CAP CANAILLE PAINTED BY HENRI MANGUIN

HENRI MANGUIN  (1874-1949)
Cap Canaille (394 m -1292, 65 ft)

France

 In  Aloés en fleurs, Cassis, oil on panel, 1912, Private owner

The mountain

Cap Canaille (394m) is a cape in France located in the the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region with a culminating point called " La Grande Tête"  (The great Head). It is located near the city of Cassis, north-west of La Ciotat. Its red rock is composed of detritic limestones. Going into the Mediterranean Sea, it consists of rocky and steep banks dominated by the western extremity of the Soubeyranes cliffs. The latter are, after the Slieve League in Ireland, one of the highest maritime cliffs in Europe and constitute, in La Ciotat, the highest cliffs in France with a maximum altitude of 394 meters. A road, the D141 called "Route des Crêtes", connects Cassis to La Ciotat by approaching the edge of the cliff.  Several gazebos are set up there with a spectacular view on the French Riviera and the sea. Cap Canaille is well known for having inspired a lot of painters of the end of 19th century and beginning of 20th. Its name is due to a distortion of the Provençal langage  Cap Naio  "Cap Naille" in French, meaning "Swimming mountain " or a distorsion of the roman latin name Mons Canalis meaning " Mountain  of Aqueducts".

The painter 

The French painter Henri-Charles Manguin although often considered a precursor of  Fauvism in 1905, is not very well konwn. Studying at  Gustave Moreau's studio at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he befriends Albert Marquet, Henri Matisse and Georges Rouault. In 1902, he participated for the first time in the Salon des Independants. In 1904, he discovered the small fishing port of Saint-Tropez in the south of France and got in touch with Paul Signac. He exhibited at the Salon d'Automne, in the United States and at the Venice Biennale. 

Ambroise Vollard buys him 150 paintings.

 In 1924, he participated in the project of the future Annonciade Museum in Saint-Tropez. In 1938, the Druet Gallery closed, his son bought the unsold ones: Manguin destroyed eight paintings, then exhibited all over the world.  In 1942, he rented a workshop in Avignon. Henri Manguin dies in his house of Oustalet in Saint-Tropez on September 25, 1949. The Salon organizes a posthumous retrospective of his works in 1950.

_______________________________

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT EREBUS BY EDWARD ADRIAN WILSON

EDWARD ADRIAN WILSON (1872-1912) 

Mount Erebus (3, 794 m - 12, 448ft)

Antarctica

  In Mount Erebus 1911, watercolour,  Museum- Royal Geographical Society,  London

The mountain 
Mount Erebus (3, 794 m - 12, 448ft), not to be confused with Mount Elbrus is the second-highest volcano in Antarctica (after Mount Sidley) and the southernmost active volcano on Earth. It is the sixth highest ultra mountain on an island, located on Ross Island, which is also home to three inactive volcanoes:  Mount Terror, Mount Bird, and Mount Terra Nova.
The volcano has been active since c. 1.3 million years ago and is the site of the Mount Erebus Volcano Observatory run by the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.
Mount Erebus was discovered on January 27, 1841 (and observed to be in eruption) by polar explorer Sir James Clark Ross who named it and its companion, Mount Terror, after his ships, Erebus and Terror (which were later used by Sir John Franklin on his disastrous Arctic expedition). Erebus is a dark region in Hades in Greek mythology. Present with Ross on the Erebus was the young Joseph Hooker, future president of the Royal Society and close friend of Charles Darwin. Erebus was an Ancient Greek primordial deity of darkness, the son of Chaos.
Mount Erebus is classified as a polygenetic stratovolcano. The bottom half of the volcano is a shield and the top half is a stratocone. The composition of the current eruptive products of Erebus is anorthoclase-porphyritic tephritic phonolite and phonolite, which are the bulk of exposed lava flow on the volcano.  Erebus is the world's only presently erupting phonolite volcano.
Researchers spent more than three months during the 2007–08 field season installing an unusually dense array of seismometers around Mount Erebus to listen to waves of energy generated by small, controlled blasts from explosives they buried along its flanks and perimeter and to record scattered seismic signals generated by lava lake eruptions and local ice quakes. By studying the refracted and scattered seismic waves, the scientists produced an image of the uppermost (top few km) of the volcano to understand the geometry of its "plumbing" and how the magma rises to the lava lake. These results demonstrated a complex upper-volcano conduit system with appreciable upper-volcano magma storage to the northwest of the lava lake at depths hundreds of meters below the surface.

The artist
Edward Adrian Wilson,  nicknamed "Uncle Bill" was an English physician, polar explorer, natural historian, painter and ornithologist. Wilson took part in two British expeditions to Antarctica, the Discovery Expedition (1901-1904)  and the tragic Terra Nova Expedition (1907-1912), both under the leadership of Scott.
Dr. Edward A. Wilson  is widely regarded as one of the finest artists ever to have worked in the Antarctic. Sailing with Captain Scott aboard 'Discovery' (1901-1904), he became the last in a long tradition of 'exploration artists' from an age when pencil and water-colour were the main methods of producing accurate scientific records of new lands and animal species. He combined scientific, topographical and landscape techniques to produce accurate and beautiful images of the last unknown continent. Such was the strength of his work that it also helped to found the tradition of modern wildlife painting. In particular Wilson captured the essence of the flight and motion of Southern Ocean sea-birds on paper.
Returning with Captain Scott aboard 'Terra Nova' (1910-1913) as Chief of Scientific Staff, he continued to record the continent and its wildlife with extraordinary deftness. Chosen to accompany Captain Scott to the South Pole, his last drawings are from one of the most famous epic journeys in exploration history. Along with his scientific work, Wilson's pencil recorded the finding of Roald Amundsen's tent at the South Pole by Captain Scott. Wilson died, along with the other members of the British Pole Party, during the return journey, in March 1912. The drawings and paintings were created at considerable personal cost in the freezing conditions in which Wilson worked. He often suffered severely from the cold whilst sketching and also from snow-blindness, or sunburn of the eye. They provide a remarkable testament to one of the great figures of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration. The book has been produced as a companion volume to 'Edward Wilson's Nature Notebooks' by two of Wilson's great nephews, to mark the centenary of his death.

_______________________________
2018 - Wandering Vertexes..
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

THE BUET PAINTED BY GABRIEL LOPPÉ

GABRIEL LOPPÉ (1825-1913)

 Mount Buet  (3, 096 m - 10, 157 ft)  

 France 

 In Le Buet vu du glacier d'Argentière, oil on canvas,  John Mitchell Fine Paintings Gallery, London

The mountain 
Mount Buet  (3, 096 m - 10, 157 ft)    also called simply The Buet is a summit of the massif of Giffre, in Haute-Savoie. It is also called the Mont Blanc des Dames (The Ladies Mont Blanc). It dominates the Cirque des Fonds.  From its summit, the highest in the department except  the Mont-Blanc massif, offers an exceptional view of the latter, as well as the red needles and the Haut-Giffre. The Buet played an important role in the birth of mountaineering and the conquest of Mont Blanc in the 18th century.
 The first a ascension took place in 1765 by Genevan scientist Jean André Deluc and his brother. The brothers Deluc reach first the summit of the Buet, on the side of Sixt in 1770. They conduct a series of experiments, including the calculation of the time required to bring water to a boil at this altitude. They are the first to use the barometer to measure an altitude. This epic is considered the first climb in the high mountains in the Alps. Six years later, in 1776, Horace-Bénédict de Saussure took the route and made preliminary observations to the ascent of Mont Blanc.
In 1910, the Grenairon refuge was built on Mount Buet. Destroyed in 1984 by a fire, it was rebuilt in 1985 in the same way.

The painter 

Toussaint Gabriel Loppé was a French painter, photographer and mountaineer. He became the first foreigner to be made a member of the Alpine Club in London. His father was a captain in the French Engineers and Loppé's childhood was spent in many different towns in south-eastern France. Aged twenty-one Loppé climbed a small mountain in the Languedoc and found a group of painters sketching on the summit. He had found his calling and subsequently went off to Geneva where he met the reputed leading Swiss landscapist, Alexandre Calame (1810 -1864). Loppé took up mountaineering in Grindelwald in the 1850s and made friends easily with the many English climbers in France and Switzerland. Although he was frequently labelled as a pupil of Calame and his rival François Diday, Loppé was almost an entirely self-taught artist. He became the first painter to work at higher altitudes during climbing expeditions earning the right to be considered the founder of the peintres-alpinistes school, which became established in the Savoie at the turn of the nineteenth century.

Notable followers of Loppé include, Charles Henri Contencin (1875-1955) and Jacques Fourcy (1906-1990). Together with the first ascent of Mt Mallet in Chamonix’s Grandes Jorasses range, Loppé made over 40 ascents of Mont Blanc during his climbing career, which lasted until the late 1890s.  He frequently made oil sketches from alpine summits, including a panorama of the view from the summit of Mont Blanc.

His paintings became celebrated for their atmosphere and spontaneity and he soon found himself taking part in many exhibitions in London and in Paris.

By 1896 Loppé had spent over fifty seasons climbing and painting in Chamonix. As the valley’s unrivalled ‘Court painter’ his work was in constant demand with the majority of his pictures going to English climbers and summer tourists.

In his later years, Loppé became fascinated with photography and was quite an innovator in this field too. His long exposure photograph of the Eiffel Tower struck by lightning, now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris remains one of his iconic images. 

_______________________________
2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

FUJIYAMA / 富士山 (n°5) BY HOKUSAI / 葛飾 北斎

KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI (1760–1849)
Fujiyama / 富士山 (3, 776 m -12,389 ft)

Japan

In Honjo Tatekawa, (The timberyard at Honjo), n°5 from the series 

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

_______________________________
2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 



THE GRANDE CASSE PAINTED BY HENRI MATISSE

HENRI MATISSE (1869- 1954) 

The Grande Casse (3, 855 m - 12,648 ft)  

France 

 In  Les Alpes de Savoie, 1901. oil on canvas,  Musée Picasso, Paris 

The mountain 
The Grande Casse (3, 855 m - 12,648 ft) is the highest mountain of the Vanoise Massif in the Graian Alps in the region of Savoie, France. It is located in the heart of the Vanoise National Park, near the village of Pralognan-la-Vanoise, which is about 25 km southeast of the nearest town, Moûtiers. It has a steep 600 m high north face. The other sides of the mountain are more gentle, mostly consisting of broken rocks. A high ridge connects it to the nearby peak of Grande Motte. The ridge connecting the Grande Casse and the Grande Motte is the watershed between the Tarentaise Valley in the north and Maurienne valley to the south.
The first ascent was made by William Mathews along with guides Michel Croz and E. Favre via the southwest face on 8 August 1860.  The north face was climbed on 6 August 1933 by the Italians Aldo Bonacossa and L. Binaghi.

The painter 
The most famous french artist Henri Émile Benoît Matisse is known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso, as one of the artists who best helped to define the revolutionary developments in the visual arts throughout the opening decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture.
The intense colorism of the works he painted between 1900 and 1905 brought him notoriety as one of the Fauves.  Many of his finest works were created in the decade or so after 1906, when he developed a rigorous style that emphasized flattened forms and decorative pattern. In 1917 he relocated to a suburb of Nice on the French Riviera, and the more relaxed style of his work during the 1920s gained him critical acclaim as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. After 1930, he adopted a bolder simplification of form. When ill health in his final years prevented him from painting, he created an important body of work in the medium of cut paper collage.
His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.
The painting above showing The Grande Casse peak from the west, belongs to the early paintings period, all painted before 1905.

_______________________________

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

JEBEL SAGHRO BY JACQUES MAJORELLE

JACQUES MAJORELLE (1886-1962), 

Jebel Saghro or Adrar Saghro (2,712 m - 8,898 ft) 

Morocco 

 In Tinghir todra, oil on canvas, 1930, Private owner

The mountain 
The Jebel Saghro  or Adrar Saghro (2,712 m - 8,898 ft) is located less than 100 km south of the central High Atlas, Morocco, overlooking the valleys of Drâa and Dadès, eastern part of the Anti-Atlas.
Lunar landscapes of plateaus, peaks, canyons, forest of pitons, immensity of spaces. In this chaos of black rocks, the small villages, are reduced to a few small houses surrounded by a bouquet of palm or almond trees. The north-south crossings are made by three passes traversed by difficult and very spectacular tracks: the Tazazert pass (2,283 m), the Kouaouch pass (2,592 m), and the Tagmout pass (1,919 m). The highest point of the mountain is the Amalou n Mansour (2,712 m) which is located southeast of the village of Iknioun.
Charles de Foucauld, gone in search of spirituality, is one of the first Western travelers having explored Jebel Saghro, (Reconnaissance au Maroc  published in 1888 in Paris).

The painter 
Jacques Majorelle son of the celebrated Art Nouveau furniture designer Louis Majorelle, was a French painter. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Nancy in 1901 and later at the Académie Julian in Paris with Schommer and Royer. Majorelle became a noted Orientalist painter, but is most remembered for constructing the villa and gardens that now carry his name, Les Jardins Majorelle in Marrakech.
In around 1917 he travelled to Morocco to recover from heart problems and after short period spent in Casablanca, he visited Marrakech, where he fell in love with the vibrant colours and quality of light he found there. Initially, he used Marrakech as a base for trips to Spain, Italy and other parts of North Africa, including Egypt. Eventually, however, he settled in Marrakech permanently.
He drew inspiration for his paintings from his trips and from Marrakesch itself. His paintings include many street scenes, souks and kasbahs as well as portraits of local inhabitants. He opened a handicrafts workshop in Marrakech and also designed posters to promote travel to Morocco.  His work was profoundly affected by his voyages around the Mediterannean and North Africa. He introduced a more coloured vision, bathed in light where the drawing disappears and the image emerges from large spots of colour laid flat. It seemed as if he had discoved the sun in these countries. His style exhibited more freedom and spontaneity.
During his lifetime, many of Majorelle's paintings were sold to private buyers and remain in private collections. Some of his early works can be found in Museums around his birthplace such as the Musée de l'Ecole de Nancy. Examples of his later work can be seen in the Mamounia Hotel, Marrakesch, the French Consulate of Marrakech and in the Villa at the Majorelle Gardens.

_______________________________
2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

THE POPOCATEPTL (2) BY JOSE MARIA VELASCO

JOSE MARIA VELASCO (1840-1912)

The Popocatépetl (5,426 m -17,802 ft)  

Mexico

 In Popocatepetl and greenery, oil on canvas, private owner 

The mountain 
Popocatépetl  (5,426 m - 17,802 ft) is an active volcano, located in the states of Puebla, Mexico, and Morelos, in Central Mexico, and lies in the eastern half of the Trans-Mexican volcanic belt.  The name Popocatépetl comes from the Nahuatl words popōca  (it smokes) and tepētl  (mountain), meaning Smoking Mountain. It is the second highest peak in Mexico, after Citlaltépetl (Pico de Orizaba) at 5,636 m (18,491 ft).
It is linked to the Iztaccihuatl volcano to the north by the high saddle known as the Paso de Cortés.
Popocatépetl is 70 km (43 mi) southeast of Mexico City, from where it can be seen regularly, depending on atmospheric conditions. Until recently, the volcano was one of three tall peaks in Mexico to contain glaciers, the others being Iztaccihuatl and Pico de Orizaba. In the 1990s, the glaciers such as Glaciar Norte (North Glacier) greatly decreased in size, partly due to warmer temperatures but largely due to increased volcanic activity. By early 2001, Popocatépetl's glaciers were gone; ice remained on the volcano, but no longer displayed the characteristic features of glaciers such as crevasses.
Magma erupting from Popocatépetl has historically been predominantly andesitic, but it has also erupted large volumes of dacite. Magma produced in the current cycle of activity tends to be a mixture of the two.

The Painter 
José Maria Tranquilino Francisco de Jesus Velasco Gomez Obregуn, generally known as José Marнa Velasco, was a 19th-century Mexican polymath, most famous as a painter who made Mexican geography a symbol of national identity through his paintings.
Velasco's long career elevated Mexican landscape painting to international standing. One of his landscapes of the Valley of Mexico is in the Vatican Museum, a gift to Pope Leo XIII. His scenes of the Mexican landscape are a visual source for environmental historians, since they show the Valley of Mexico before its degradation in the twentieth century, with air pollution and urban sprawl. His landscape art has a wide appeal, since it is more accessible than history paintings that require the viewer to understand a particular event.
Today the Government of the State of Mexico, where Velasco was from, presents an award for artistic merit in his name to painters born in that state. Among the most outstanding winners are Luis Nishizawa, Leopoldo Flores, Ignacio Barrios and Héctor Cruz.
The José María Velasco Museum was opened in 1992 in Toluca City with the task of preserving and promoting his paintings

_______________________________
2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT WAHINGTON OR AGIOCOCHOOK BY SANFORD ROBINSON GIFFORD

SANFORD ROBINSON GIFFORD (1823-1880)

Mount Washington or Agiocochook  (1,916 m- 6,288 ft)

United States of America 

 In Indian Summer in the White Mountains, oil on canvas, 1862, Mint Museum of Art

The mountain 

Mount Washington (1,916 m- 6,288 ft), called Agiocochook by some Native American tribes, is the highest peak in the Northeastern United States at  and the most topographically prominent mountain east of the Mississippi River. The mountain is located in the Presidential Range of the White Mountains, in the township of Sargent's Purchase, in Coös County, New Hampshire. While nearly the whole mountain is in the White Mountain National Forest, an area of 60.3 acres (24.4 ha) surrounding and including the summit is occupied by Mount Washington State Park.

The mountain is notorious for its erratic weather. On the afternoon of April 12, 1934, the Mount Washington Observatory recorded a windspeed of 231 miles per hour (372 km/h) at the summit, the world record for most of the 20th century, and still a record for measured wind speeds not involved with a tropical cyclone.

The Mount Washington Cog Railway ascends the western slope of the mountain, and the Mount Washington Auto Road climbs to the summit from the east. The mountain is visited by hikers, and the Appalachian Trail crosses the summit. Other common activities include glider flying, backcountry skiing, and annual cycle and running races such as the Auto Road Bicycle Hillclimb and Road Race.

The painter 
Like most Hudson River School artists, Gifford traveled extensively to find scenic landscapes to sketch and paint. In addition to exploring New England, upstate New York and New Jersey, Gifford made extensive trips abroad. He first traveled to Europe from 1855 to 1857, to study European art and sketch subjects for future paintings. During this trip Gifford also met Albert Bierstadt and Worthington Whittredge.
In 1858, he traveled to Vermont, "apparently" with his friend and fellow painter Jerome Thompson. Details of their visit were carried in the contemporary Home Journal. Both artists submitted paintings of Mount Mansfield, Vermont's tallest peak, to the National Academy of Design's annual show in 1859. Thompson's work, "Belated Party on Mansfield Mountain" is now owned by the MET in New York, according to the report.
Thereafter, he served in the Union Army as a corporal in the 7th Regiment of the New York Militia upon the outbreak of the Civil War. A few of his canvases belonging to New York City's Seventh Regiment and the Union League Club of New York are testament to that troubled time.
Gifford referred to the best of his landscapes as his "chief pictures". Many of his chief pictures are characterized by a hazy atmosphere with soft, suffuse sunlight. Gifford often painted a large body of water in the foreground or middle distance (see above) in which the distant landscape would be gently reflected. A catalog of his work published shortly after his death recorded in excess of 700 paintings during his career.

_______________________________

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT STURGEON OR WURGARRI BY EUGENE VON GUERARD

EUGENE VON GUERARD  (1811-1901)

Mount Sturgeon or Wurgarri  (575 m - 1,886 ft) 

Australia (Victoria) 

 In Mount Sturgeon and the Wannon in the Grampians, Victoria 1858, pencil on paper

The mountain 

Mount Wurgarri  (575 m-1,886 ft)  also called Mount Sturgeon is a mountain in Australia located in the Southern Grampians region and the state of Victoria , about 230 kilometers west of the state capital of Melbourne. The width at the base is 2.1 km.  The area around Mount Wurgarri is almost unpopulated, with less than two inhabitants per square kilometer.  In the surroundings around Mount Wurgarri grows mainly savannah forest.  The average annual average is 927 millimeters. The rainy month is July, with an average of 143 mm rainfall , and the driest is February, with 25 mm rainfall.

The painter 
Johann Joseph Eugene von Guerard was an Austrian-born artist, active in Australia from 1852 to 1882. Known for his finely detailed landscapes in the tradition of the Düsseldorf school of painting, he is represented in Australia's major public galleries, and is referred to in the country as Eugene von Guerard. In 1852 von Guerard arrived in Victoria, Australia, determined to try his luck on the Victorian goldfields. As a gold-digger he was not very successful, but he did produce a large number of intimate studies of goldfields life, quite different from the deliberately awe-inspiring landscapes for which he was later to become famous. Realizing that there were opportunities for an artist in Australia, he abandoned the diggings and was soon undertaking commissions recording the dwellings and properties of wealthy pastoralists.
By the early 1860s, von Guerard was recognized as the foremost landscape artist in the colonies, touring Southeast Australia and New Zealand in pursuit of the sublime and the picturesque.  He is most known for the wilderness paintings produced during this time, which are remarkable for their shadowy lighting and fastidious detail.  Indeed, his View of Tower Hill in south-western Victoria was used as a botanical template over a century later when the land, which had been laid waste and polluted by agriculture, was systematically reclaimed, forested with native flora and made a state park. The scientific accuracy of such work has led to a reassessment of von Guerard's approach to wilderness painting, and some historians believe it likely that the landscapist was strongly influenced by the environmental theories of the leading scientist Alexander von Humboldt. Others attribute his 'truthful representation' of nature to the criterion for figure and landscape painting set by the Düsseldorf Academy.

_______________________________
2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MUHABURA VOLCANO IN VINTAGE POSTCARD 1930

VINTAGE POSTCARDS 1930 

Mount Muhabura  (4,127 m - 13,540 ft) 

Rwanda - Uganda border 

`The mountain 
Mount Muhabura  ( 4,127 m - 13,540 ft)  also known as Mount Muhavura, is an extinct volcano in the Virunga Mountains on the border between Rwanda and Uganda. Muhabura is the third highest of the eight major mountains of the mountain range, which is a part of the Albertine Rift, the western branch of the East African Rift. Muhabura is partly in the Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda and partly in the Mgahinga Gorilla National Park, Uganda. The name Muhabura means "The Guide" in the local language, Kinyarwanda. It can be seen from many parts of Uganda and Rwanda because of its slope.


2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

PECA VIEJA PAINTED BY DAVID BOMBERG

 

DAVID BOMBERG (1890-1957)  

Peca Vieja (2,617m) 

Spain (Asturias)

In Sunrise in the mountains, Picos de Asturias, oil on canvas, 1935

The mountain
Peca Vieja (2,617m) is a mountain that is one of the Picos de Europa, also known as Picos de Aturias or Picos in Spain. The peaks of Europe (in Spanish: Picos de Europa, often called Los Picos), the highest massif of the Cordillera Cantabria, are located between the provinces of Asturias, Leûn and Cantabria, about thirty kilometers from the sea. They culminate in Torre de Cerredo, at 2,648 m.
The approximate dimensions of the massif are 40 km long (east - west) by 20 km wide (north - south) and an area of ​​502 km2. On May 30, 1995, the Picos de Europa National Park was created. For sailors coming from the west on the Atlantic Ocean who sailed by sight, Los Picos was the first land visible on the horizon, which explains the origin of the name. They are framed in the north by the Sierra de Cuera and the Sierra del Escudo, to the south by the Sierra de Alba and to the west by the Sierra de Ave.

The painter 
David Garshen Bomberg was an English painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys. Bomberg was one of the most audacious of the exceptional generation of artists who studied at the Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks, and which included Mark Gertler, Stanley Spencer, C.R.W. Nevinson and Dora Carrington.  Bomberg painted a series of complex geometric compositions combining the influences of cubism and futurism in the years immediately preceding World War I; typically using a limited number of striking colours, turning humans into simple, angular shapes, and sometimes overlaying the whole painting a strong grid-work colouring scheme. He was expelled from the Slade School of Art in 1913, with agreement between the senior teachers Tonks, Frederick Brown and Philip Wilson Steer, because of the audacity of his breach from the conventional approach of that time.
Whether because his faith in the machine age had been shattered by his experiences as a private soldier in the trenches or because of the pervasive retrogressive attitude towards modernism in Britain Bomberg moved to a more figurative style in the 1920s and his work became increasingly dominated by portraits and landscapes drawn from nature. Gradually developing a more expressionist technique, he travelled widely through the Middle East and Europe.

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

AI-PETRI PAINTED BY IVAN AIVAZOVSKY

IVAN AIVAZOVSKY (1817-1900)

Ai-Petri  (1,234.2 m - 4,049 ft)

Crimea - Russia 

In Pushkin at Ai-Petri Peak during sunrise, watercolour 

 The mountain 

Ai-Petri  (1,234.2 m - 4,049 ft) meaning  Saint Peter in Greek,  is a peak in the Crimean Mountains. For administrative purposes it is in the Yalta municipality of Crimea.  Ai-Petri is one of the windiest places in Crimea. The wind blows for 125 days a year, reaching a speed of 50 m/s (110 mph). The peak is located above the city of Alupka and the town of Koreiz. There is a cable car that takes passengers from a station near Alupka to the main area in Ai-Petri.

The painter 

Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (Ива́н Константи́нович Айвазо́вский)  was a Russian Romantic painter. Despite he is considered one of the greatest marine artists in history, he painted a few mountains landscapes.  Aivazovsky was born into an Armenian family in the Black Sea port of Feodosia and was mostly based in his native Crimea.  Following his education at the Imperial Academy of Arts, Aivazovsky traveled to Europe and lived briefly in Italy in the early 1840s. He then returned to Russia and was appointed the main painter of the Russian Navy. Aivazovsky had close ties with the military and political elite of the Russian Empire and often attended military maneuvers. He was sponsored by the state and was well-regarded during his lifetime. The saying "worthy of Aivazovsky's brush", popularized by Anton Chekhov, was used in Russia for "describing something ineffably lovely." One of the most prominent Russian artists of his time, Aivazovsky was also popular outside Russia. He held numerous solo exhibitions in Europe and the United States. During his almost 60-year career, he created around 6,000 paintings, making him one of the most prolific artists of his time. The vast majority of his works are seascapes, but he often depicted battle scenes, Armenian themes, and portraiture. Most of Aivazovsky's works are kept in Russian, Ukrainian and Armenian museums as well as private collections.

_______________________________
2018 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

THE GIEWONT BY JAN NEPOMUCEN GLOWACKI

JAN NEPOMUCEN GLOWACKI (1802-1847)

Giewont (1, 895 m- 6, 217 ft)

Poland

The mountains 

Giewont is a mountain massif in the Tatra Mountains of Poland. It  is 1,895 m - at its highest.

The massif has three peaks (all m/metres in AMSL):

- Great Giewont - Wielki Giewont (1,895 m- 6, 217 ft)

- Long Giewont - Długi Giewont (1,867 m- 6, 125 ft)

- Small Giewont -  Polish Mały Giewont (1,728 m - 5,669 ft)

There is a mountain pass located between Great and Long Giewont, known as Szczerba (1,823 m-  5, 980 ft).  Long Giewont and Great Giewont are situated at a higher altitude than the nearby town of Zakopane, making them clearly visible from that city.

On Great Giewont, there is a 15 m steel cross (erected in 1901) - the site of religious pilgrimages. The area is notorious for its hazardous nature during thunderstorms, so this should be taken into consideration when approaching the summit.

The first recorded ascent to Giewont's summit was undertaken in 1830 by Franciszek Herbich and Aleksander Zawadzki (a19th century explorer). The first winter ascent of Giewont occurred in 1904 by a group of five mountaineers led by Mariusz Zaruski. Nowadays the climbing on Giewont is strictly banned. On the other hand, hiking on the hiking trails is allowed and the access (except the winter) is not difficult hence Giewont is a very popular destination among amblers and Sunday tourists. In the summer up to few thousands tourists a day ascend the top.

The painter 

Jan Nepomucen Głowacki was a Polish realist painter of the Romantic era, regarded as the most outstanding landscape painter of the early 19th century in Poland under the foreign partitions. Głowacki studied painting at the Kraków School of Fine Arts and later at the academies of Prague and Vienna, as well as Rome and Munich. He returned to Kraków in 1828, and became a teacher of painting and drawing. From 1842 he served as a professor in the Faculty of Landscape Painting at the School of Fine Arts. His work can be found at the National Museum of Poland and its branches. Some of his work was looted by Nazi Germany in World War II and has never been recovered.

Głowacki was the first Polish artist to devote an entire series of works to the Tatra Mountains.

 He was also the first, to produce studies for his oil paintings on strenuous outdoor trips. Landscapes such as "Widok z Poronina" (View from Poronin, 1836) and "Morskie Oko" are said to mark the beginning of realist Polish mountain painting.

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

THE MONT BLANC BY JEAN-ANTOINE LINCK

JEAN-ANTOINE LINCK (1766-1843

 The Mont Blanc ( 4,808 m -15,777 ft)

France- Italy border 

 In Vue du massif du Mont-Blanc de Epaule droite des Aiguilles Vertes des Charmoz, du Plan du Midi, du Goute du Bionnassay, du Trelatete, des Montagnes du Prarion et Pormenaz, Aquatinta, Swiss National Library 

The mountain 

 The Mont Blanc ( 4,808.73 m -15,777 ft) or Monte Bianco, both meaning "White Mountain", is the highest mountain in the Alps and the highest in Europe after the Caucasus peaks. It 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 summits, (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. 

 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 artist

Jean-Antoine Linck, is a swiss painter and draftsman who lived and worked at the end of the 18th century and beginning of 19th century, at the time nature and mountains were up to date in high society  in Switzerland and France.He is the son of Jean-Conrad, an enameller and engraver from Geneva who initiates his apprenticeship. He was then trained by Carl Hackert with Wolfgang Adam Toepffer. In 1802, he opened his own studio in Geneva, in the district of Montbrillant. His works, depicting the surroundings of Geneva, Savoy, the Alps and the Mont Blanc, were inspired by those of the great master of that " genre" Johann Ludwig Aberli and were successful with Josephine de Beauharnais, the French Empress and Catherine II, the Russian Empress, meanwhile alpine tourism began to develop.

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT BANAHAW (3) BY FERNANDO AMORSOLO

FERNANDO AMORSOLO (1882-1972),

Mount Banahaw (2, 170m- 7, 120 ft) 

Philippines (Luzon)




The mountain

Mount Banahaw (2, 170m- 7, 120 ft) is an active volcano on Luzon in the Philippines. The three-peaked volcano complex is located between the provinces of Laguna and Quezon and is the tallest mountain in the Calabarzon region dominating the landscape for miles around. 

Mount Banahaw is a traditional pilgrimage site for locals, believed by many as a "Holy mountain", a spiritually-charged location. The mountain and its environs are considered sacred by local residents; the water from its sacred springs are deemed "holy water" for allegedly having beneficial qualities, issuing forth from locations called "puestos" or "holy sites". These sites are unique natural features composed not only of springs, but also caves, streams and boulders; with names with biblical allusions, and shrines erected in, on or around them. These locations were allegedly revealed to a man named Agripino Lontoc by the "Santong Boses" or the "Holy Voices", which also gave the names to these places way back during the Spanish Colonial Era. Another one of this mountain is the adjacent Mount Banahaw de Lucbán.

Due to incessant climbing activity the mountain trails have become littered with trash. In March 2004, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources ordered a 5-year suspension of hiking activity in the mountains, covering the Dolores and Sariaya trails. Reopening was delayed was then scheduled to March 2012, but was further extended to February 2015.




The painter 

Fernando Cueto Amorsolo was one of the most important artists in the history of painting in the Philippines.Amorsolo was a portraitist and painter of rural Philippine landscapes. He is popularly known for his craftsmanship and mastery in the use of light. After graduating from the Univeajor influences on his work. Amorsolo set up his own studio upon his return to Manila and painted prodigiously during the 1920s and the 1930s. His Rice Planting (1922), which appeared on posters and tourist brochures, became one of the most popular images of the Commonwealth of the Philippines. Beginning in the 1930s, Amorsolo's work was exhibited widely both in the Philippines and abroad. His bright,optimistic, pastoral images set the tone for Philippine painting before World War II . Except for his darker World War II-era paintings, Amorsolo painted quiet and peaceful scenes throughout his career.

_______________________________
2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

EL CAYAMBE BY ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT  (1769-1859) 

 Cayambe  (5,790 m -19,000 ft)

 Ecuador

  In Vues des Cordillères et Monumens des Peuples Indigènes de l’Amérique  

book published in 1816 in Paris,  University of Ottawa 

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 cartographer and painter  
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt was a Prussian geographer, naturalist, explorer, and influential proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography. Humboldt's advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement laid the foundation for modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring.
Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in Latin America, exploring and describing it for the first time from a modern scientific point of view. His description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. Humboldt was one of the first people to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined (South America and Africa in particular). Humboldt resurrected the use of the word cosmos from the ancient Greek and assigned it to his multi-volume treatise, Kosmos, in which he sought to unify diverse branches of scientific knowledge and culture. This important work also motivated a holistic perception of the universe as one interacting entity.
On their way back to Europe from Mexico on their way to the United States, Humboldt and his fellow scientist Aimé Bonpland stopped in Cuba for a while. After their first stay in Cuba of three months they returned the mainland at Cartagena de Indias (now in Colombia), a major center of trade in northern South America. Ascending the swollen stream of the Magdalena River to Honda and arrived in Bogotá on July 6, 1801 where they met Spanish botanist José Celestino Mutis, the head of the Royal Botanical Expedition to New Granada, staying there until September 8, 1801. Mutis was generous with his time and gave Humboldt access to the huge pictorial record he had compiled since 1783.  Humboldt had hopes of connecting with the French sailing expedition of Baudin, now finally underway, so Bonpland and Humboldt hurried to Ecuador. They crossed the frozen ridges of the Cordillera Real, they reached Quito on 6 January 1802, after a tedious and difficult journey.
Their stay in Ecuador was marked by the ascent of Pichincha and their climb of Chimborazo, where Humboldt and his party reached an altitude of 19,286 feet (5,878 m). This was a world record at the time, but a thousand feet short of the summit.  Humboldt's journey concluded with an expedition to the sources of the Amazon en route for Lima, Peru.

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

BEAR MOUNTAIN PAINTED BYJOHN MARIN

JOHN MARIN (1870-1953) 

Bear Mountain  (393m - 1,289ft)

United States of America 

The mountain 
Bear Mountain  (393m - 1,289ft) is one of the best-known peaks of New York's Hudson Highlands. Located partially in Orange County in the town of Highlands and partially in Rockland County in the town of Stony Point, it lends its name to the nearby Bear Mountain Bridge and Bear Mountain State Park that contains it. Its summit, accessible by a paved road, has several roadside viewpoints, a picnic area and an observatory, the Perkins Memorial Tower. It is crossed by several hiking trails as well, including the oldest section of the Appalachian Trail (AT). As of 2015, the AT across Bear Mountain is continuing to be improved by the New York–New Jersey Trail Conference to minimize erosion and improve accessibility and sustainability as part of a project to rebuild and realign the trail that began in 2006.
The steep eastern face of the mountain overlooks the Hudson River. The eastern side of the mountain consists of a pile of massive boulders, often the size of houses, that culminate in a 50-foot (15 m) cliff face at approximately the 1,000-foot (300 m) level. A direct scramble from the shore of Hessian Lake to Perkins Memorial Drive on the summit requires a gain of about 1,000 feet (300 m) in roughly 0.8 miles (1.3 km). From the summit, one can see as far as Manhattan, and the monument on High Point in New Jersey.


The painter 
John Marin was a seminal American modernist painter. He was one of the first Americans to employ techniques of abstraction in his calligraphic depictions of landscapes and city streets. Along with Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, and Georgia O’Keeffe, Marin helped introduce a new aesthetic model for American painters. “I must for myself insist that when finished, that is when all the parts are in place and are working, that now it has become an object and will therefore have its boundaries as definite as the prow, the stern, the sides, and bottom bound as a boat” he once reflected.
Marin started his career in art later in life, graduating from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1901 at the age of 30. In 1905, he travelled to Europe, lived in Paris (1905-1909) where he developed his signature watercolor technique and met the artist Edward Steichen. It was Steichen that introduced his work to the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who mounted Marin’s first solo show in 1909, and financially supported the artist over the remainder of his career.
Today, his works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others.
He developed a more dynamic, fractured style from 1912 to depict the interaction of conflicting forces, and gradually evolved summary ways of rendering his vivid impressions of sea, sky, mountains or the skyscrapers of Manhattan. In the 1920s worked almost exclusively in watercolour; after 1930 painted largely in oils.

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

PUIG FUMAT BY JOHN SINGER SARGENT

JOHN SINGER SARGENT  (1856-1925)

 Puig Fumat  (384 m -1,260ft)
Spain (Mallorca)

In Mallcorca- Cap san Vicente, watercolour, The Brooklyn Museum

The mountain 

Puig  Fumat (384m)  is the cape at the northeastern tip of Mallorca dominating Cape Formentor and the bay of San Vicente. In 1925, Antoni Parietti Coll (Palma, 1899-1979) made the route between Port de Pollença and the end of the peninsula of Formentor, opening ample tourism in this portion, as well as the perspective of the luxury hotel.

The painter 
John Singer Sargent  was an American artist who  created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Switzerland, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida. He was trained in Paris prior to moving to London. Sargent enjoyed international acclaim as a portrait painter, but  in later life he expressed ambivalence about the restrictions of formal portrait work, and devoted much of his energy to mural painting and working en plein air. He lived most of his life in Europe.  Each destination offered pictorial stimulation and treasure.  Even at his leisure, in escaping the pressures of the portrait studio, he painted with restless intensity, often painting from morning until night.  His hundreds of watercolors of Venice are especially notable, many done from the perspective of a gondola. His colors were sometimes extremely vivid and as one reviewer noted, "Everything is given with the intensity of a dream." In the Middle East and North Africa Sargent painted Bedouins, goatherds, and fisherman. In the last decade of his life, he produced many watercolors in Maine, Florida, and in the American West, of fauna, flora, and native peoples.
With his watercolors, Sargent was able to indulge his earliest artistic inclinations for nature, architecture, exotic peoples, and noble mountain landscapes. And it is in some of his late works where one senses Sargent painting most purely for himself. His watercolors were executed with a joyful fluidness.   His first major solo exhibit of watercolor works was at the Carfax Gallery in London in 1905. In 1909, he exhibited 86 watercolors in New York City, 83 of which were bought by the Brooklyn Museum. Evan Charteris wrote in 1927: 'To live with Sargent's water-colours is to live with sunshine captured and held, with the luster of a bright and legible world, 'the refluent shade' and 'the Ambient ardours of the noon.'
Although not generally accorded the critical respect given Winslow Homer, perhaps America's greatest watercolorist, scholarship has revealed that Sargent was fluent in the entire range of opaque and transparent watercolor technique, including the methods used by Homer.

_____________________________

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

TARANAKI / MOUNT EGMONT BY JOHN BARR CLARK HOYTE

JOHN BARR CLARK HOYTE (1835-1913)

Mount Taranaki / Mount Egmont  (2,518 m - 8,261 ft) 

New Zealand (North Island) 

In  Mount Egmont, Taranaki, watercolor  Alexander Turnbull Library 

The mountain 
Taranaki / Mount Egmont  (2,518 m - 8,261 ft) is an active but quiescent stratovolcano in the Taranaki region on the west coast of New Zealand's North Island.
According to Māori mythology, Taranaki once resided in the middle of the North Island, with all the other New Zealand volcanoes. The beautiful Pihanga was coveted by all the mountains, and a great battle broke out between them. Tongariro eventually won the day, inflicted great wounds on the side of Taranaki, and causing him to flee. Taranaki headed westwards, following Te Toka a Rahotu and forming the deep gorges of the Whanganui River, paused for a while, creating the depression that formed the Te Ngaere swamp, then heading north. Further progress was blocked by the Pouakai ranges, and as the sun came up Taranaki became petrified in his current location. When Taranaki conceals himself with rainclouds, he is said to be crying for his lost love, and during spectacular sunsets, he is said to be displaying himself to her. In turn, Tongariro's eruptions are said to be a warning to Taranaki not to return.
Captain Cook named it Mount Egmont on 11 January 1770 after John Perceval, 2nd Earl of Egmont, a former First Lord of the Admiralty who had supported the concept of an oceanic search for Terra Australis Incognita. Cook described it as "of a prodigious height and its top cover'd with everlasting snow" surrounded by a "flat country ... which afforded a very good aspect, being clothed with wood and verdure".

The Painter 
John Barr Clark Hoyte was born in England, probably in London,  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.   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.
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.

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MONTE CROCE DI MUGGIO BY FREDERIC LEIGHTON

 FREDERIC LEIGHTON ( 1830-1896)

Monte Croce di Muggio (1,799 m - 5902 ft) 

Italy   

In Monte Croce, watercolour, The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology

The Mountain 

The Monte Croce di Muggio  (1,799 m - 5902 ft)  is a  mountain in the Bergamo Alps in Italy. It is located east of Lake Como.

 Starting points are Mornico (970 m) near Bellano, located southwest of the summit, or Giumello (1,536 m ) in the northeast. A popular climb ( mountain trail ) begins in Mornico and leads over the flank of the Matoch  1,379 m) to Monte Chiara (1,531 m). From there you continue on a flat path to the Rifugio Capanna Vittoria (1,536 m) and then to the summit cross of the Croce di Muggio

 The painter 

Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton, PRA known as Sir Frederic Leighton between 1878 and 1896, was an English painter and sculptor. His works depicted historical, biblical, and classical subject matter. In 1860, he moved to London, where he associated with the Pre-Raphaelites. He designed Elizabeth Barrett Browning's tomb for Robert Browning in the English Cemetery, Florence in 1861. 

After his death his Barony was extinguished after existing for only a day; this is a record in the Peerage. His house in Holland Park, London has been turned into a museum, the Leighton House Museum. It contains many of his drawings and paintings, as well as some of his former art collection including works by Old Masters and his contemporaries such as a painting dedicated to Leighton by Sir John Everett Millais.

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

MOUNT TAMALPAIS PAINTED BY WILLIAM KEITH

WILLIAM KEITH (1838-1911)  

Mount Tamalpais (784m -  2,571 ft)  

 United State of America (California)

  In Sunset Glow on Mt Tamalpais, oil on canvas, 1896 Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

The mountain 
Mount Tamalpais (784m -  2,571 ft)  known locally as Mount Tam is a peak in Marin County, California, United States, often considered symbolic of Marin County.  The name Tamalpais was first recorded in 1845. It comes from the Coast Miwok name for this mountain, támal pájiṣ, literally "west hill". Much of Mount Tamalpais is protected within public lands such as Mount Tamalpais State Park, the Marin Municipal Water District watershed, and National Park Service land, such as Muir Woods. Mount Tamalpais is the highest peak in the Marin Hills, which are part of the Northern California Coast Ranges.
Mount Tamalpais provides one of the last remaining wildlife refuges in the Bay Area. Urbanization has invaded wildlife habitat, forcing many fauna in southern Marin County to retreat up onto Mount Tamalpais, Muir Woods, and the Bolinas Ridge. A wide variety of avifauna, amphibians, arthropods and mammals are found on Mount Tamalpais, including a number of rare and endangered species. Nonetheless, Mt. Tamalpais and the neighboring Golden Gate Recreation Area together encompass over 115 square miles (298 square kilometers) of land, forming one of the largest preserved parklands located near a U.S. urban center.
Mount Tamalpais has been a common subject in California landscape painting. Painters who have made Tamalpais the subject of one or more paintings include Etel Adnan, Harry Cassie Best, Albert Bierstadt, Norton Bush, Russell Chatham, Edwin Deakin, Percy Gray, Ransome Gillett Holdridge, Tom Killion, William Marple, William Birch McMurtrie, Gilbert Munger, Julian Rix, Frederick Schafer, Jules Tavernier, Nancy Wallace, Thaddeus Welch, Ludmilla Welch, Virgil Williams, Jack Wisby, Theodore Wores, and Raymond Dabb Yelland.

The painter
William Keith (November 18, 1838 – April 13, 1911) was a Scottish-American painter famous for his California landscapes. He is associated with Tonalism and the American Barbizon school. Although most of his career was spent in California, he started out in New York, made two extended study trips to Europe, and had a studio in Boston in 1871-72 and one in New York in 1880.
When Keith went to California, and traveled to Yosemite Valley in the 70' with a letter of introduction to John Muir. The two men became deep friends for the next 38 years. Both had been born in Scotland the same year, and they shared a love for the mountains of California. James Mitchell Clarke described their friendship as one "in which deep affection and admiration were expressed through a kind of verbal boxing, counter-jibe answering jibe, counter-insult responding to insult."
During the 1870s Keith painted a number of six- by ten-foot panoramas, including Kings River Canyon (Oakland Museum, originally owned by Gov. Leland Stanford) and "California Alps" (Mission Inn, Riverside). These competed with paintings of similar size and subject matter by Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Hill.
 "My subjective pictures are the ones that come from the inside. I feel some emotion and I immediately paint a picture that expresses it. The sentiment is the only thing of real value in my pictures, and only a few people understand that. Suppose I want to paint something recalling meditation or repose. If people do not feel that sensation when my work is completed, they do not appreciate nor realize the picture. The fact that they like it means nothing. Any one who can use paint and brushes can paint a true scene of nature — that is an objective picture. The artist must not depend on extraneous things. There is no reality in his art if he must depend on outside influences — it must come from within."
 ( From 1913 Exhibition booklet, Art Institute of Chicago)

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
Un blog de Francis Rousseau