VESUVIUS ERUPTION BY GEORGE-JULIUS POULETT SCROPE

 GEORGE-JULIUS POULETT SCROPE (1797-1876)

 Mount Vesuvius(1,281 m- 4,203 ft at present) 

 Italy

In  The Eruption of Vesuvius as seen from Naples, October 1822,   

Historical drawing from George Julius Poulett Scrope

The mountain 

Mount Vesuvius (1,281 meters- 4,203 ft at present) is one of those legendary and mythic mountains the Earth paid regularly tribute. Monte Vesuvio in Italian modern langage or Mons Vesuvius in antique Latin langage is a stratovolcano in the Gulf of Naples (Italy) about 9 km (5.6 mi) east of Naples and a short distance from the shore. 

It is one of several volcanoes which form the Campanian volcanic arc. Vesuvius consists of a large cone partially encircled by the steep rim of a summit caldera caused by the collapse of an earlier and originally much higher structure.

Mount Vesuvius is best known for its eruption in AD 79 that led to the burying and destruction of the Roman antique cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and several other settlements. That eruption ejected a cloud of stones, ash, and fumes to a height of 33 km (20.5 mi), spewing molten rock and pulverized pumice at the rate of 1.5 million tons per second, ultimately releasing a hundred thousand times the thermal energy released by the Hiroshima bombing. At least 1,000 people died in the eruption. The only surviving eyewitness account of the event consists of two letters by Pliny the Younger to the historian Tacitus.

Vesuvius has erupted many times since and is the only volcano on the European mainland to have erupted within the last hundred years. Nowadays, it is regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of the population of 3,000,000 people living nearby and its tendency towards explosive eruptions (said Plinian eruptions). It is the most densely populated volcanic region in the world.

Vesuvius was formed as a result of the collision of two tectonic plates, the African and the Eurasian. The former was subducted beneath the latter, deeper into the earth. As the water-saturated sediments of the oceanic African plate were pushed to hotter depths in the earth, the water boiled off and caused the melting point of the upper mantle to drop enough to create partial melting of the rocks. Because magma is less dense than the solid rock around it, it was pushed upward. Finding a weak place at the Earth's surface it broke through, producing the volcano.

he area around Vesuvius was officially declared a national park on June 5, 1995. The summit of Vesuvius is open to visitors and there is a small network of paths around the mountain that are maintained by the park authorities on weekends.

There is access by road to within 200 metres (660 ft) of the summit (measured vertically), but thereafter access is on foot only. There is a spiral walkway around the mountain from the road to the crater.

The first funicular cable car on Mount Vesuvius opened in 1880. It was later destroyed by the 1944 eruption. "Funiculì, Funiculà", a famous Neapolitan song with lyrics by journalist Peppino Turco set to music by composer Luigi Denza, commemorates its opening.

The artist
George Julius Poulett Scrope (1797- 1876) was an English geologist and political economist as well as a magistrate for Stroud in Gloucestershire. He was educated at Harrow, and for a short time at Pembroke College, Oxford, but in 1816 he entered St John's College, Cambridge, graduating BA in 1821.  Through the influence of Edward Clarke and Adam Sedgwick he became interested in mineralogy and geology.
During the winter of 1816–1817 he was at Naples, and was so keenly interested in Vesuvius that he renewed his studies of the volcano in 1818; and in the following year visited Etna and the Lipari Islands. In 1821 he married the daughter and heiress of William Scrope of Castle Combe, Wiltshire, and assumed her name; and he entered the House of Commons of the United Kingdom in 1833 as MP for Stroud, retaining his seat until 1868.
Meanwhile he began to study the volcanic regions of central France in 1821, and visited the Eifel district in 1823. In 1825 he published Considerations on Volcanos, leading to the establishment of a new theory of the Earth, and in the following year was elected FRS. This earlier work was subsequently amplified and issued under the title of Volcanos (1862); an authoritative text-book of which a second edition was published ten years later.
In 1827 he issued his classic Memoir on the Geology of Central France, including the Volcanic formations of Auvergne, the Velay and the Vivarais, a quarto volume illustrated by maps and plates. The substance of this was reproduced in a revised and somewhat more popular form in The Geology and extinct Volcanos of Central France (1858). These books were the first widely published descriptions of the Chaîne des Puys, a chain of over 70 small volcanoes in the Massif Central.
Scrope was awarded the Wollaston Medal by the Geological Society of London in 1867. Among his other works was the History of the Manor and Ancient Barony of Castle Combe (printed for private circulation, 1852).
He died at Fairlawn near Cobham, Surrey on 19 January 1876.

_______________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

GUNUNG BROMO BY TEMPEST ANDERSON

TEMPEST ANDERSON (1846-1913)

Gunung Bromo (2,329m - 7,641ft)

Indonesia (Java Timur) 

The mountain 

Gunung Bromo (2,329m - 7,641ft) or Gunung Brama, an active volcano,in East Java, Indonesia,  is not the highest peak of the Tengger massif, but the best known. The massif area is one of the most visited tourist attractions in East Java, Indonesia. The volcano belongs to the Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park. The name of Bromo derived from Javanese pronunciation of Brahma, the Hindu creator god. Gunung Bromo sits in the middle of a plain called the "Sea of Sand"  a protected nature reserve since 1919. The best way to visit Gunung Bromo is from the nearby mountain village of Cemoro Lawang, from where it is possible to walk during 45 mn to the volcano. It is also possible to take an organised jeep tour, which includes a stop at the viewpoint on Gunung Penanjakan (2,770 m - 9,088 ft).

On the fourteenth day of the Hindu festival of Yadnya Kasada, the Tenggerese people of Probolinggo, East Java, travel up the mountain in order to make offerings of fruit, rice, vegetables, flowers and sacrifices to the mountain gods by throwing it into the caldera of the volcano. The origin of the ritual lies in the 15th century legend when princess  Roro Anteng started the principality of Tengger with her husband, Joko Seger. The couple were childless and therefore beseeched the assistance of the mountain gods. The gods granted them 24 children but stipulated that the 25th child, named Kesuma, must be thrown into the volcano as a human sacrifice. The gods' request was implemented. The tradition of throwing sacrifices into the volcano to appease these ancient deities continues today and is called the Yadnya Kasada ceremony. Though fraught with danger, some locals risk climbing down into the crater in an attempt to recollect the sacrificed goods that they believe could bring them good luck.

Depending on the degree of volcanic activity, the Indonesian Centre for Volcanology and Disaster Hazard Mitigation sometimes issues warnings against visiting Mount Bromo.

 Mount Bromo recently erupted in 2004, 2010, 2011 and 2015.

The photographer
Tempest Anderson  was an ophthalmic surgeon at York County Hospital in the United Kingdom, and an expert amateur photographer and vulcanologist. He was a member of the Royal Society Commission which was appointed to investigate the aftermath of the eruptions of Soufriere volcano, St Vincent and Mont Pelee, Martinique, West Indies which both erupted in May 1902. Some of his photographs of these eruptions were subsequently published in his book, Volcanic Studies in Many Lands. Tempest Anderson spent nine months in Mexico, Guatemala and the West Indies in 1906/1907. He travelled to Mexico to attend the 10th Congres Geologique International before sailing by mail steamer to Guatemala to study the effects of the 1902 earthquake. During the trip he observed and photographed Cerro Quemado, Santa Maria, and Atitlan. During this trip he collected first hand accounts of the 1902 eruption of the Santa Maria and the immediate aftermath. Captain Saunders of the Pacific Mail Steamer S.S. Newport observed the eruption cloud which rose to a great height. The Captain measured it using a sextant and recorded it as reaching 17 to 18 miles. The sounds accompanying the eruption were loud and were heard even louder at more distant places than close to the mountain. The eruption was heard as far away as Guatemala City, the noises so strong, they were assumed to come from neighbouring volcanoes.
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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

TARANAKI / MT EGMONT BY SIR WILLIAM FOX

SIR WILLIAM FOX (1812-1893)

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

New Zealand  (North Island) 

 In Mount Egmont from the coast, watercolor, 1860, 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 artist 
Sir William Fox was the second Premier of New Zealand and held that office on four separate occasions in the 19th century, while New Zealand was still a colony. He was known for his confiscation of Māori land rights, his contributions to the education system (such as establishing the University of New Zealand), and his work to increase New Zealand's autonomy from Britain. He has been described as determined and intelligent, but also as bitter and "too fond" of personal attacks. Different aspects of his personality are emphasised by different accounts, changing mainly due to the reviewers' political beliefs. HU use to be a  "amateur "watercolourist as well.
_______________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

DIE WILDSPITZE PAINTED BY EDWARD H. COMPTON

EDWARD H. COMPTON (1861-1960), 

The Wildspitze (3,774 m - 12, 382ft) and the Pitzal Glacier 

Austria (Tyrol) 

In The Pitzal glacier at the foot of the Wildsptize, Tyrol,  oil on canvas, 

The mountain and the glacier 
The Wildspitze (3,774 m - 12, 382ft)  is the highest summit of the Otzal Massif in Austria (Tyrol). At its foot lies the Pitztal Glacier (Pitztaler Gletscher), the highest ski glacier in the Tyrol. Located 100 km from Innsbruck International Airport and 38 km from Imst-Pitztal Station, at the end of the Pitze Valley in the Eastern Alps, the Pitztal Glacier Alpine Ski Area enjoys a snow of quality and a long season because of its altitude and its privileged situation.
The ski area of the Pitztal Glacier is made up of wide tracks like boulevards, suitable for carving. It is more oriented towards skiers at intermediate levels, sportsmen to experts.

The painter 

Edward Harrison Compton (1881–1960) not to be confused with his father Edward Theodore Compton (1849-1921) was a German landscape painter and illustrator of English descent. Compton was born in Feldafing in Upper Bavaria, Germany, the second son of notable landscape painter Edward Theodore Compton. He received his early art training from his father, and after a period of study in London at the Central School of Arts and Crafts settled back in Bavaria. Like his father he was inspired by the Alps to become a mountain painter ("bergmaller") working in both oils and watercolour. However, an attack of Polio at the age of 28 meant that he had to find more accessible landscapes to paint in Germany, England northern Italy and Sicily. He also provided illustrations for several travel books published by A & C Black. Compton exhibited at galleries in Munich and Berlin, and also in England at the Royal Academy in London and in Bradford. He died in Feldafing in 1960.
He had two sisters, both of whom were artists: Marion Compton, the flowers and still-life painter, and Dora Keel-Compton, flower and mountain painter.
_______________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

STOK KANGRI / KANGLACHAN PEAK BY SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER

SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER (1817-1911), 

Stok Kangri / Kanglachan Peak (6,154 m -20,190 ft)

India 

In Moraines - Kanglachan, watercoulour on paper, 1850 

The mountain 
Stok Kangri  also known as Kanglachan Peak (6,154 m -20,190 ft)) is the highest mountain in the Stok Range of the Himalayas in the Ladakh region of north-west India. The peak is located in Hemis National Park, 12 km southwest of the trailhead in the village of Stok and around 15 km southwest of the city of Leh, the capital of Ladakh.
Despite its high altitude, Stok Kangri is a popular trekking peak and is often climbed as an initial non-technical foray into high altitude mountaineering. However, the difficulty of Stok Kangri is often underestimated and the need to acclimatise before and during the ascent makes Stok Kangri an enduring challenge.
In late July and August, all but the top of the peak may be snow-free. The elevation data was verified by GPS readings from 11 satellites at the Summit during a late July 2007 joint Nepalese-US expedition which encountered snow cover for 85% of the final four-hour, four km, 900 metre climb. Another GPS reading provided a 6136-meter elevation. The shortest route to the peak is along the Stok valley, following the Stok Chu to Stok village. This valley's grazing landscape, especially near the village, was devastated by the 2010 Ladakh floods, the most severe in decades.

The artist 

Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker OM GCSI CB PRS was one of the greatest British botanists and explorers of the 19th century. He was a founder of geographical botany and Charles Darwin's closest friend. For twenty years he served as director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, succeeding his father, William Jackson Hooker, and was awarded the highest honours of British science. He reminded famous for his Voyages to Antarctic (1839-1843), Himalayas and India (1847-1851), Palestine (1860), Morocco (1871), and Western United Statesof America (1877).  He is the first European to have sketched Mount Everest and Himalayas (see above) as well as Mount Erebus and Mont Terror in Antarctic.

Voyage to the Himalayas and India 1847–1851

On 11 November 1847 Hooker left England for his three-year-long Himalayan expedition; he would be the first European to collect plants in the Himalaya.  He arrived in Calcutta on 12 January 1848, leaving on 28th to begin his travels with a geological survey party under 'Mr Williams', who he left on 3 March to continue travelling by elephant to Mirzapur, up the Ganges by boat to Siliguri and overland by pony to Darjeeling, arriving on 16 April 1848.

Hooker and a sizeable party of local assistants departed for eastern Nepal on 27 October 1848. They travelled to Zongri, west over the spurs of Kangchenjunga, and north west along Nepal's passes into Tibet. In April 1849 he planned a longer expedition into Sikkim. Leaving on 3 May, he travelled north west up the Lachen Valley to the Kongra Lama Pass and then to the Lachoong Pass. Campbell and Hooker were imprisoned by the Dewan of Sikkim as they travelled towards the Cho La in Tibet. A British team was sent to negotiate with the king of Sikkim. However, they were released without any bloodshed and Hooker returned to Darjeeling, where he spent January and February 1850 writing his journals, replacing specimens lost during his detention and planning a journey for his last year in India.

In an article of the Alpine Journal, it was demonstrated by Stephen Goodwin how the sketch above is the very first known drawing in situ of Mount Everest.  "Is this 1848 sketch by Joseph Dalton Hooker the first recorded view of Mount Everest by a European? Drawn in situ on the ‘Choonjerma pass’ – now generally referred to as the Mirgin la – in eastern Nepal, it has, for many years, lain unidentified in the archives at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Its ‘discovery’ adds one more facet to the remarkable accomplishments of Hooker during his three years of exploration and research in the eastern Himalaya."

_______________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MONTE PERDIDO PAINTED BY FRANZ SCHRADER

FRANZ SCHRADER (1844-1924) 

Monte Perdido ou Mont Perdu  (3,355 m -11,007ft)

Spain

The mountain

Monte Perdido (3,355 m -11,007ft), Mont Perdu in French, located in Spain, near the French-Spanish border, is the highest summit above sea level on the ridge separating the canyons of Ordesa and Pineta  in the Pyrénées. This is the central peak of  Tres Hermanas (Spanish) consist of the cylinder Marboré, the Soum de Ramond, and Monte Perdido itself.

Observable from the peaks popular at the time (including the Pic du Midi de Bigorre), Mount Perdido is no longer visible from the French valleys, as located behind the watershed line between France and Spain.

The limestone, rich in fossils are marine sedimentary origin. These sediments occupying a shallow sea were raised during the formation of the Pyrenees there are 40 million years (see article Geology of the Pyrénées).The summit a form of typical pyramidal peak of erosion by glaciers time of glaciation, he is still on the northeast side of the mountain the Monte Perdido glacier.

Ramond Carbonnières, is the firstpersonn to have discover Mount Perdu. Since his first stay in Barèges, in 1787, he was fascinated by the "massive limestone" of Marboré.  In 1796, convinced that the nature of the limestone Marboré is "ordinary" Ramond  determines an access route to the summit: the Estaubé Valley.

August 11, 1797, he organized a real strong expedition of fourteen participants to the summit: The hard glacial corridor Tuquerouye. His guides, Laurens and Mouré, and a Spanish smuggler to lead the Frozen lake at the foot of the north face of the peak. A second expedition, September 7, follows the same route: very tricky climb through the corridor Tuquerouye in hard ice late in the season, return by parets of Pinewood and port. Ramond finds confirmation of his thesis: limestone, rich in fossils are marine sedimentary origin. His observations during these "expeditions" are the subject of his masterpiece: Travel to Monte Perdido and in the adjacent part of the Pyrénées appeared in the An IX of the French Revolution (1801). It was only in 1802 that Ramond decided to reach the summit of Mont Perdu.

On 6 August 1802 first known ascent to the summit of Mont Perdu by two Barèges guys, Rondo and Laurens led at the top by an Aragonese shepherd. Rondo and Laurens had been sent scouts to recognize the ascent route by Ramond Carbonnières that, with the same guides, realized the second ascent of Mont Perdu, 10 August 1802. The route followed was long and complicated: Valley Estaubé, port Pine, crossing parets from Pinewood to the col de Niscle east of Monte Perdido, glacier climbing and the southern slope terraces.

The painter 

Jean-Daniel-François Schrader, better known as Franz Schrader, was a French mountaineer, geographer, cartographer and landscape painter. He made an important contribution to the mapping of the Pyrenees and was highly considered among the pyreneists.

He is the son of Prussian Ferdinand Schrader from Magdeburg, who emigrated to Bordeaux, and of Marie-Louise Ducos, cousin of geographers Élisée and Onésime Reclus. He shows a talent for drawing from an early age.  In 1866, while staying with his friend Léonce Lourde-Rocheblave in Pau, he has a sort of revelation at the "spectacle grandiose de la barrière montagneuse des Pyrenées ".

His vocation strengthens when reading stories by Ramond de Carbonnières (1755-1827) (Les Voyages au Mont-Perdu) and by Henry Russell (1834-1909) (Les Grandes Ascensions des Pyrénées, guide d'une mer à l'autre).

While devoting the main part of his leisure to long hikes in the mountains, during which he gathers thousands of observations for his topographical records, he still finds time to paint numerous panoramas of the Pyrenees as well as the Alps which he also studies, and to acquire a solid formation in topography.

To facilitate topographical work in rugged terrain, he develops the orograph in 1873. His first great cartographic work, in 1874, is the map of the massif of Gavarnie-Mont-Perdu at a scale of 1:40 000, for which he collects the measurements with the participation of Lourde-Rocheblave from nearby Pau. That map triggers such a sensation that it is included in the annual Mémoires of the Société des Sciences Physiques et Naturelles de Bordeaux with an explanatory text the following year. The Club alpin français directory follows with the publication of an enthusiastic review, describing Schrader as qualified for "first rank topographer in a glorious master stroke". In 1876 he takes part in the creation of the Bordeaux section of the Club Alpin Français, becoming its first president.

In 1877 he travels to Paris with a recommendation from his cousins Élisée and Onésime Reclus. There, having met Émile Templier, nephew and collaborator of Louis Hachette, and Adolphe Joanne, president of the Parisian section of the Club Alpin Français, he is employed as a geographer by Librairie Hachette and is now able to practice his passion in the scope of his profession. He also gives geography lessons at the School of Anthropology and also becomes editor of the French Alpine Club directory

In 1927, three years after his death, his remains are transferred to a tomb on a slope of the Circus of Gavarnie (French Pyrenees).

_______________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT SNEFFELS PAINTED BY CHARLES PARTRIDGE ADAMS

 CHARLES PARTRIDGE ADAMS (1858 -1942)

Mount Sneffels (4,315 m- 14,150 ft)

United States of America (Colorado) 

In Mount Sneffels San Juan Colorado, Private collection

The mountain 

Mount Sneffels (4,315 m- 14,150 ft)is the highest summit of the Sneffels Range in the Rocky Mountains of North America. It is  located in the Mount Sneffels Wilderness of Uncompahgre National Forest, 6.7 miles (10.8 km) west by south (bearing 256°) of the City of Ouray in Ouray County, Colorado, United States. The summit of Mount Sneffels is the highest point in Ouray County.

Mount Sneffels is notable for its great vertical relief, as it rises 7,200 feet above the town of Ridgway, Colorado 6 miles to the northeast.

The primary route to the summit follows a creek bed up from Yankee Boy Basin. A secondary route follows a ridge line to the summit from the saddle of Blue Lakes Pass.

Mount Sneffels was named after the volcano Snæfell, which is located on the tip of the Snæfellsnes peninsula in Iceland. That mountain and its glacier, Snæfellsjökull, which caps the crater like a convex lens, were featured in the Jules Verne novel A Journey to the Center of the Earth. An area on the western flank of Mount Sneffels gives the appearance of volcanic crater.

Nowadays, Mount Sneffels is one of the most photographed mountains in Colorado.

The painter 
Charles Partridge Adams was a largely self-taught American landscape artist who painted primarily in Colorado, and secondarily in California. Some paintings were also made in other Rocky Mountain states, the Pacific Northwest and Canada, and a few in Louisiana, the East Coast and Europe.
Adams is widely considered to have been Colorado’s finest landscape artist. He is best known for his stunning views of snowy mountain peaks in early morning or sunset light, or wreathed in storm clouds, and for his luminous sunset and twilight paintings of the river bottoms near Denver. His works show an intensely personal and poetic response to the Colorado mountains and plains, with unusual sensitivity to the changing effects of light, atmosphere and season.
Adams early work in the 1880s was largely representational and somewhat prosaic, with only hints of the more impressionist works to follow. His style began to coalesce in the early 1890s with some excellent luminous sunsets, some of which were in a Barbizon style, but overall his output was still uneven. In the later 1890s his painting became much more consistent, impressionist, and colorful, and this style prevailed through about 1915. After that his style became progressively “looser,” with larger brush strokes, brighter colors, more impasto, and much less attention to foreground and detail. Some paintings left at his death show only traces of his previous skill.
Adams experimented freely with different palettes and lighting, and some of these were much more successful than others. He must have created several hundred paintings of Longs and Meeker Peaks from his studio in Estes Park, Colorado, yet no two are alike, and some are strikingly different.
Some of his earlier paintings include animals or human figures, but he was not very successful at rendering these, and later paintings do not include them.
Roughly half of Adams paintings are oils and half are watercolors, which he began painting in the early 1890s. Although some of his watercolors are masterfully detailed and very carefully done, others are much less detailed, and must have been done very quickly for the tourist trade. As one watercolorist remarked about one of these, “That one must have taken him all of 15 minutes.” Over 950 paintings have been documented. His total output is unknown, but it is estimated to have been 3,000 or more.
_____________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

EL TUNGURUHUA (2) PAINTED BY RAFAEL TROYA

RAFAEL TROYA (1845-1920) 

El Tungurahua (5,023 m - 16,480 ft)

Ecuador 

 In  El Tungurahua. Vista de la Cordillera de Utuñac, oil on canvas, 1893,  Colección del Banco Central del Ecuador, Quito.

The mountain 
El Tungurahua (5,023 m - 16,480 ft) is an active stratovolcano located in the Cordillera Oriental of Ecuador. The volcano gives its name to the province of Tungurahua. Volcanic activity restarted on August 19, 1999, and is ongoing as of 2013, with several major eruptions since then, the last starting on 1 February 2014.
According to one theory the name Tungurahua is a combination of the Quichua Tunguri (throat) and Rahua (fire) meaning "Throat of Fire". According to another theory it is based on the Quichua Uraua for crater. Tungurahua is also known as "The Black Giant" and, in local indigenous mythology it is allegedly referred to as Mama Tungurahua ("Mother Tungurahua").
With its elevation, Tungurahua  is just over tops the snow line (about 4,900 m- 16,100 ft) and its top is snow-covered and did feature a small summit glacier which melted away after the increase of volcanic activity in 1999.

The painter 
Rafael Troya (1845-1920)  was an Ecuadorian painter born, the son of the painter Vicente Troya. Being a teenager, he is taken to the Colegio de la Compañia de Jesus in Quito, but he soon abandons the clerical career to dedicate himself to what was his true vocation: painting. With the painter Luis Cadena, he learns the technique of colors. In 1872, he definitely choose the landscape and accompanied  Reis and Stübel on their study trips in Ecuador on Nature and Archeology. Troya becomes the portraitist of nature, painting compositions full of color and life. In 1890 he came back in the capital of Imbabureña, and decided to be completely dedicated to his art. There he made several masterpieces, such as the paintings on the Apostles, which today are admired in the Ibarra Cathedral, the Ibarra Foundation, preserved in the Hall of the city of Ibarra; Allegory of love, panoramic view of Ibarra; The earthquake of Imbabura, and several religious canvases that are conserved in some churches of Quito, in the church of Caranqui and in the Museum of the Central Bank of Quito. In his paintings, green and bluish tones predominate, characteristic of his native land. He painted a lot of mountains of the Andes and  the most famous volcanoes of the Cordillera.
_____________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT LEFROY PAINTED BY J.E.H. MC DONALD

J.E.H. MC DONALD (1873-1932)

Mount Lefroy (3,423 m -11,230 ft) 

 Canada (Alberta)

 1. In Mount Lefroy oil on canvas, 1932,  National Gallery of Canada 

The mountain 
Mont Lefroy (3,423 m -11,230 ft)  is a mountain on the Continental Divide, at the border of Alberta and British Columbia in western Canada. The mountain is located on the eastern side of Abbot Pass which separates Lake Louise in Banff National Park from Lake O'Hara in Yoho National Park. Mount Victoria lies immediately on the western side of the pass.
The mountain was named by George M. Dawson in 1894 for Sir John Henry Lefroy (1817-1890), an astronomer who had traveled over 8,800 kilometres (5,470 mi) in Canada's north between 1842-44 making meteorological and magnetic observations.
The mountain is the site of the first fatal climbing accident in Canada. In 1896 during a failed summit bid, Philip Stanley Abbot slipped on rocks after just coming off an icy section and plummeted down the rock face to his death.

The painter 
The painter J.E.H. (James Edward Hervey) MacDonald, a founding member of the Group of Seven, responded to the Canadian landscape with a sensitivity honed by his interest in the American writers Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman. One of Canada's leading graphic designers and a popular art teacher, MacDonald was also a poet and calligrapher. His design work was strongly influenced by Arts and Crafts designers in England and Canada, especially William Morris.
The son of a cabinetmaker, MacDonald immigrated with his family to Hamilton, Ontario, in 1887. After apprenticing with a Toronto lithography company at the age of sixteen, he worked in commercial design for Grip Printing and Publishing Co. from around 1895 to 1903, at Carlton Studio in London from 1903 to 1907, and again at Grip Ltd. from 1907. MacDonald resigned in 1912 to paint full-time, but worked as a freelance designer until 1921. While an apprentice, MacDonald studied art under John Ireland and Arthur Heming at the Hamilton School of Art, and with G.A. Reid and William Cruikshank at the Central Ontario School of Art and Design (now the Ontario College of Art and Design). He was active in the Arts and Letters Club, Toronto, and was a member of the Ontario Society of Artists and the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
MacDonald painted decorations for Dr. James MacCallum's cottage in Georgian Bay (1915) and St. Anne's Church, Toronto (1923). He worked up his paintings from sketches made on trips to Georgian Bay, northern Ontario, Algoma (1919 to 1922), and in the Rockies (1924 to 1930). From 1921 he taught at the Ontario College of Art, becoming Principal in 1929. MacDonald visited Barbados with his wife early in 1932 to recover from a stroke he had suffered the previous November.
_______________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

SHISHAPANGMA / GOSAINTHAN PHOTOGRAPHED BY KURT BOECK

KURT BOECK (1855–1933) 

Shishapangma / Gosainthān  (8,027 m - 26,335 ft) 

China (Autonomous region of Tibet)

 In Das Gosainthangebirge (Shishapangma), Photo, 1898

The mountain 
Shishapangma / Gosainthān  (8,027 m - 26,335 ft)  is the 14th highest mountain in the world. It was the last 8,000 m peak to be climbed, due to its location entirely within Tibet Autonomous Region.  It is the only eight-thousander entirely within Chinese territory, located in south-central Tibet, five kilometres from the border with Nepal.
Shishapangma / Gosainthān was first climbed via the Northern Route on 2 May 1964 by a Chinese expedition led by Xu Jing. In addition to Xǔ Jìng, the summit team consisted of Zhāng Jùnyán, Wang Fuzhou, Wū Zōngyuè, Chén Sān, Soinam Dorjê, Chéng Tiānliàng, Migmar Zhaxi, Dorjê, and Yún Dēng.
Shishapangma / Gosainthān  is also the highest peak in the Jugal Himal which is contiguous with and often considered part of Langtang Himal. The Jugal/Langtang Himal straddles the Tibet/Nepal border.
 Tibetologist Guntram Hazod records a local story that explains the mountain's name in terms of its literal meaning in the Standard Tibetan language: shisha, which means "meat of an animal that died of natural causes" and sbangma which means "malt dregs left over from brewing beer".
According to the story, one year a heavy snowfall killed most of the animals at pasture. All that the people living near the mountain had to eat was the meat of the dead animals and the malt dregs left over from brewing beer, and so the mountain was named Shisha Pangma (shisha sbangma), signifiying "meat of dead animals and malty dregs".
The Sanskrit name of the mountain, Gosainthan, means "place of the saint" or "Abode of God".
Still, its most common name is Shishapangma.

The artist  
Kurt Karl Alexander Oskar Boeck was a German theater actor, climber, travel writer  ans eventually early photographer. He began as an actor but in 1887when  he had the opportunity to accompany a research expedition to Asia, especially to Persia and the Caucasus, he could not resist the temptation.
Researching and traveling in lesser-known, far-off lands told him so much that when he returned home from Asia he did not find a commitment that suited his wishes, he turned completely to this interesting profession. First, Boeck undertook in 1890 at his own expense an expedition to the Himalayas, where he took the glacier leader Hans Kerner from Tyrol and drove in the years 1893, 1895 and 1898-1899 again to India to thoroughly get to know the country in all parts. Boeck's lectures in numerous national and international associations on these and his other travels in Burma, China, America, Japan, Siberia, etc., have made him, as well as his articles in magazines, known to the general public.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

SOUTH MASSIF BY NASA APOLLO 17 MISSION (1972)

NASA APOLLO 17 MISSION (1972)

 South Massif (2, 300 m - 75, 46ft)

The Moon

1.  In Astronaut Harrison Schmitt next to a large boulder in the Taurus–Littrow valley on the Apollo 17 mission . The South massif is visible to the right. Original NASA caption. 1972

2.  In  South Massif - North facing slope of South Massif, with the 3.6 km diameter Ching-Te crater in the background, Original NASA caption, 1972

The mountain 
South Massif  (2, 300 m - 75, 46ft)  is, according to lunar standards, a relatively modest mountain, but with a rich history (geologic and exploration).  South Massif is located at the edge of the Serenitatis impact basin on the Moon's nearside and borders the Taurus Littrow Valley where the Apollo 17 astronauts landed and explored.
The oblique view (n°2 above) dramatically shows the north-facing slope of South Massif, with the 3.6 km diameter Ching-Te crater in the background. From summit to base, the massif's relief exceeds that of the Grand Canyon.
The distinct high reflectance deposit that spreads across the Taurus Littrow valley floor formed as a giant landslide from the north face of South Massif. Apollo era scientists proposed that the landslide was caused by ejecta from Tycho crater landing on the summit and south side of the massif. The resulting seismic jolt sent regolith sliding down the steep north slope resulting in the distinctive landslide we see today. Look closely at the summit, you can see what appears to be dark and blocky material that may be a deposit of now solidifed impact melt from the Tycho event.  Sampling the landslide was an objective of the Apollo 17 mission. By  determining how long rocks had sat on the surface of the slide scientists could know the timing of the formation of Tycho crater, which is more than 2000 kilometers to the southwest.
As it turns out, the exposure ages of the samples brought back from the landslide were about 110 million years - thus Tycho crater was assigned that age. However, new mapping and analysis of the area brought forward a second hypotheisis, reported this spring at the 49th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. The alternative idea is that the landslide was caused by motion along the Lee Lincoln fault. It is certainly logical that seismic shaking along such a massive fault could cause a landslide. In fact, the paper (authored by Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt) proposes that there were actually two large quakes and thus two landslides, the younger covering most of the older. The older deposit (smaller lobe on the right) is distinguished by its lower reflectance relative to the brighter younger slide (left side). If Dr. Schmitt is correct then we do not know the age of Tycho crater which in turn has implications for how scientists estimate the ages of other young craters across the Moon (and other inner Solar System bodies).

The mission 
Apollo 17 was the final mission of NASA's Apollo program.
Launched at 12:33 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST) on December 7, 1972, with a crew made up of Commander Eugene Cernan, Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans, and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt, it was the last use of Apollo hardware for its original purpose; after Apollo 17, extra Apollo spacecraft were used in the Skylab and Apollo–Soyuz programs.
Apollo 17 was the first night launch of a U.S. human spaceflight and the final manned launch of a Saturn V rocket. It was a "J-type mission" which included three days on the lunar surface, extended scientific capability, and the third Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV). While Evans remained in lunar orbit in the Command/Service Module (CSM), Cernan and Schmitt spent just over three days on the Moon in the Taurus–Littrow valley and completed three moonwalks, taking lunar samples and deploying scientific instruments. Evans took scientific measurements and photographs from orbit using a Scientific Instruments Module mounted in the Service Module.
The landing site was chosen with the primary objectives of Apollo 17 in mind: to sample lunar highland material older than the impact that formed Mare Imbrium, and investigate the possibility of relatively new volcanic activity in the same area.  Cernan, Evans and Schmitt returned to Earth on December 19 after a 12-day mission.
Apollo 17 is the most recent manned Moon landing and the most recent time humans travelled beyond low Earth orbit.  It was also the first mission to have no one on board who had been a test pilot; X-15 test pilot Joe Engle lost the lunar module pilot assignment to Schmitt, a scientist.
The mission broke several records: the longest moon landing, longest total extravehicular activities (moonwalks),  largest lunar sample, and longest time in lunar orbit.
Astronaut Eugene A. Cernan, commander, makes a short checkout of the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) during the early part of the first Apollo 17 Extravehicular Activity (EVA-1) at the Taurus-Littrow landing site.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

PICOS DE EUROPA PAINTED BY CARLOS DE HAES

CARLOS DE HAES ( 1829-1898) 

Picos de Europa  (2,445 m - 8,022 ft)

Spain (Asturias) 

 In A canal de Mancorbo en los Picos de Europa,1876, Museo nacional del Prado 

About he painting
The place that appears in this painting lies at the foot of mount Andara, on the eastern side of Picos de Europa, above the village of Argüébanes in the Cantabrian county of Liébana. Haes fits the landscape’s geographical features into a clear structure of diagonal lines that brings out the stony peak rising from the back of the canal at the center of the composition, and flanked by the slopes of the two foothills in the foreground. The peak projects a shadow on the left foothill, that contrasts with the brightly illuminated face of the right one.

The mountain 
 The Picos de la Europa   (2,445 m - 8,022 ft) is  a mountainous massif located in the north of Spain that belongs to the central part of the Cantabrian mountain range. Although not very extensive, its proximity to the sea makes it lavish in geographic features of great interest. Currently, the Picos de Europa National Park is the second most visited national park in Spain.
This limestone formation extends through Cantabria, León and the Principality of Asturias, and its heights stand out, in many cases above 2500 m, because of how close they are to the Cantabrian Sea, because at its northernmost point they are only a short distance away. 15 kilometers from the sea.

The painter 
The spanish painter Carlos Sebastián Pedro Hubert de Haes was noted for the Realism in his landscapes, and was considered to be the "first contemporary Spanish artist able to capture something of a particularly Spanish 'essence' in his work". He was cited along with Jenaro Perez Villaamil and Aureliano de Beruete as one of the three Spanish grand masters of landscape painting, the latter of which was his pupil.
In the 1850s, Haes was involved in the rise of the Realist school of landscape. Coincidentally his landscape and wildlife paintings of the Monasterio de Piedra occurred at the time of an academic opening for the Painting School of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, the selection to be made by a landscape competition. In 1857 he became the first professor of landscape painting, the first in Spain to teach painting directly from nature. In 1860, he became an Academic at the Royal Academy. In 1876, he presented at the National Exhibition with La Canal de Mancorbo en los Picos de Europa ("The Canal of Mancorbo in the Picos de Europa") later acquired by the Spanish state to be part of the collection of the Museo del Prado, because of its significance as a realistic Spanish landscape painting.
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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
A blog by Francis Rousseau

ELLMAUER HALT PAINTED BY ALFONS WALDE

ALFONS WALDE (1891-1958)

Ellmauer Halt (2,344 m  - 7,690 ft)

Austria

  In  Büchlach et le Wilder Kaiser, oil on paper, 1925

The mountain 
The Ellmauer Halt (2,344 m  - 7,690 ft)  is an alpine summit,  the highest point of the Kaisergebirge, and in particular the Wilder Kaiser range in Austria (Tyrolean Land).
The massif is surrounded by the Chiemgau Alps to the north, the Loferer Steinberge to the east, the Kitzbühel Alps to the south and the Brandenberg Alps to the west.
It is bordered on the west by the Inn.
It is composed of two main links oriented in an east-west axis about twenty kilometers long: the highest, the Wilder Kaiser (literally "Wild Emperor") in the south, and the Zahmer Kaiser ("Emperor Tamed") in North. They are separated by the Kaisertal ("Valley of the Emperor") and are connected only at the Stripsenjoch, at 1,580 meters above sea level.
The first dated traces of the human settlement in the Kaisergebirge are estimated from the 3rd millennium BC. These are the remains of hunters from the Stone Age in the cave of Tischof. Other finds prove the presence of settlements in the Bronze Age in the cavities. The documents relating to the settlement of Kaisertal in the Middle Ages date back to 1430. This is a contract to sell a farm called Hinterkaiser. The name "Kaiser" in this area is older and is already in 1240 in a list of goods Kitzbühel enacted by a certain Gamsgiayt Chaiser.
Tourism development begins in the Kaisergebirge in the second half of the 19th century. Until the end of this century, there are also many firsts. However, it is assumed that the greatest peaks had already been sporadically erected by the natives without this having ever been manifested. Then, until the First World War, the limestone walls of the Wilder Kaiser were the cradle of the Munich climbing scene, where the famous pioneers such as Hans Dülfer completely revolutionized the climbing adventure and athletic. Then, until the 1960s, the fixation techniques of these two disciplines were practically completed. In 1977, the 7th degree of difficulty is introduced with the free climbing of Pumprisse by Reinhard Karl and Helmut Kiene at Fleischbank. In the 1970s and 1980s, a series of sometimes extremely difficult sports routes were opened in the massif.

The artist 

Alfons Walde  was an Austrian artist and architect, best known for his winter landscapes and farming images, especially skiing and sporting scenes, painted in tempera or impastoed oil paint. Many of his paintings can be seen in the Museum gallery in Kitzbühel.
Walde  produced his first watercolour and tempera paintings during his school days. From 1910 to 1914 he studied architecture at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna, while continuing his education as a painter. In the Danubian metropolis he moved in artistic circles that included Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, and he became influenced by Ferdinand Hodler.
In 1911 Walde had his first exhibition in Innsbruck, and in 1913 presented four farm pictures at the prestigious Vienna Secession exhibition. From 1914 to 1917 he actively participated in World War I as a Tyrolean Kaiserschütze in the high mountains. After returning to Kitzbühel, he fully devoted himself to painting and participated again in exhibitions of the Secession and the Vienna Künstlerhaus throughout the 1920s. He was active as a graphic artist, and beginning in 1926 designed many posters.
By around 1928 Walde had finally found his own characteristic style, one that gave expression to both the Tyrolean mountain scenery – particularly the living winter landscapes – and its robust people through the use of highly reduced drawings and pastel colouring. Throughout the rest of his artistic career his work stayed with the subject of his homeland, and retained the same distinct native style.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

BRANDBERG / OMUKURUVARO PAINTED BY JACOBUS HENDRIK PIERNEEF

JACOBUS HENDRIK PIERNEEF (1886-1957), 

 The Brandberg  (2,573 m -8,442 ft)

 Namibia  

 In Purple Mountain  oil on board (10, 5 x14 cm), Private collection 

The mountain 
The Brandberg or Omukuruvaro  (2,573 m -8,442 ft)  is Namibia's highest mountain. Brandberg Mountain is located in former Damaraland, now Erongo, in the northwestern Namib Desert, near the coast, and covers an area of approximately 650 km². With its highest point, the Königstein (German for 'King's Stone'), located on the flat Namib gravel plains, on a clear day 'The Brandberg' can be seen from a great distance. There are various routes to the summit, the easiest (also steepest) being up the Ga'aseb river valley, but other routes include the Hungurob and Tsisab river valleys. The nearest settlement is Uis, roughly 30 km from the mountain.
The name Brandberg is Afrikaans, Dutch and German for Burning Mountain, which comes from its glowing color which is sometimes seen in the setting sun. The Damara name for the mountain is Dâures, which means 'burning mountain', while the Herero name, Omukuruvaro means 'mountain of the Gods'.
The Brandberg is a spiritual site of great significance to the San (Bushman) tribes. The main tourist attraction is The White Lady rock painting, located on a rock face with other art work, under a small rock overhang, in the Tsisab Ravine at the foot of the mountain. The ravine contains more than 1 000 rock shelters, as well as more than 45 000 rock paintings.
The Brandberg Massif or Brandberg Intrusion is a granitic intrusion, which forms a dome-shaped massif. It originated during Early Cretaceous rifting that led to the opening of the South Atlantic Ocean. Argon–argon dating yielded intrusive ages of 132 to 130 Ma. Remnants of Cretaceous volcanic rocks are preserved in a collar along the western and southern margins of the massif. The origins of the magmas that formed the Brandberg intrusion are related to emplacement of mantle-derived basaltic magma during continental break-up which led to partial melting of crustal rocks resulting in a hybrid granitic magma. Erosion subsequently removed the overburden rock. Apatite fission track dating indicates approximately 5 km denudation between 80 and 60 Ma.

The painter 
Jacobus Hendrik (Henk) Pierneef (usually referred to as Pierneef)  was a South African landscape artist, generally considered to be one of the best of the old South African masters. His distinctive style is widely recognized and his work was greatly influenced by the South African landscape.
Most of his landscapes were of the South African highveld, which provided a lifelong source of inspiration for him. Pierneef's style was to reduce and simplify the landscape to geometric structures, using flat planes, lines and colour to present the harmony and order in nature. This resulted in formalised, ordered and often-monumental view of the South African landscape, uninhabited and with dramatic light and colour.
Pierneef's work can be seen worldwide in many private, corporate and public collections, including the Africana Museum, Durban Art Gallery, Johannesburg Art Gallery, King George VI Art Gallery, Pierneef Museum and the Pretoria Art Gallery.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT ABUNA YOSEF BY RAY NESTOR

RAY NESTOR  (1888-1989),

Abuna Yosef (4,260 m-13,980 ft)

Ethiopia

In the Mountains of the moon, watercolour, private collection  

The mountains
Mountains of the Moon or Jibbel el Kumri is an ancient term referring to a legendary mountain or mountain range in east Africa at the source of the Nile River. Various identifications have been made in modern times.  O. G. S. Crawford identified this range with the Mount Abuna Yosef  (4,260 m - 13,976 ft) area in the Amhara Region of Ethiopia.
Abuna Yosef   (4,260 m - 13,976 ft) is a prominent mountain near the eastern escarpment of the Ethiopian Highlands ; it is the 6th tallest mountain in Ethiopia and the 19th highest of Africa. It is located in the Lasta massif in the Semien Wollo Zone of the Amhara Region.
People of the ancient world were long curious about the source of the Nile, especially Ancient Greek geographers. A number of expeditions up the Nile failed to find the source.
Eventually, a merchant named Diogenes reported that he had traveled inland from Rhapta in East Africa for twenty-five days and had found the source of the Nile. He reported it flowed from a group of massive mountains into a series of large lakes. He reported the natives called this range the Mountains of the Moon because of their snowcapped whiteness.
These reports were accepted as true by Ptolemy and other Greek and Roman geographers, and maps he produced indicated the reported location of the mountains. Late Arab geographers, despite having far more knowledge of Africa, also took the report at face value, and included the mountains in the same location given by Ptolemy.[3]
It was not until modern times that Europeans resumed their search for the source of the Nile. The Scottish explorer, James Bruce, who travelled to Gojjam, Ethiopia, in 1770, investigated the source of the Blue Nile there. He identified the "Mountains of the Moon" with Mount Amedamit, which he described surrounded the source of the Lesser Abay "in two semi-circles like a new moon ... and seem, by their shape, to deserve the name of mountains of the moon, such as was given by antiquity to mountains in the neighborhood of which the Nile was supposed to rise."
James Grant and John Speke in 1862 sought the source of the White Nile in the Great Lakes region. Henry Morton Stanley finally found glacier-capped mountains possibly fitting Diogenes's description in 1889 (they had eluded European explorers for so long due to often being shrouded in mist). Today known as the Rwenzori Mountains, the peaks are the source of some of the Nile's waters, but only a small fraction, and Diogenes would have crossed the Victoria Nile to reach them.
Many modern scholars doubt that these were the Mountains of the Moon described by Diogenes, some holding that his reports were wholly fabricated. G.W.B. Huntingford suggested in 1940 that the Mountain of the Moon should be identified with Mount Kilimanjaro, and "was subsequently ridiculed in J. Oliver Thompson's History of Ancient Geography published in 1948". Huntingford later noted that he was not alone in this theory, citing Sir Harry Johnston in 1911 and Dr. Gervase Mathew later in 1963 having made the same identification.

The painter

Ray Nestor was born in India in 1888. He came to Kenya in 1912 as a surveyor and was between 1932 and 1950 farmed at Kipkarren where he did most of his paintings. Ray Nestor modesty as a printer stood between him and the wider recognition of his work. He never courted publicity being content to record his impressions of a fascinating country and its diverse peoples for his own satisfaction and that of his friends. In all his time in Africa, Ray Nestor was seldom without his paints and sketch book, alert to capture the fugitive moment : an old woman in her beads and bangles drawing on her long pipe ; a dhow in full sail beyond the coral reef outside Mombasa harbour ; the stupendous view from his farm house over down and forest, rolling away towards Mount Elgon;

a pair of rhinos threading their way through the bush under the snows of Kilimandjaro.  These sketches are what they claim to be, with all their freshness sponteneity. Ray Nestor died in England in June 1989. 

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

KVASSTINDEN & BREITINDEN PAINTED BY EVEN ULVING

 EVEN ULVING (1863 - 1952)
  Kvasstinden (1,010 m -3,313ft ) 
Breitinden (910 m - 2,985ft) 
Norway 

In  Motiv of Helgeland. Winter landscape with reindeer, oil on canvas, 1906,
Royal Palace Collection, Oslo

The mountains 
 Kvasstinden (1,010 m -3,313ft )  and Breitinden (910 m - 2,985ft) are part of the The Seven Sisters,  a mountainous massif of Norway located on the island of Alsten, in the county of Nordland, southwest of Mo i Rana. From north-east to south-west, the seven summits are:  Botnkrona (1,072 m - 3517ft)),  Grytfoten (1,019 m -3, 343ft),  Skjæringen (1,037 m- 3,402ft), Tvillingene ("the Twins") (945 m- 3,100ft  and 980 m - 3,215ft),  Kvasstinden  (1,010 m -3,313ft)  and  Breitinden (910 m - 2,985ft).

The painter 
Even Christophersen Ulving (was a Norwegian painter.  At the age of 18, he traveled to Kristiania to learn his craft with Wilhelm von Krogh  In 1883/84 he was a student at Knud Bergslien's painting school, in 1885/86 by Heinz Heim and Carl Frithjof Smith at the Kunstakademie in Munich, and in 1887 by William Adolphe Bouguereau at the Académie Julian in Paris.
Ulving painted naturalistic, mostly motifs from Helgeland or Vestfold . He especially understood how to portray the characteristic colors of the different seasons in a variety of often powerful tones, without causing any discord. His landscapes always show human activities or traces of it. He also likes to paint rural genre scenes in huts and living rooms.
Pictures of him hanging in the royal castle, and also the National Museum Oslo recently bought two works by him.
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2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

KAILASH / GANG RINPOCHÉ PAINTED BY NICHOLAS ROERICH

NICHOLAS ROERICH (1874-1947)

 Kailash  or Gang Rinpoché  (6,638 m - 21,778ft) 

China  (Tibet autonomous region) 

The mountain 

Mount Kailash (6,638 m - 21,778ft)  also  called Kangrinboqê or Gang Rinpoche  or Tisé Mountain  is situated in  the Kailash Range (Gangdisê Mountains), which forms part of the Transhimalaya in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China.
The mountain is located near Lake Manasarovar and Lake Rakshastal, close to the source of some of the longest Asian rivers: the Indus, Sutlej, Brahmaputra, and Karnali also known as Ghaghara (a tributary of the Ganges) in India.
Mount Kailash is considered to be sacred in four religions: Bön, Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism.
Tibetan Buddhists call it Kangri Rinpoche (Precious Snow Mountain).
For Böns, a religion native to Tibet,  it makes no doubt  that the entire mystical region and Kailash, which they call the "nine-story Swastika Mountain", is the axis mundi (Tagzig Olmo Lung Ring).
For Hindus, it is the home of the wild mountain god Shiva and a symbol of his penis.
For Jains it is where their first leader was enlightened.
For Buddhists, the navel of the universe; and for adherents of Bon, the abode of the sky goddess Sipaimen.
Every year, thousands make a pilgrimage to Kailash, following a tradition going back thousands of years. Pilgrims of several religions believe that circumambulating Mount Kailash on foot is a holy ritual that will bring good fortune. The peregrination is made in a clockwise direction by Hindus and Buddhists, while Jains and Bönpos circumambulate the mountain in a counterclockwise direction.  Kailash is still an unclimbed summit.
Herbert Tichy was in the area in 1936, attempting to climb Gurla Mandhata. When he asked one of the Garpons of Ngari whether Kailash was climbable, the Garpon replied, "Only a man entirely free of sin could climb Kailash. And he wouldn't have to actually scale the sheer walls of ice to do it – he'd just turn himself into a bird and fly to the summit."
 Reinhold Messner was given the opportunity by the Chinese government to climb in the mid-1980s but he declined.
In 2001, reports emerged that the Chinese had given permission for a Spanish team to climb the peak, which caused an international backlash. Chinese authorities disputed the reports, and stated that any climbing activities on Mt Kailash were strictly prohibited.
 Reinhold Messner, who condemned the reported Spanish plans, said:
" If we conquer this mountain, then we conquer something in people's souls. I would suggest they go and climb something a little harder. Kailash is not so high and not so hard. "  

The painter 
Nicholas Roerich known also as Nikolai Konstantinovich Rerikh (Никола́й Константи́нович Ре́рих) is quite an important figure of mountain paintings in the early 20th century.  He was a Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, perceived by some in Russia as an enlightener, philosopher, and public figure. In his youth was he was quite influenced by a movement in Russian society around the occult and was interested in hypnosis and other spiritual practices. His paintings are said to have hypnotic expression.
Born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, he lived in various places around the world until his death in Naggar, Himachal Pradesh, India. Trained as an artist and a lawyer, his main interests were literature, philosophy, archaeology, and especially art. After the February Revolution of 1917 and the end of the czarist regime, Roerich, a political moderate who valued Russia's cultural heritage more than ideology and party politics, had an active part in artistic politics. With Maxim Gorky and Aleksandr Benois, he participated with the so-called "Gorky Commission" and its successor organization, the Arts Union (SDI).
After the October Revolution and the acquisition of power of Lenin's Bolshevik Party, Roerich became increasingly discouraged about Russia's political future. During early 1918, he, Helena, and their two sons George and Sviatoslav emigrated to Finland. After some months in Finland and Scandinavia, the Roerichs relocated to London, arriving in mid-1919. Later, a successful exhibition resulted in an invitation from a director at the Art Institute of Chicago, offering to arrange for Roerich's art to tour the United States. During the autumn of 1920, the Roerichs traveled to America by sea.  The Roerichs remained in the United States from October 1920 until May 1923.
After leaving New York, the Roerichs – together with their son George and six friends – began the five-year-long 'Roerich Asian Expedition' that, in Roerich's own words: "started from Sikkim through Punjab, Kashmir, Ladakh, the Karakoram Mountains, Khotan, Kashgar, Qara Shar, Urumchi, Irtysh, the Altai Mountains, the Oyrot region of Mongolia, the Central Gobi, Kansu, Tsaidam, and Tibet" with a detour through Siberia to Moscow in 1926.
In 1929 Nicholas Roerich was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the University of Paris. He received two more nominations in 1932 and 1935. His concern for peace resulted in his creation of the Pax Cultura, the "Red Cross" of art and culture. His work for this cause also resulted in the United States and the twenty other nations of the Pan-American Union signing the Roerich Pact on April 15, 1935 at the White House. The Roerich Pact is an early international instrument protecting cultural property.
In 1934–1935, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (then headed by Roerich admirer Henry A. Wallace) sponsored an expedition by Roerich and USDA scientists H. G. MacMillan and James F. Stephens to Inner Mongolia, Manchuria, and China.
Roerich was in India during the Second World War, where he painted Russian epic heroic and saintly themes, including: Alexander Nevsky, The Fight of Mstislav...
In 1942, Roerich received Jawaharlal Nehru at his house in Kullu. Together they discussed the fate of the new world: "We spoke about Indian-Russian cultural association, it is time to think about useful and creative cooperation ...”.
Gandhi would later recall about several days spent together with Roerich's family: "That was a memorable visit to a surprising and gifted family where each member was a remarkable figure in himself, with a well-defined range of interests." ..."Roerich himself stays in my memory. He was a man with extensive knowledge and enormous experience, a man with a big heart, deeply influenced by all that he observed". During the visit, "ideas and thoughts about closer cooperation between India and USSR were expressed. Now, after India wins independence, they have got its own real implementation[clarification needed]. And as you know, there are friendly and mutually-understanding relationships today between both our countries".
In 1942, the American-Russian cultural Association (ARCA) was created in New York.
Its active participants were Ernest Hemingway, Rockwell Kent, Charlie Chaplin, Emil Cooper, Serge Koussevitzky, and Valeriy Ivanovich Tereshchenko. The Association's activity was welcomed by scientists like Robert Millikan and Arthur Compton.
Roerich died on December 13, 1947.
Presently, the Nicholas Roerich Museum in New York City is a major institution for Roerich's artistic work. Numerous Roerich societies continue to promote his theosophical teachings worldwide. His paintings can be seen in several museums including the Roerich Department of the State Museum of Oriental Arts in Moscow; the Roerich Museum at the International Centre of the Roerichs in Moscow; the Russian State Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia; a collection in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow; a collection in the Art Museum in Novosibirsk, Russia; an important collection in the National Gallery for Foreign Art in Sofia, Bulgaria; a collection in the Art Museum in Nizhny Novgorod Russia; National Museum of Serbia ; the Roerich Hall Estate in Nagar village in Kullu Valley, India; the Sree Chitra Art Gallery, Thiruvananthapuram, India;[17] in various art museums in India; and a selection featuring several of his larger works in The Latvian National Museum of Art.

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2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

THE KAISER MOUNTAINS PAINTED BY ALFONS WALDE

ALFONS WALDE (1891-1958)

Kaiser mountains   (2,344 m- 7,690 ft)

Austria 

 In  Ergfrühling (Wilder Kaiser), c. 1920. Oil on cardboard, 78.5 x 100 cm

The mountains 

The Kaiser Mountains  or  Kaisergebirge, meaning Emperor mountains  or just Kaiser, are a mountain range in the Northern Limestone Alps and Eastern Alps. It consists of two main mountain ridges – the Zahmer Kaiser ("gentle or tame emperor") to the north ,mainly covered by mountain pine and the Wilder Kaiser ("wild or fierce emperor") to the south, formed predominantly of bare limestone rock. The entire range is situated in the Austrian state of Tyrol between the town of Kufstein and the market town of St. Johann in Tirol. The Kaiser Mountains offer some of the loveliest scenery in all the Northern Limestone Alps. 

These two mountain ridges are linked by the 1,580 m- high Stripsenjoch pass, but are separated in the west by the valley of Kaisertal and in the east by the Kaiserbach valley. In total the Kaiser extends for about 20 km (12 mi) in an east-west direction and about 14 km (8.7 mi) from north to south, giving a total area of some 280 square kilometres (110 sq mi). 

The Zahmer Kaiser only just breaks through the 2,000 metre barrier (in the Vordere Kesselschneid). The highest elevation in the Wilder Kaiser is the Ellmauer Halt in the borough of Kufstein at 2,344 metres (7,690 ft). There are around forty other summits, including many well-known climbing peaks such as the Karlspitzen, Totenkirchl, Fleischbank, Predigtstuhl, Goinger Halt, Ackerlspitze and Maukspitze.

 The artist 

Alfons Walde  was an Austrian artist and architect, best known for his winter landscapes and farming images, especially skiing and sporting scenes, painted in tempera or impastoed oil paint. Many of his paintings can be seen in the Museum gallery in Kitzbühel.
Walde  produced his first watercolour and tempera paintings during his school days. From 1910 to 1914 he studied architecture at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna, while continuing his education as a painter. In the Danubian metropolis he moved in artistic circles that included Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, and he became influenced by Ferdinand Hodler.
In 1911 Walde had his first exhibition in Innsbruck, and in 1913 presented four farm pictures at the prestigious Vienna Secession exhibition. From 1914 to 1917 he actively participated in World War I as a Tyrolean Kaiserschütze in the high mountains. After returning to Kitzbühel, he fully devoted himself to painting and participated again in exhibitions of the Secession and the Vienna Künstlerhaus throughout the 1920s. He was active as a graphic artist, and beginning in 1926 designed many posters.
By around 1928 Walde had finally found his own characteristic style, one that gave expression to both the Tyrolean mountain scenery – particularly the living winter landscapes – and its robust people through the use of highly reduced drawings and pastel colouring. Throughout the rest of his artistic career his work stayed with the subject of his homeland, and retained the same distinct native style.

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2018 - Men Portraits 
Un blog de Francis Rousseau