the nineteenth century his work evolved to combine influences from several genres including Symbolism and Art Nouveau. In 1890 he completed Night, a work that marked Hodler's turn toward symbolist imagery. It depicts several recumbent figures, all of them relaxed in sleep except for an agitated man who is menaced by a figure shrouded in black, which Hodler intended as a symbol of death. Hodler developed a style he called "Parallelism" that emphasized the symmetry and rhythm he believed formed the basis of human society. In paintings such as The Chosen One, groupings of figures are symmetrically arranged in poses suggestive of ritual or dance.

Hodler painted number of large-scale historical paintings, often with patriotic themes. In 1897 he accepted a commission to paint a series of large frescoes for the Weapons Room of the Schweizerisches Landesmuseum in Zurich. The compositions he proposed, including The Battle of Marignan which depicted a battle that the Swiss lost, were controversial for their imagery and style, and Hodler was not permitted to execute the frescoes until 1900.

Hodler's work in his final phase took on an expressionist aspect with strongly coloured and geometrical figures. Landscapes were pared down to essentials, sometimes consisting of a jagged wedge of land between water and sky.

THE CATSKILLS PAINTED BY MYCHAJLO MOROZ

MYCHAJLO MOROZ  (1904-1992) 

 Catskill Mountains (1,279 m - 4,180 ft) 

 United States of America  (New York State)

 In  Catskill Mountains, 1961, oil on canvas 

The mountains 
The Catskill Mountains (1,279 m - 4,180 ft)  also known as the Catskills, are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains, located in southeastern New York. As a cultural and geographic region, the Catskills are generally defined as those areas close to or within the borders of the Catskill Park, a 700,000-acre (2,800 km2) forest preserve forever protected from many forms of development under New York state law.
Geologically, the Catskills are a mature dissected plateau, a once-flat region subsequently uplifted and eroded into sharp relief by watercourses. The Catskills form the northeastern end of the Allegheny Plateau (also known as the Appalachian Plateau).
The Catskills are well known in American culture, both as the setting for many 19th-century Hudson River School paintings and as the favored destination for vacationers from New York City in the mid-20th century. The region's many large resorts gave countless young stand-up comedians an opportunity to hone their craft. In addition, the Catskills have long been a haven for artists, musicians, and writers, especially in and around the towns of Phoenicia and Woodstock.

The painter 
Mychajlo Moroz  is a prominent Ukrainian artist, best remembered for his landscapes painted with turbulent strokes and vivid colors.  In 1923 he became a student in the newly established Novakivskyi School of Art, where he studied until 1927. The next two years were spent studying art in Paris on a scholarship from Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky. In Paris, Moroz studied at the Académie Julian.
While in Paris, Moroz met such renowned Ukrainian artists as Oleksa Hryshchenko (Alexis Gritchenko), Mykola Hlushchenko and Vasyl Khmeliuk, who were also working  in variations of the expressionist style. In Paris Moroz met the famous French artist and father of the fauvist movement, Henri Matisse. The direct encounter with the Ecole de Paris, particularly the experience of French expressionists, had a strong impact on Moroz.
In 1931 Moroz traveled to Italy accompanied by his former teacher, and in 1932 he became Novakivskyi's assistant. Together they made trips to the picturesque Carpathian Mountains and were inspired to paint numerous works of the land and its people. The events of World War II and the occupation of western Ukraine by the Soviet Union interrupted Moroz's work and forced him to seek asylum for his young wife, Irena, and infant son, Ihor, in Germany.
In 1949 Moroz and his family settled in New York, where he continued to make a living as an artist. In January, 1959 he had his first of five solo exhibitions at the Panoras Gallery in New York. The journal Art News noted: "Mychajlo Moroz, a Ukrainian, is only a newcomer to New York. The unity of the show as a whole, the fluency, the fast play of brush and color, reveal an experienced painter, a man who sees his scene all of a piece, grasps its details instinctively and with a quick technique lays it out flatly and distinctly." (January 1959).
As a result of the 1962 exhibition, The New York Times wrote: "Mychajlo Moroz is showing lively interpretations of picturesque scenes, some of which tend to go beyond the picturesque to the expressionistic." (January 23, 1962).
An entire room in the Ukrainian Museum in Rome is dedicated to Moroz's work. In 1990 a retrospective exhibition of his work was held at The Ukrainian Museum in New York. The artist died in 1992 on Staten Island, N.Y.

MUGI HILL BY AKSELI GALLEN-KALLELA

AKSELI GALLEN-KALLELA  (1865-1931)

Mugi Hill (3,541 m - 11,617 ft)

Kenya 

In  Wakamba Plain, Mugi Hill, 1909, oil on canvas

The spot 
Mugi Hill (3,541 m - 11,617 ft ) and the Giant's Billiards Table offers some of the best hillwalking in Kenya. It  is part of the Mount Kenya National Park, established in 1949, protects the region surrounding the volcano itself.  Currently the national park is within the forest reserve which encircles it.  In April 1978 the area was designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.The national park and the forest reserve, combined, became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997.
The Government of Kenya had four reasons for creating a national park on and around Mount Kenya. These were the importance of tourism for the local and national economies, preserve an area of great scenic beauty, conserve the biodiversity within the park and to preserve the water catchment for the surrounding area.
Kenya’s government has announced a project to discourage animals from straying into small holdings surrounding the Park and devastating crops.  Since 2014,  the Park  is enclosed by an electric fence with five electrified strands.

The painter 
Akseli Gallen-Kallela was a Swedish-speaking Finnish painter who is best known for his illustrations of the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic. His work was considered very important for the Finnish national identity. He changed his name from Gallen to Gallen-Kallela in 1907. In 1884 he moved to Paris, to study at the Académie Julian and became friends with the Finnish painter Albert Edelfelt, the Norwegian painter Adam Dörnberger, and the Swedish writer August Strindberg.
In December 1894, Gallen-Kallela moved to Berlin to oversee the joint exhibition of his works with the works of Norwegian painter Edvard Munch. Here he became acquainted with the Symbolists.
On his return from Germany, Gallen studied print-making and visited London to deepen his knowledge, and in 1898 studied fresco-painting in Italy.
For the Paris World Fair in 1900, Gallen-Kallela painted frescoes for the Finnish Pavilion. In these frescoes, his political ideas became most apparent.Gallen-Kallela officially finnicized his name to the more Finnish-sounding Akseli Gallen-Kallela in 1907.
In 1909, Gallen-Kallela moved to Nairobi in Kenya with his family, and there he painted over 150 expressionist oil paintings and bought many east African artefacts. But he returned to Finland after a couple of years, because he realized Finland was his main inspiration. Between 1911 and 1913 he designed and built a studio and house at Tarvaspää, about 10 km northwest of the centre of Helsinki.
From December 1923 to May 1926, Gallen-Kallela lived in the United States, where an exhibition of his work toured several cities, and where he visited the Taos art-colony in New Mexico to study indigenous American art. In 1925 he began the illustrations for his "Great Kalevala". This was still unfinished when he died of pneumonia in Stockholm on 7 March 1931, while returning from a lecture in Copenhagen, Denmark
His studio and house at Tarvaspää was opened as the Gallen-Kallela Museum in 1961

THE GRINDELWALD GLACIER BY JOSEPH ANTON KOCH

JOSEPH ANTON KOCH  (1768-1839)

Grindelwald (1,034 m 3,392 ft) 

Switzerland

 In Grindelwald Glacier, 1823, oil on canvas, National Museum in Wroclaw

The spot 
Grindelwald (1,034 m 3,392 ft) designates a valley, a village and a municipality in the Interlaken-Oberhasli administrative district in the canton of Berne in Switzerland. In addition to the village of Grindelwald, the municipality also includes the settlements of Alpiglen, Burglauenen, Grund, Itramen, Mühlebach, Schwendi, Tschingelberg and Wargistal. Three major swiss peaks overlooking Grindelwald: the Eiger (3,970 m - 13, 020ft), the Mettenberg (3,104m -10,184ft), the Wetterhorn (3,692m - 12, 133ft).

The painter 

Joseph Anton Koch was an Austrian (Tyrol) painter of Neoclassicism and later the German Romantic movement; he is perhaps the most significant neoclassical landscape painter.

He   received academic training in the Karlsschule Stuttgart, a strict military academy. In 1791, he ran away, and traveled through France and Switzerland. He arrived in Rome in 1795. Koch was close to the painter Asmus Jacob Carstens and carried on Carstens' "heroic" art, at first in a literal manner. 

After 1800, Koch developed as a landscape painter.  In Rome, he espoused a new type of "heroic" landscape, revising the classical compositions of Poussin and Lorrain with a more rugged, mountainous scenery. In 1812, forced through inadequate income from his work, or in protest of the French invasion, he went to Vienna, where he worked prolifically. He stayed in Vienna until 1815. During this period, he incorporated more non-classical themes in his work.  In Vienna, he was influenced by Friedrich Schlegel and enthusiasts of old German art.  In response, his style became harsher. When returning to Rome, Koch became a conspicuous figure in the German artists' colony there.  He painted, among other works, the four frescoes in the Dante Room of the Villa Massimi (1824–29).  He wrote Moderne Kunstchronik oder die rumfordische Suppe gekocht und geschrieben von J. A. Koch (Stuttgart, 1834) which was directed humorously against unjustifiable criticism and false connoisseurship.  Koch's last years were spent in great poverty. He died in Rome,where he was buried in the Teutonic Cemetery, located next to St. Peter's Basilica within Vatican City.  He etched 20 Italian landscapes and a large sheet representing The Oath of the French at Millesimo; 14 pages after Dante, adding later another 30 pages (published Vicenza, 1904), and 36 pages after Ossian.  

He contributed American landscape scenes to the works of Alexander von Humboldt (1805).

MOUNT SCHAFFER PAINTED BY LAWREN HARRIS

LAWREN S. HARRIS (1885-1970)

Mount Schaffer (2,962 m - 9,711 ft)

 Canada

In Mount Schaffer, Yoho national park, oil on canvas, 1926

The mountain 
Mount Schaffer (2,962 m- 9,711ft) was named in 1909 after Mary Schaffer.
Schaffer, a native of Pennsylvania, accompanied the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences on a trip to the Canadian Rockies with Mary Vaux in 1889. The Rockies made an obvious impression on Mary, who was an accomplished artist, writer and photographer and she returned annually to explore until finally moving to Banff in 1912. Although Mount Schaffer overlooks one of Yoho National Park’s scenic gems: Lake O’Hara, Mary Schaffer is more well-known for her exploration of Maligne Lake in Jasper National Park. In addition to being the first tourist in Jasper National Park, in 1908, she was likely the first non-native person to see Maligne Lake since it was discovered 32 years earlier. Mount Schaffer was first climbed in 1909 by M. Goddard and W. S. Richardson.

The painter 
Lawren Stewart Harris was a leading landscape canadian painter. An inspirer of other artists, he was a key figure in the Group of Seven and gave new vision to representations of the northern Canadian landscape. During the 1920s, Harris's works became more abstract and simplified, especially his stark landscapes of the Canadian north and Arctic.  He also stopped signing and dating his works so that people would judge his works on their own merit and not by the artist or when they were painted.
In 1924, a sketching trip with A.Y. Jackson to Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies marked the beginning of Harris' mountain subjects, which he continued to explore with annual sketching trips until 1929, exploring areas around Banff National Park, Yoho National Park and Mount Robson Provincial Park. In 1930, Harris went on his last extended sketching trip, travelling to the Arctic aboard the supply ship SS. Beothic for two months, during which time he completed over 50 sketches.  "We are on the fringe of the great North and its living whiteness, its loneliness and replenishment, its resignations and release, tis call and answer, its cleansing rhythms. It seems that the top of the continent is a source of spiritual flow that will ever shed clarity into the growing race of America."
(Lawren S. Harris, 1926)
For Harris, art was to express spiritual values as well as to represent the visible world. North Shore, Lake Superior (1926), an image of a solitary weathered tree stump surrounded by an expanse of dramatically lit sky, effectively evokes the tension between the terrestrial and spiritual.
The resulting Arctic canvases that he developed from the oil panels marked the end of his landscape period, and from 1935 on, Harris enthusiastically embraced abstract painting. Several members of the Group of Seven later became members of the Canadian Group of Painters including Harris, A. J. Casson, Arthur Lismer, A. Y. Jackson, and Franklin Carmichael.
From 1934 to 1937, Harris lived in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he painted his first abstract works, a direction he would continue for the rest of his life. In 1938 he moved to Sante Fe, New Mexico, and helped found the Transcendental Painting Group, an organization of artists who advocated a spiritual form of abstraction.
In 1969, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.
Harris died in Vancouver in 1970, at the age of 84, as a well-known artist. He was buried on the grounds of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, where his work is now held.
On November 26, 2015 his painting Mountain and Glacier was auctioned for $3.9 million at a Heffel Fine Art Auction House auction in Toronto, breaking the previous record for the sale of one of Harris's works.
In 2016 a film about Harris's life, Where the Universe Sings, was produced by TV Ontario. It was created by filmmaker Peter Raymont and directed by Nancy Lang.

GUNUNG MERAPI BY ARTHUR ELAND

ARTHUR ELAND (1884-1948)

 Gunung Merapi or Mount Merapi (2,914m - 9,500 ft)

Indonesia (Java) 

The mountain 

Gunung Merapi (2,914m - 9,500 ft)  is an active stratovolcano located on the border between Central Java and Yogyakarta, Indonesia. It is the most active volcano in Indonesia and has erupted regularly since 1548. It is located approximately 28 kilometres (17 mi) north of Yogyakarta city which has a population of 2.4 million, and thousands of people live on the flanks of the volcano, with villages as high as 1,700 metres (5,600 ft) above sea level.

Smoke can often be seen emerging from the mountaintop, and several eruptions have caused fatalities. Pyroclastic flow from a large explosion killed 27 people on 22 November 1994, mostly in the town of Muntilan, west of the volcano.Another large eruption occurred in 2006, shortly before the Yogyakarta earthquake. In light of the hazards that Merapi poses to populated areas, it has been designated as one of the Decade Volcanoes.

On 25 October 2010 the Indonesian government raised the alert for Mount Merapi to its highest level and warned villagers in threatened areas to move to safer ground. People living within a 20 km (12 mi) zone were told to evacuate. Officials said about 500 volcanic earthquakes had been recorded on the mountain over the weekend of 23–24 October, and that the magma had risen to about 1 kilometre (3,300 ft) below the surface due to the seismic activity. On the afternoon of 25 October 2010 Mount Merapi erupted lava from its southern and southeastern slopes.

The mountain was still erupting on 30 November 2010, but due to lowered eruptive activity on 3 December 2010 the official alert status was reduced to level 3. The volcano is now 2930 metres high, 38 metres lower than before the 2010 eruptions.

After a large eruption in 2010 the characteristic of Mount Merapi was changed. On 18 November 2013 Mount Merapi burst smoke up to 2,000 meters high, one of its first major phreatic eruptions after the 2010 eruption. Researchers said that this eruption occurred due to combined effect of hot volcanic gases and abundant rainfall.

In 2004 an area of 6,410 hectares around Mount Merapi was established as a national park. The decision of the Ministry of Forestry to declare the park has been subsequently challenged in court by The Indonesian Forum for Environment, on grounds of lack of consultation with local residents. During the 2006 eruption of the volcano it was reported that many residents were reluctant to leave because they feared their residences would be confiscated for expansion of the national park, meaning they wouldn't have a house.

Mythology

Merapi is very important to Javanese, especially those living around its crater. As such, there are many myths and beliefs attached to Merapi. It is believed that when the gods had just created the Earth, Java was unbalanced because of the placement of Mount Jamurdipo on the west end of the island. In order to assure balance, the gods (generally represented by Batara Guru) ordered the mountain to be moved to the centre of Java. However, two armourers, Empu Rama and Empu Permadi, were already forging a sacred keris at the site where Mount Jamurdipo was to be moved. The gods warned them that they would be moving a mountain there, and that they should leave; Empu Rama and Empu Permadi ignored that warning. In anger, the gods buried Empu Rama and Empu Permadi under Mount Jamurdipo; their spirits later became the rulers of all mystical beings in the area. In memory of them, Mount Jamurdipo was later renamed Mount Merapi, which means "fire of Rama and Permadi.

The Javanese believe that the Earth is not only populated by human beings, but also by spirits (makhluk halus). Villages near Merapi believe that one of the palaces (in Javanese kraton) used by the rulers of the spirit kingdom lies inside Merapi, ruled by Empu Rama and Empu Permadi. This palace is said to be a spiritual counterpart to the Yogyakarta Sultanate, complete with roads, soldiers, princes, vehicles, and domesticated animals. Besides the rulers, the palace is said to also be populated by the spirits of ancestors who died as righteous people. The spirits of these ancestors are said to live in the palace as royal servants (abdi dalem), occasionally visiting their descendants in dreams to give prophecies or warnings. "

Spirits of Merapi

To keep the volcano quiet and to appease the spirits of the mountain, the Javanese regularly bring offerings on the anniversary of the sultan of Yogyakarta's coronation. For Yogyakarta Sultanate, Merapi holds significant cosmological symbolism, because it is forming a sacred north-south axis line between Merapi peak and Southern Ocean (Indian Ocean). The sacred axis is signified by Merapi peak in the north, the Tugu Yogyakarta (id) monument near Yogyakarta main train station, the axis runs along Malioboro street to Northern Alun-alun (square) across Keraton Yogyakarta (sultan palace), Southern Alun-alun, all the way to Bantul and finally reach Samas and Parangkusumo beach on the estuary of Opak river and Southern Ocean. This sacred axis connected the hyangs or spirits of mountain revered since ancient times—often identified as "Mbah Petruk" by Javanese people—The Sultan of Yogyakarta as the leader of the Javanese kingdom, and Nyi Roro Kidul as the queen of the Southern Ocean, the female ocean deity revered by Javanese people and also mythical consort of Javanese kings.

The painter 
There is not much biographical information about Arthur Eland, except that he was Leo Eland's twin brother. These two Dutch  brothers were born in 1884 in the Dutch East Indies on Java in Salatiga. After the death of Arthur and since the 1970s many of his canvases and watercolors representing large Indonesian volcanic landscapes have gone into auctions especially at Christie's and have acquired unmistakable market value. Christie's classified him after the colonial impressionist painters

Y LLIWEDD BY SIR KYFFIN WILLIAMS

SIR KYFFIN WILLIAMS (1918-2006) 

Y Lliwedd  (898m- 2, 946ft)

 United Kingdom (Wales)

In Sun and Cloud on Lliwedd, oil on canvas, 1973  

Aberystwyth University School of Art Museum and Galleries 

The mountain 

Y Lliwedd  (898m- 2, 946ft) is a mountain, connected to Mount Snowdon  in the Snowdonia National Park, North Wales. The eastern flanks are steep cliffs rising above Glaslyn and Llyn Llydaw. Y Lliwedd is the most conspicuous of the peaks for those who approach Snowdon via the Miners' and Pyg tracks. Few that summit Snowdon continue over to Y Lliwedd as the challenge of Wales' highest peak is enough, leaving Y Lliwedd quiet and peaceful even when queues are forming at the summit of Snowdon.

Hikers and mountaineers often pass over Y Lliwedd when walking the Snowdon Horseshoe. The noted British climber George Mallory undertook many of his early climbs here. It was also the site of considerable training activity for the 1953 British Everest Expedition.

The north face of Y Lliwedd was explored in the late 19th century and in 1909 was the subject of the first British climbing guide, The climbs on Lliwedd by J. M. A. Thomson and A. W. Andrews.

Two subsidiary peaks of Y Lliwedd are listed as Nuttalls: Lliwedd Bach (818m - 2,699 ft)  and Y Lliwedd East Peak  (893m- 2,947ft)

The Painter 
Sir John "Kyffin" Williams, KBE, RA was a Welsh landscape painter who lived at Pwllfanogl, Llanfairpwll, on the Island of Anglesey. Williams is widely regarded as the defining artist of Wales during the 20th century.
His works typically drew inspiration from the Welsh landscape and farmlands. His works may be seen in a permanent exhibition in the Oriel Kyffin Williams Gallery which opened in 2008 at Oriel Ynys Môn in Llangefni, Anglesey, as well as at many other galleries elsewhere in Britain. He was president of the Royal Cambrian Academy and was appointed a member of the Royal Academy in 1974.
In 1995 Williams received the Glyndŵr Award for an Outstanding Contribution to the Arts in Wales during the Machynlleth Festival. He was awarded the OBE for his services to the arts in 1982 and a KBE in 1999.
The Kyffin Williams Drawing Prize was established in 2009. The winning works from the 2018 prize are due to be exhibited at the Oriel Kyffin Williams Gallery.
In February 2011 it was announced that Williams' paintings of Patagonia would be shown for the first time.  His last passport, on show in the Oriel Ynys Môn gallery at Llangefni, 2004–2014, has the name Sir John Williams. Kyffin was his grandmother's maiden name.
Williams' works are held in many public collections, including the Government Art Collection, the Arts Council Collection and the National Museum of Wales.

SIF MONS BY NASA MAGELLAN MISSION

NASA MAGELLAN MISSION (1989-1994)

Sif Mons (2,000m / 2kms- 6561ft / 1, 24mi) 

Venus 

The volcano 
Sif Mons is a shield volcano located on the planet Venus at 22 ° N and 352.4 ° E, in the west of Eistla Regio. It is south of Sedna Planitia, west of Bereghinya Planitia and east of Guinevere Planitia. It is near Gula Mons, a little bigger and located further east in the extension of Eistla. Its lava flows are clearly visible even from Earth using the Arecibo radio telescope. The volcano is named after Sif, the northern goddess.

The photo
Sif Mons is displayed in this computer-simulated view of the surface of Venus. The viewpoint is located 360 kilometers (223 miles) north of Sif Mons at a height of 7.5 kilometers (4.7 miles) above the lava flows. Lave flows extend for hundreds of kilometers across the fractured plains shown in the foreground to the base of Sif Mons. The view is to the south. Sif Mons, a volcano with a diameter of 300 kilometers (186 miles) and a height of 2 kilometers (1.2 miles), appears in the upper half of the image. Magellan synthetic aperture radar data is combined with radar altimetry to produce a three-dimensional map of the surface. Rays, cast in a computer, intersect the surface to create a three-dimensional perspective view. Simulated color and a digital elevation map developed by the U.S. Geological Survey are used to enhance small-scale structure. The simulated hues are based on color images recorded by the Soviet Venera 13 and 14 spacecraft. The image was produced at the JPL Multimission Image Processing Laboratory and is a single frame from a video released at the March 5, 1991, JPL news conference.

BEN NEVIS BY CECIL ARTHUR HUNT

CECIL ARTHUR HUNT (1873-1965)

Ben Nevis (1,344 m - 4, 118 ft)

Great Britain - Scotland




The mountain 

Ben Nevis  (1,344 m - 4, 118 ft)  in Scottish Gaelic: Beinn Nibheis is the highest mountain in the British Isles, located in Scotland, at the western end of the Grampian Mountains in the Lochaber area of the Scottish Highlands, close to the town of Fort William.

The mountain is a popular destination, attracting an estimated 100,000 ascents a year, around three-quarters of which use the Pony Track from Glen Nevis. The 700m  (2,300 ft) cliffs of the north face are among the highest in Scotland, providing classic scrambles and rock climbs of all difficulties for climbers and mountaineers. They are also the principal locations in Scotland for ice climbing.

The summit, which is the collapsed dome of an ancient volcano, features the ruins of an observatory which was continuously staffed between 1883 and 1904. The meteorological data collected during this period are still important for understanding Scottish mountain weather. C. T. R. Wilson was inspired to invent the cloud chamber after a period spent working at the observatory.

The first recorded ascent of Ben Nevis was made on 17 August 1771 by James Robertson, an Edinburgh botanist, who was in the region to collect botanical specimens. Another early ascent was in 1774 by John Williams, who provided the first account of the mountain's geological structure. John Keats climbed the mountain in 1818, comparing the ascent to "mounting ten St. Pauls without the convenience of a staircase".  The following year William MacGillivray, who was later to become a distinguished naturalist, reached the summit only to find "fragments of earthen and glass ware, chicken bones, corks, and bits of paper". 

It was not until 1847 that Ben Nevis was confirmed by the Ordnance Survey as the highest mountain in Britain and Ireland, ahead of its rival Ben Macdhui.

In 2000, the Ben Nevis Estate, comprising all of the south side of the mountain including the summit, was bought by the Scottish conservation charity the John Muir Trust.

The painter 
Cecil Arthur Hunt was educated at Winchester and Trinity College, Cambridge, studying Classics and Law, and being called to the Bar in 1899. He treated painting and writing as serious pastimes until 1925, when he was elected to the full membership of the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours. He then relinquished his legal career to become a professional painter.
Hunt had first exhibited in 1900, at the Alpine Club Galleries, and had held his first major show a year later, alongside E Home Bruce at the Ryder Gallery. From the first, he established himself as an atmospheric painter of mountains, especially of the Alps and Dolomites. However, he was soon accepted as a master of a great variety of topographies, for he exhibited the products of his wide travels frequently and extensively. Favourite destinations included the West Country, the West Coast of Scotland, the Rhone Valley, Northern Italy, Rome and Taormina. From 1911, until his death, Hunt lived at Mallord House in Chelsea, especially designed for him by Sir Ralph Knott to include a large studio on the ground floor. During the summer months he and his family retreated to the farm estate of Foxworthy, on the edge of Dartmoor.
Hunt showed work regularly at the Royal Academy (from 1912), the Royal Society of British Artists (from 1914) and the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours (from 1918). He was elected a member of the RBA in 1914, an associate of the RWS in 1919, and a full member six years later. He acted as the Vice-President of the RWS for a three-year period from 1930. His many substantial solo shows included six at the Fine Art Society (1919-34) and one at Colnaghi’s (1945). Following his death, in 1965,  he was the subject of a large memorial show at the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours.
Chris Beetles has done much to revive interest in the work of Cecil Arthur Hunt. He mounted a large scale retrospective exhibition in 1996 at his London gallery, on the exact site of the artist’s first substantial show in 1901. The retrospective was accompanied by a definitive catalogue.

CAYAMBE (2) BY FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH

FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH  (1826-1900) 

 Cayambe  (5,790 m -19,000 ft)

 Ecuador

In Cayambe volcano, The Andes of Ecuador, oil on canvas, 1848, Museum of FineArts Boston

The mountain 

Cayambe or Volcбn Cayambe (5,790 m -19,000 ft) is the name of a volcano located in the Cordillera Central, a range of the Ecuadorian Andes. It is located in Pichincha province some 70 km (43 mi) northeast of Quito. It is the third highest mountain in Ecuador.

Cayambe, which has a permanent snow cap, is a Holocene compound volcano which last erupted in March 1786. At 4,690 metres (15,387 ft) on its south slope is the highest point in the world crossed by the Equator and the only point on the Equator with snow cover. The volcano and most of its slopes are within the Cayambe Coca Ecological Reserve.  Studies conducted since 1995 by a joint team of Ecuadorian and French researchers have shown that during the last 4000, the Cayambe has experienced periods of intense eruptive activity about 700 years alternating with rest periods of 500 to 600 years. The resumption of eruptions must be considered.
Moreover, the region is home to numerous flower plantations for export; however, the non-secure management and toxic effects of these crops have caused serious damage to the environment and create health problems among employees of the plantations.

The painter
Frederic Edwin Church was an American landscape painter born in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a central figure in the Hudson River School of American landscape painters, perhaps best known for painting large panoramic landscapes, often depicting mountains, waterfalls, and sunsets, but also sometimes depicting dramatic natural phenomena that he saw during his travels to the Arctic and Central and South America. Church's paintings put an emphasis on light and a romantic respect for natural detail. In his later years, Church painted classical Mediterranean and Middle Eastern scenes and cityscapes.
Church was the product of the second generation of the Hudson River School and the pupil of Thomas Cole, the school’s founder. The Hudson River School was established by the British Thomas Cole when he moved to America and started painting landscapes, mostly of mountains and other traditional American scenes.  Both Cole and Church were devout Protestants and the latter's beliefs played a role in his paintings especially his early canvases.  Church did differ from Cole in the topics of his paintings: he preferred natural and often majestic scenes over Cole's propensity towards allegory.
Church, like most second generation Hudson River School painters, used extraordinary detail, romanticism, and luminism in his paintings. Romanticism was prominent in Britain and France in the early 1800s as a counter-movement to the Enlightenment virtues of order and logic. Artists of the Romantic period often depicted nature in idealized scenes that depicted the richness and beauty of nature, sometimes also with emphasis on the grand scale of nature.
This tradition carries on in the works of Frederic Church, who idealizes an uninterrupted nature, highlighted by creating excruciatingly detailed art. The emphasis on nature is encouraged by the low horizontal lines, and preponderance of sky to enhance the wilderness; humanity, if it is represented, is depicted as small in comparison with the greater natural reality. The technical skill comes in the form of luminism, a Hudson River School innovation particularly present in Church's works. Luminism is also cited as encompassing several technical aspects, which can be seen in Church’s works. One example is the attempt to “hide brushstrokes,” which makes the scene seem more realistic and lessen the artist’s presence in the work. Most importantly is the emphasis on light (hence luminism) in these scenes. The several sources of light create contrast in the pictures that highlights the beauty and detailed imagery in the painting.

POINTE DUFOUR BY ADOLPHE BRAUN

 ADOLPHE BRAUN (1812-1877)

Pointe Dufour  / Dufour Spitze (4,634 m - 7,103ft) 

 Switzerland - Italy border 

1. In Le Mont Rose, 1860 

2. In  Le Mont Rose  between 1863 and 1865, Musée Condé Chantilly

The Mountain 

The  Pointe Dufour (4,634 m - 7,103ft) , in german Dufourspitze, is the highest peak of Monte Rosa, (Mont Rose) a huge ice-covered mountain massif in the Alps. Dufourspitze is the highest mountain peak of both Switzerland and the Pennine Alps and is also the second-highest mountain of the Alps and Europe outside the Caucasus. It is located between Switzerland (Canton of Valais) and Italy (Piedmont and Aosta Valley). Following a long series of attempts beginning in the early nineteenth century, Monte Rosa's summit, then still called Hцchste Spitze, was first reached on 1 August, the Swiss National celebration day, in 1855 from Zermatt by a party of eight climbers led by three guides: Matthдus and Johannes Zumtaugwald, Ulrich Lauener, Christopher and James Smyth, Charles Hudson, John Birkbeck and Edward Stephenson.
The name Pointe Dufouror Dufour Spitze  replaced the former name Höchste Spitze (English: Highest Peak) that was indicated on the Swiss maps before the Federal Council, on January 28, 1863, decided to rename the mountain in honor of Guillaume-Henri Dufour. Dufour was a Swiss engineer, topographer, co-founder of the Red Cross and army general who led the Sonderbund campaign. This decision followed the completion of the Dufour Map, a series of military topographical maps created under the command of Dufour.
The point just 80 m (260 ft) east of the Dufourspitze and only 2 metres lower, the Dunantspitze, was renamed in 2014 in honor of Henry Dunant, the main founder of the Red Cross.

The photographer

Adolphe Braun was a French photographer, best known for his floral still lifes, Parisian street scenes, and grand Alpine landscapes. One of the most influential French photographers of the 19th century, he used contemporary innovations in photographic reproduction to market his photographs worldwide. In his later years, he used photographic techniques to reproduce famous works of art, which helped advance the field of art history.
Photography historian Naomi Rosenblum described Braun's work as representative of the relationship between art and commercialism in the mid-19th century. His self-sustaining Mulhouse studio helped elevate photography from a craft to a full-scale business enterprise, producing thousands of unique images which were reproduced and marketed throughout Europe and North America.  Rosenblum also suggests that Braun's detailed reproductions of works of art in European museums brought these works to art students in North America, providing a major catalyst for the field of art history in the United States. Subsequent photographs focused on Alpine landscapes, especially lake scenes, and glacier scenes. Unlike many landscape photographers during this period, Braun liked to include people in his scenes. Photography historian Helmut Gernsheim suggested that Braun was one of the most skillful photographers of his era in rendering composition.  While not known as a portraitist, he did take portraits of several notable individuals, including Pope Pius IX, Franz Liszt, and the Countess of Castiglione, mistress of Napoleon III. Braun's work has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the George Eastman House, and the Musйe d'Orsay.
His photographs of Parisian street scenes and Alpine landscapes are frequently reproduced in works on the history of photography.

PICURIS MOUNTAINS PAINTED BY ERNEST L. BLUMENSCHEIN

ERNEST  L. BLUMENSCHEIN (1874-1960)

 Picuris Mountains (2,967 m -  9,734 feet) 

United States of America (New Mexico) 

 In Picuris Mountain (Near Taos), ca. 1940, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum 

The mountains 
Picuris Mountains (2,967 m -  9,734 feet)  is one of the Ridge in Taos County, nearby  Osha Canyon and Vallecitos.  Named Pikuria – those who paint – by Spanish colonizer Juan de Oñate, Picuris is located 24 miles (38 km) southeast of Taos in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains via N.M. 68, 518, and 75. Picuris, once the largest, today is one of the smallest Tiwa pueblos, with some 1,801 inhabitants (Census 2000). Like Taos, it was influenced by Plains Indian culture, particularly the Apaches
If one like biking, the ride takes you into the scenic and historic part of  Picuris Mountains. About 2 miles from the start of this ride you will cross the historic Camino Real, or “Royal Highway,” that served as the original highway to Taos for traders, settlers, and Native Americans traveling north and south for several hundred years.
In late spring through fall this ride is free of snow and dry. It can be pretty beastly pushing up this mountain in the middle of summer. Plan on riding early or late in the day to avoid the heat.

The Painter 
Ernest Leonard Blumenschein  was an American artist and founding member of the Taos Society of Artists. He is noted for paintings of Native Americans, New Mexico and the American Southwest.
Ernest Blumenschein began in arts by studying violin at the Cincinnati College of Music, but after working as an illustrator for his high school newspaper, he sensed that he had found his calling. To pay for courses at the Art Students League, he played for the New York Symphony for two years, under the direction of the Czech composer Anton Dvorák  himself !  He saved enough money to move to Paris to sharpen his painting skills at the Adadémie Julian.
 Back in the United States, an assignment for McClure’s Magazine took him to Taos, New Mexico, for the first time. Charmed by the Southwest, Blumenschein eventually settled there along with other East Coast artists who had grown tired of life in the city.
As Blumenschein later recalled, “We all drifted into Taos like skilled hands looking for a good steady job . . . We lived only to paint. And that is what happens to every artist who passes this way.” (Henning, ed., Ernest L. Blumenschein Retrospective, 1978)
Ib a letter dated 1901 he wrote :  "I am wildly enthusiastic over my surroundings. Everything about me is inspiring me to work. Great mountain ranges that become as clear to one as a friend, landscapes, big and beautiful, deserts reflecting a vast sky, and you feel you are part of it all and are never alone.” in Paintings of the American Southwest, The Arvin Gottlieb Collection, brochure, National Museum of American Art, 1995
The style of painting of the Taos painters was to decisively influence the perceptions that the wider world came to have of the American Southwest, specifically of the Pueblo and Navajo Indian peoples.
During World War I, Blumenschein led a national effort to produce range-finder paintings used to help train military gunners.
Paintings by Blumenschein are held in the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis, Indiana, the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos,  the Taos Art Museum and Fechin House,  the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe,  and the El Paso Art Museum in El Paso, Texas.

THE MONT BLANC BY ALBERT MARQUET

ALBERT MARQUET (1875–1947)

The Mont Blanc (4,808 m - 15,776 ft)

  France - Italy  border

 In Le Lac Léman, Le mont Blanc, oil on canvas 

The mountain 

Mont Blanc (in French) or Monte Bianco (in Italian), both meaning "White Mountain", is the highest mountain in the Alps and the highest in Europe after the Caucasus peaks. It rises 4,808.73 m (15,777 ft) above sea level and is ranked 11th in the world in topographic prominence.  The Mont Blanc is one of the Seven Summit, which includes the highest mountains of each of the seven continents. Summiting all of them is regarded as a mountaineering challenge, first achieved on April 30, 1985 by Richard Bass.  The 7 highest summit, (which are obviously 8 with 2 in Europe !) are :  

Mount Everest (8,848m), Aconcagua (6,961m), Mt Denali or Mc Kinley (6,194m),  Kilimandjaro (5,895m), Mt Elbrus (5,642m), Mount Vinson (4,892m) and Mount Kosciuszko  (2,228m) in Australia.

The mountain lies in a range called the Graian Alps, between the regions of Aosta Valley, Italy, and Savoie and Haute-Savoie, France. The location of the summit is on the watershed line between the valleys of Ferret and Veny in Italy and the valleys of Montjoie, and Arve in France. The Mont Blanc massif is popular for mountaineering, hiking, skiing, and snowboarding.

The three towns and their communes which surround Mont Blanc are Courmayeur in Aosta Valley, Italy, and Saint-Gervais-les-Bains and Chamonix in Haute-Savoie, France.  A cable car ascends and crosses the mountain range from Courmayeur to Chamonix, through the Col du Géant. Constructed beginning in 1957 and completed in 1965, the 11.6 km (7¼ mi) Mont Blanc Tunnel runs beneath the mountain between these two countries and is one of the major trans-Alpine transport routes.

Since the French Revolution, the issue of the ownership of the summit has been debated. 

From 1416 to 1792, the entire mountain was within the Duchy of Savoy. In 1723 the Duke of Savoy, Victor Amadeus II, acquired the Kingdom of Sardinia. The resulting state of Sardinia was to become preeminent in the Italian unification.[ In September 1792, the French revolutionary Army of the Alps under Anne-Pierre de Montesquiou-Fézensac seized Savoy without much resistance and created a department of the Mont-Blanc. In a treaty of 15 May 1796, Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia was forced to cede Savoy and Nice to France. In article 4 of this treaty it says: "The border between the Sardinian kingdom and the departments of the French Republic will be established on a line determined by the most advanced points on the Piedmont side, of the summits, peaks of mountains and other locations subsequently mentioned, as well as the intermediary peaks, knowing: starting from the point where the borders of Faucigny, the Duchy of Aoust and the Valais, to the extremity of the glaciers or Monts-Maudits: first the peaks or plateaus of the Alps, to the rising edge of the Col-Mayor". This act further states that the border should be visible from the town of Chamonix and Courmayeur. However, neither the peak of the Mont Blanc is visible from Courmayeur nor the peak of the Mont Blanc de Courmayeur is visible from Chamonix because part of the mountains lower down obscure them. A Sardinian Atlas map of 1869 showing the summit lying two thirds in Italy and one third in France.

After the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna restored the King of Sardinia in Savoy, Nice and Piedmont, his traditional territories, overruling the 1796 Treaty of Paris. Forty-five years later, after the Second Italian War of Independence, it was replaced by a new legal act. This act was signed in Turin on 24 March 1860 by Napoleon III and Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy, and deals with the annexation of Savoy (following the French neutrality for the plebiscites held in Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna to join the Kingdom of Sardinia, against the Pope's will). A demarcation agreement, signed on 7 March 1861, defines the new border. With the formation of Italy, for the first time Mont Blanc is located on the border of France and Italy.

The 1860 act and attached maps are still legally valid for both the French and Italian governments. One of the prints from the 1823 Sarde Atlas  positions the border exactly on the summit edge of the mountain (and measures it to be 4,804 m (15,761 ft) high). The convention of 7 March 1861 recognises this through an attached map, taking into consideration the limits of the massif, and drawing the border on the icecap of Mont Blanc, making it both French and Italian.Watershed analysis of modern topographic mapping not only places the main summit on the border, but also suggests that the border should follow a line northwards from the main summit towards Mont Maudit, leaving the southeast ridge to Mont Blanc de Courmayeur wholly within Italy.

Although the Franco-Italian border was redefined in both 1947 and 1963, the commission made up of both Italians and French ignored the Mont Blanc issue. In the early 21st century, administration of the mountain is shared between the Italian town of Courmayeur and the French town of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, although the larger part of the mountain lies within the commune of the latter.

The painter 
Albert Marquet was a French painter, associated with the Fauvist movement. He initially became one of the Fauve painters and a lifelong friend of Henri Matisse. In 1890 Marquet moved to Paris to attend the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs, where he met Henri Matisse. They were roommates for a time, and they influenced each other's work. Marquet began studies in 1892 at the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris under Gustave Moreau, the famous symbolist artist. In 1905 he exhibited at the Salon d'Automne. Dismayed by the intense coloration in these paintings, critics reacted by naming the artists the "Fauves", i.e. the wild beasts. Although Marquet painted with the fauves for years, he used less bright and violent colours than the others, and emphasized less intense tones made by mixing complementaries, thus always as colors and never as grays.
Marquet subsequently painted in a more naturalistic style, primarily landscapes, but also several portraits and, between 1910 and 1914, several female nude paintings.
From 1907 to his death, Marquet alternated between working in his studio in Paris (a city he painted a lot of times) and many parts of the European coast and in North Africa. He was most involved with Algeria and Algiers and with Tunisia. He remained also impressed particularly with Naples and Venice where he painted the sea and boats, accenting the light over water.  During his voyages to Germany and Sweden he painted the subjects he usually preferred: river and sea views, ports and ships, but also cityscapes.
The watercolor of Pyrenees (above) is a rare example of Marquet painting mountains, which was not his favorite subject.
Marquet was particularly revered by the American painters Leland Bell and his wife Louisa Matthiasdottir. He was also revered by Bell's contemporaries Al Kresch and Gabriel Laderman. Since both Bell and Laderman were teachers in several American art schools, they have had an influence on younger American figurative artists and their appreciation of Marquet. Matisse said ; "When I look at Hokusai, I think of Marquet—and vice versa ... I don't mean imitation of Hokusai, I mean similarity with him".
___________________________________________
2018 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

FUJIYAMA / 富士山 (n°2) BY HOKUSAI

KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI (1760–1849) 

Fujiyama / 富士山 (3, 776 m -12,389 ft)

Japan

A sketch of the Mitsui shop in Suruga street in Edo, n°2 from the series 

36 Views of Mount Fuji (1830- 32),  woodblock print, ink and color on paper, 1930 edition, 

About the 36 Views of Mt Fuji 
Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (富嶽三十六景 Fugaku Sanjūrokkei) is a series of landscape prints　created by the Japanese ukiyo-e artist Hokusai (1760? - 1849).
The series depicts Mount Fuji from different locations and in various seasons and weather conditions. The original thirty-six prints were so popular that Hokusai expanded the series by ten.
The earliest impressions appear faded when compared to the versions usually seen, but are closer to Hokusai's original conception. The original prints have a deliberately uneven blue sky, which increases the sky's brightness and gives movement to the clouds. The peak is brought forward with a halo of Prussian blue. Subsequent prints have a strong, even blue tone and the printer added a new block, overprinting the white clouds on the horizon with light blue. Later prints also typically employ a strong benigara (Bengal red) pigment, which lent the painting its common name of Red Fuji. The green block colour was recut, lowering the meeting point between forest and mountain slope.


The artist
Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾 北斎)  was a Japanese artist, ukiyo-e painter and printmaker of the Edo period. He was influenced by such painters as Sesshu, and other styles of Chinese painting. Born in Edo (now Tokyo), Hokusai is best known as author of the woodblock print series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (富嶽三十六景 c. 1831) which includes the internationally recognized print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, created during the 1820s.
Hokusai created the "Thirty-Six Views of Mt Fuji " both as a response to a domestic travel boom and as part of a personal obsession with Mount Fuji. In this series, Mt Fuji is painted on different meteorological conditions, in different hours of the days, in different seasons and from different places.


The mountain 
This is the legendary Mount Fuji or Fujiyama (富士山).
It is located on Honshu Island and is the highest mountain peak in Japan at 3,776.24 m (12,389 ft). Several names are attributed to it:  "Fuji-san", "Fujiyama" or, redundantly, "Mt. Fujiyama". Usually Japanese speakers refer to the mountain as "Fuji-san".  The other Japanese names for Mount Fuji,  have become obsolete or poetic like: Fuji-no-Yama (ふじの山 - The Mountain of Fuji), Fuji-no-Takane (ふじの高嶺- The High Peak of Fuji), Fuyō-hō (芙蓉峰 - The Lotus Peak), and Fugaku (富岳／富嶽), created by combining the first character of 富士, Fuji, and 岳, mountain.
Mount Fuji is an active stratovolcano that last erupted in 1707–08. Mount Fuji lies about 100 kilometres (60 mi) south-west of Tokyo, and can be seen from there on a clear day.
Mount Fuji's exceptionally symmetrical cone, which is snow-capped several months a year, is a well-known symbol of Japan and it is frequently depicted in art and photographs, as well as visited by sightseers and climbers.
Mount Fuji is one of Japan's Three Holy Mountains (三霊山) along with Mount Tate and Mount Haku. It is also a Special Place of Scenic Beauty and one of Japan's Historic Sites.
It was added to the World Heritage List as a Cultural Site on June 22, 2013. As per UNESCO, Mount Fuji has “inspired artists and poets and been the object of pilgrimage for centuries”. UNESCO recognizes 25 sites of cultural interest within the Mt. Fuji locality. These 25 locations include the mountain itself, Fujisan Hongū Sengen Shrine and six other Sengen shrines, two lodging houses, Lake Yamanaka, Lake Kawaguchi, the eight Oshino Hakkai hot springs, two lava tree molds, the remains of the Fuji-kō cult in the Hitoana cave, Shiraito Falls, and Miho no Matsubara pine tree grove; while on the low alps of Mount Fuji lies the Taisekiji temple complex, where the central base headquarters of Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism is located.



MITRE PEAK / RAHOTU BY JOHN BARR CLARK HOYTE

JOHN BARR CLARK HOYTE (1835-1913)

 Mitre Peak / Rahotu  (1,683m -  5,522 ft) 

New Zealand (South Island)

1.  In Milford sound, watercolour, 1870  

The mountain 

Mitre Peak/ Rahotu  (1,683m -  5,522 ft) is an iconic mountain in the South Island of New Zealand, located on the shore of Milford Sound. It is one of the most photographed peaks in the country. The distinctive shape of the peak in southern New Zealand gives the mountain its name, after the mitre headwear of Christian bishops. It was named by Captain John Lort Stokes of the HMS Acheron. 

Part of the reason for its iconic status is its location. Close to the shore of Milford Sound, in the Fiordland National Park in the southwestern South Island, it is a stunning sight.  The mountain rises near vertically from the water of Milford Sound, which technically is a fjord.

The peak is actually a closely grouped set of five peaks, with Mitre Peak not even the tallest one, however from most easily accessible viewpoints, Mitre Peak appears as a single point.

 Milford Sound is part of Te Wahipounamu, a World Heritage Site as declared by UNESCO.

The only road access to Milford Sound is via State Highway 94, in itself one of the most scenic roads in New Zealand.

Climbing

Mitre Peak is difficult to climb and not many people do so.  The first attempt was made in 1883, but was aborted due to bad weather. The next attempt was on 13 March 1911 by JR Dennistoun from Peel Forest. People did not believe Dennistoun, who claimed to have built a cairn on the peak to which he had fixed his handkerchief. Those facts were confirmed by the next successful climbers in 1914. There are six routes up to Mitre Peak, and most climbers start by getting a boat to Sinbad Bay.

The Painter 

John Barr Clark Hoyte was born in England, probably in London,  the son of Samuel Hoyte, a landowner. His mother's name is not known, nor are any details of his childhood. From 1856 to 1859 he was employed as a planter in Demerara, Guyana, after which he returned to England. On 1860, at Leamington, Warwickshire, he married Rose Esther Elizabeth Parsons, daughter of an iron merchant. Within three months they sailed on the Egmont for Auckland, New Zealand, where they were to live for 16 years. Three daughters were born in Auckland, and the couple may also have had a son. A brother of John Hoyte emigrated to New Zealand, possibly in the 1870s.
Nothing is known of Hoyte's education and artistic training and we are reduced to the obvious deduction that he was heir to the English tradition of topographic draughtsmanship and watercolour painting. Firm drawing underlies his landscapes, making it appropriate to group him with colonial surveyor–architect artists such as Edward Ashworth, Edmund Norman and George O'Brien.
During his years in New Zealand John Hoyte travelled assiduously in search of new scenes to exploit. In January 1866 he exhibited views from Whangarei, Coromandel, Auckland, Waikato, the Wellington region and Nelson, although some of these pictures were not painted from the subject. In the 1870s he travelled each summer, progressively adding the thermal region, Taranaki, Nelson, Christchurch, Arthur's Pass, Banks Peninsula and Otago to his repertoire between 1872 and 1876.
His pictorial exploration of the colony's principal dramatic landscapes was completed when he took a cruise circumnavigating the South Island in early 1877, exploring the coast of Fiordland with particular attention. New Zealand subjects would continue to inspire his production long after he had settled in Australia, where they shared his attention with coastal and mountain views drawn chiefly from the neighbourhood of Sydney.
The success of the art unions of his work shows that the subjects he painted were in harmony with public taste. Despite the exceptional landscapes which appear so frequently in his production – geysers, the Pink and White Terraces, fiords, mountains and lakes – it appears that his preference was for a more gentle, picturesque mode of landscape art rather than the heightened tensions of the sublime. The Otago Guardian in 1876 described 'the aspect of repose which usually characterises Mr Hoyte's illustrations of native landscapes'. A comparison of Fiordland subjects painted by Hoyte and John Gully shows that Hoyte eschewed the manipulation of the viewer's emotions which the latter exploited so regularly. Even in his pastoral subjects Gully could be relied on to introduce an epic element which Hoyte usually avoided. Despite his apparent commercial success, however, Hoyte's standing, like that of George O'Brien, waned in the 1870s: a decade which marked a major shift in New Zealand colonial taste as the Turnerian Romantics such as Gully, J. C. Richmond and W. M. Hodgkins moved into greater prominence. They and their style were to dominate the following decades.

CHARTREUSE MASSIF PAINTED BY J.M.W.TURNER

J.M.W. TURNER (1775-1851)

Massif de la Chartreuse / Chamechaude  (2, 082m - 6, 830ft) 

France (Jura) 

 In  The Chartreuse massif and the monastery, 1802, watercolour  

The mountain 

The Chartreuse massif is a mountainous massif of the Prealps, on the border of the French departments of Isère and, to a lesser extent, Savoy. It culminates in Chamechaude (2, 082m - 6, 830ft). It consists mainly of limestones arranged in succession of anticlines and synclines forming long lines of ridges oriented from north to south. The depressions, at the bottom of which flows the Guiers and its tributaries, are separated by passes. The massif, subject to an oceanic mountain climate, has relatively high rainfall but water is absent from the surface; it flows rapidly into karstic networks carved out of limestone.

The massif has been shaped in the course of its history by the presence, since the eleventh century, of the Carthusian order which founded the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse and helped to shape the landscape by developing a breeding economy, a beginning industry and traffic routes. The opening of the massif by means of roads brings him, in the twentieth century, an economic boom: agriculture specializes and forestry develops.

During the winter season, the snow can operate small ski resorts. During the high season, the main outdoor activity is hiking; the walls also offer the possibility of climbing, while the many cavities attract speleologists. The creation of the Chartreuse Regional Nature Park has boosted tourism, enhanced cultural heritage, while preserving the environment through the management of the territory. It is completed by the national reserve of Hauts de Chartreuse to preserve biodiversity. The natural environment is divided between deciduous and coniferous forests, grasslands, cliffs and rare wetlands on the periphery of the massif, sheltering many protected species.

The painter 
The english painter Joseph Mallord William Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence in the history of painting. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. He is commonly known as "the painter of light" and his work is regarded as a Romantic preface to Impressionism.
In his thirties, Turner travelled widely in Europe, starting with France and Switzerland in 1802 and studying in the Louvre in Paris in the same year. He made many visits to Venice.   Turner's talent was recognized early in his life. Financial independence allowed Turner to innovate freely; his mature work is characterized by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint. According to David Piper's The Illustrated History of Art, his later pictures were called "fantastic puzzles." Turner was recognized as an artistic genius: influential English art critic John Ruskin described him as the artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature."
Turner's major venture into printmaking was the Liber Studiorum (Book of Studies), seventy prints that he worked on from 1806 to 1819. The Liber Studiorum was an expression of his intentions for landscape art. The idea was loosely based on Claude Lorrain's Liber Veritatis (Book of Truth), where Lorrain  had recorded his completed paintings; a series of print copies of these drawings, by then at Devonshire House, had been a huge publishing success. Turner's plates were meant to be widely disseminated, and categorized the genre into six types: Marine, Mountainous, Pastoral, Historical, Architectural, and Elevated or Epic Pastoral.  His printmaking was a major part of his output, and a museum is devoted to it, the Turner Museum in Sarasota, Florida, founded in 1974 by Douglas Montrose-Graem to house his collection of Turner prints.
Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his affection for humanity on the one hand (note the frequent scenes of people drinking or working or walking in the foreground), but its vulnerability and vulgarity amid the 'sublime' nature of the world on the other. 'Sublime' here means awe-inspiring, savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by man, evidence of the power of God – a theme that romanticist artists and poets were exploring in this period. Although these late paintings appear to be 'impressionistic' and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena.
Turner used pigments like carmine in his paintings, knowing that they were not long-lasting, despite the advice of contemporary experts to use more durable pigments. As a result, many of his colours have now faded greatly.
John Ruskin says in his "Notes" on Turner in March 1878 : "His true master was Dr Monro; to the practical teaching of that first patron and the wise simplicity of method of watercolour study, in which he was disciplined by him and companioned by Girtin, the healthy and constant development of the greater power is primarily to be attributed; the greatness of the power itself, it is impossible to over-estimate. "

MOUNT PILATUS / TOMLISHORN IN VINTAGE POSTCARD 1890

VINTAGE POSTCARD 1890

 Mount Pilatus or Tomlishorn (2,128 m - 6,982 ft)

Switzerland

 In La gare de Lucerne et le Mont Pilatus au clair de lune, La Suisse en Couleur,  1890, 
 Photochrom color print, The Library of Congress, Wahington D.C.

The mountain 

Mount Pilatus overlooking Lucerne in central Switzerland. It is composed of several summits of which the highest is named Tomlishorn.(2,128 m - 6,982 ft).  Another summit named Esel (2,119 m) lies just over the railway station. Jurisdiction over the massif is divided between the cantons of Obwalden, Nidwalden, and Lucerne. The main peaks are right on the border between Obwalden and Nidwalden.

A few different local legends about the origin of the name exist. One claims that Mount Pilatus was named so because Pontius Pilate was buried there; a similar legend is told of Monte Vettore in Italy. Another is that the mountain looks like the belly of a large man, Pilate, lying on his back and was thus named for him. The name may also be derived from "pileatus," meaning "cloud-topped."

A medieval legend had dragons with healing powers living on the mountain. A chronicle from 1619 reads: 'as I was contemplating the serene sky by night, I saw a very bright dragon with flapping wings go from a cave in a great rock in the mount called Pilatus toward another cave, known as Flue, on the opposite side of the lake'. 

Nowadays, dragon has been replaced by fortified radar (part of the Swiss FLORAKO system) and weather stations on the Oberhaupt summit, not open to the public view and used all year round.

The top can be reached with the Pilatus railway, the world's steepest cogwheel railway, from Alpnachstad, operating from May to November (depending on snow conditions), and the whole year with the aerial panorama gondolas and aerial cableways from Kriens. Both summits of Tomlishorn and Esel can be reached with a trail. Mount Pilatus has the longest summer toboggan track in Switzerland (0.88 miles or 1,350 m) and the biggest suspension rope park in Central Switzerland.

During the summer, the "Golden Round Trip" — a popular route for tourists — involves taking a boat from Lucerne across Lake Lucerne to Alpnachstad, going up on the cogwheel railway, coming down on the aerial cableways and panorama gondolas, and taking a bus back to Lucerne.

Numbered amongst those who have reached its summit are Conrad Gessner, Theodore Roosevelt, Arthur Schopenhauer (1804), Queen Victoria and Julia Ward Howe (1867).

The photos 
The Library of Congress' Photochrom prints collection contains almost 6,000 views of Europe and the Middle East and 500 views of North America. Published primarily from the 1890s to 1910s, these prints were created by the Photoglob Company in Zürich, Switzerland, and the Detroit Publishing Company in Michigan. The richly colored images look like photographs but are actually ink-based photolithographs, usually 6.5 x 9 inches.
Like postcards, the photochroms feature subjects that appeal to travelers, including landscapes, architecture, street scenes, and daily life and culture. The prints were sold as souvenirs and often collected in albums or framed for display.
The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division assembled this collection from two sources that provided prints in mint condition. In 1985, the prints of Europe and the Middle East were purchased from the Galerie Muriset in Switzerland. In 2004, Howard L. Gottlieb generously donated the North American views. Additional photochroms can be found in the collections listed in the Related Resources section.