MONTE SAN VALENTIN BY ANTONIO SMITH

ANTONIO SMITH (1832-1877)

Monte San Valentin  (4,058 m - 13,314 ft)

Chile

 In  Paisaje cordillerano y laguna, oil on canvas, Pinacoteca Universidad de Concepción,  Chile 

The mountain 
Monte San Valentin  (4,058 m - 13,314 ft) , also known as Monte San Clemente, is the highest mountain in Chilean Patagonia  and the highest mountain south of 37°S outside Antarctica. It stands at the north end of the North Patagonian Icefield.
There is some confusion about the elevation. It was originally estimated at 3,876m by Nordenskjold in 1921 but later thought to be 4,058m. The latter is the most commonly quoted elevation and is quoted here. A French group that climbed the San Valentin in 1993 included two surveyors, who calculated an elevation of 4,080±20 m by using a GPS.  In 2001 a Chilean group measured 4,070±40 m, also using GPS.  SRTM and ASTER GDEM data also support an elevation in excess of 4,000 metres. However, Chilean IGM mapping gives only 3,910 metres. ChIGM maps are usually accurate and reliable,[citation needed] but the summit is uniformly white, which may have created problems for the cartographers.
Monte San Valentin can be climbed from Lago Leones, to the south east, or from Laguna San Rafael, to the west. The ascent is long and is particularly subject to bad weather. The accident and fatality rate is high.

The painter 
Painter and caricaturist Chilean, Antonio Smith is  considered the first satirico-politico artist of his country and one of the first truly contemporary painters, mainly cultivated the romantic landscape and exerted a considerable influence on later artists like Pedro Lira.
Son of an English father and Spanish mother, Antonio Smith studied at the National Institute of the Chilean capital, and then entered the Academy of fine arts, directed at that time by the Italian Alejandro Ciccarelli. During this time, the lessons taught in the Centre were subordinate to the rigid rules of pictorial academicism, inspired in turn by neoclassicism; This environment wasn't the young artist, who because of his disagreements with Ciccarelli, became the first student that would disappear from the Academy before the end of the studies. His eternal spirit of rebellion also led him to abandon the military career (1857), which had initiated in the cavalry squadron of grenadiers, to begin a life of dissident and 'Bohemian' artist, and frequent the most critical intellectual circles with the ruling classes of the country; then dedicated themselves to publishing cartoons in the pages of the literary mail that ridiculed to various public figures of the era, including, as not, the own Ciccarelli. The increasingly critical tone that was acquiring finally forced him to leave the country and go to Europe; This European stage, during which he/she worked in several Italian and French, painting workshops was crucial in defining its pictorial style and the definitive removal of academicism. In 1866 he/she returned to Chile, where he/she developed the rest of his career.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT EARNSLAW / PIKIRAKATAHI BY JOHN TURNBULL THOMSON

EDWYN TEMPLE (1835-1921)

Mount Earnslaw / Pikirakatahi (2,819m -9,249 ft)

New Zealand

 In  Mount Earnslaw-Lake Wakatipu 1883 oil on canvas - Private collection New Zealand 

The Mountain 

Mount Earnslaw, (2,819m -9,249 ft) also named Pikirakatahi by Māori is located on New Zealand's South Island. It is named after Earnslaw (formerly Herneslawe) village in the parish of Eccles, Berwickshire, hometown of the surveyor John Turnbull Thomson's father.

Mount Earnslaw is within Mount Aspiring National Park at the southern end of the Forbes Range of New Zealand's Southern Alps. It is located 25 kilometres north of the settlement of Glenorchy, which lies at the northern end of Lake Wakatipu.

The painter 
 Edwyn Temple, or 'The Captain' as he was referred to by his friends and family, was born in England in 1835, the son of Lieutenant Colonel John Temple and the grandson of Grenville Temple-Temple 9th Baronet of Stowe.  Educated at Rugby School, he entered the military services in 1853. During a brief period in Italy a relative, Princess Pondalfina, recognised his ability and engaged a tutor to teach him the rudiments of painting.
Temple was ensigned in 1854 and became a Captain in the 55th Foot (Westmoreland) Regiment in 1858. He later served in the Crimea and in India from 1864 to 1866. By that time he had married and the first of a family of nine children had been born. It was more than nine years after retiring from the army that he decided to emigrate with his wife and family to New Zealand, arriving in Lyttelton on 25 October 1879.
Within a very short time of his arrival, he was established and developed a network of ex-military friends in Christchurch. Some of these were among the group that got together in June 1880 to form the Canterbury Society of Arts. Temple's role in its formation cannot be overstated and, in acknowledgment of this, he was elected to the key role of Secretary/Treasurer of the Society.
In 1882 he moved to Geraldine to a property, 'Castlewood', which he had purchased the previous year. There he lived and farmed for almost three decades, a Justice of the Peace from 1883, but mostly concentrating on painting before retiring to live in Timaru in the 1900s.
There is no question that Temple had an inner drive. He was a compulsive sketcher who drew on any piece of paper readily at hand as the mood took him; letters, ledgers, telegrams, envelopes, even wrapping paper were all targets for his pen, pencil or brush. His imagination was fertile and, coupled with a sardonic wit, resulted in many lively and amusing drawings and paintings. Though he was not considered to be a professional artist in the accepted sense, he was serious in his endeavours with painting and his approach was nothing short of professional. To have spent the time to produce such a quantity of work, of which those in this exhibition are only a small representation, shows that he was not just engaged in a diverting pastime.
Between 1880 and 1892, which was his most active period as an artist in New Zealand, Temple made many trips over the South Island with his relative and friend James Dupré Lance of Horsley Down Station. He also travelled with the government Surveyor John H. Baker. It was during these trips that he made sketches that were later developed into more major paintings, many of which he regularly showed at either the Canterbury Society of Arts, or the Otago Art Society annual exhibitions where they often received favourable notice from contemporary reviewers.
Temple also exhibited beyond New Zealand, first in 1880 in Melbourne, then in 1886 at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition London. He was also represented at the New Zealand Industrial Exhibition in Wellington in 1885 and the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition held in Dunedin in 1889–90.
He made return trips to England in 1892 and 1909 during which he made many landscape paintings.
Although the landscape was dominant in Temple's work, it was the alpine region of the South Island that particularly interested him and made him recognised in Canterbury as a specialist in this genre. Lakes Wanaka and Wakatipu were of special interest and these locales formed the backdrop to his imagery. From an early age Temple had visited Switzerland and the Lake District where several of his uncles had established themselves as gentry around Lake Ullswater and, in a sense, he had found a New Zealand equivalent to this experience. At the time of his death in 1920 Temple had amassed a considerable body of work that included paintings and drawings from his imagination that were pure fantasy as well as landscape, caricature and narrative subjects. Today, many hundreds of works are held by Temple's descendants scattered throughout the world but he is also represented in collections held by the National Library of Australia, Canberra; Hocken Library, Dunedin; Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington; Centre of Contemporary Art (incorporating Canterbury Society of Arts) Christchurch; as well as the Robert McDougall Art Gallery.
=> Courstesy Christchurch Art Gallery / Te Puna o Waiwhetū
___________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT TACOMA/ MOUNT RAINIER BY ABBY WILLIAMS HILL

ABBY WILLIAMS HILL (1861-1943) 

Mount Tacoma / Mount Rainier (4,392 m-14,411 ft)

United States of America  (Washington State)

In Mount Rainier from Eunice Lake, 1904, University of Puget Sound 

The mountain
Mount Rainier,  Mount Tacoma, or Mount Tahoma (4,392 m-14,411 ft) is the highest mountain of the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest, and the highest mountain in the U.S. state of Washington. It is a large active stratovolcano located 54 miles (87 km) south-southeast of Seattle. It is the most topographically prominent mountain in the contiguous United States and the Cascade Volcanic Arc.
Mount Rainier was first known by the Native Americans as Talol, or Tacoma or Tahoma. One hypothesis of the word origin is  ("mother of waters"), in the Lushootseed language spoken by the Puyallup people. Another hypothesis is that "Tacoma" means "larger than Mount Baker" in Lushootseed: "Ta", larger, plus "Koma", Mount Baker. Other names originally used include Tahoma, Tacobeh, and Pooskaus.
The current name was given by George Vancouver, who named it in honor of his friend, Rear Admiral Peter Rainier. The map of the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-1806 refers to it as "Mt. Regniere".
With 26 major glaciers and 36 sq mi (93 km2) of permanent snowfields and glaciers, Mount Rainier is the most heavily glaciated peak in the lower 48 states. The summit is topped by two volcanic craters, each more than 1,000 ft (300 m) in diameter, with the larger east crater overlapping the west crater. Geothermal heat from the volcano keeps areas of both crater rims free of snow and ice, and has formed the world's largest volcanic glacier cave network within the ice-filled craters, with nearly 2 mi (3.2 km) of passages. A small crater lake about 130 by 30 ft (39.6 by 9.1 m) in size and 16 ft (5 m) deep, the highest in North America with a surface elevation of 14,203 ft (4,329 m), occupies the lowest portion of the west crater below more than 100 ft (30 m) of ice and is accessible only via the caves. The Carbon, Puyallup, Mowich, Nisqually, and Cowlitz Rivers begin at eponymous glaciers of Mount Rainier. The sources of the White River are Winthrop, Emmons, and Fryingpan Glaciers. The White, Carbon, and Mowich join the Puyallup River, which discharges into Commencement Bay at Tacoma; the Nisqually empties into Puget Sound east of Lacey; and the Cowlitz joins the Columbia River between Kelso and Longview.

The Painter 
Abby Williams Hill was an American plein-air painter most known for her landscapes of the American West. Hill also advocated for children's rights, attended the 1905 Congress of Mothers in Washington, D.C., and founded the Washington (state) Parent-Teacher Association.
In the early 1900s, the Great Northern Railway and the Northern Pacific Railway commissioned Hill to paint landscapes of the northwestern United States to promote tourism. The commission required that Hill produce 22 paintings in just 18 weeks, and that she produce them en plein air.  Accompanied by her four children, Abby Hill took prolonged camping trips for the purpose of painting scenery in places such as Yosemite National Park and Yellowstone National Park.  Her works were exhibited at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis and the 1905 Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland. Over the course of her career, Hill achieved her goal of painting in every national park in the Western United States.
Her husband became incapacitated by psychotic depression in 1911, so the family moved to the small isolated community of Laguna Beach, California, for the benefit of the mild, sunny climate.
Abby Hill was one of several early-20th-century American artists who built studios in Laguna Beach and transformed it into an artist community. She became a founding member of the Laguna Beach Art Association.
Following the death of her husband in 1938, Abby Hill became bedridden. She died in Laguna Beach in 1943.
A permanent collection of her works and papers is held by the University of Puget Sound.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

EL CAYAMBE BY RAFAEL TROYA

RAFAEL TROYA (1845-1920) 

Cayambe  (5,790 m -19,000 ft)

 Ecuador

In Vista tomada de Sannicolas, Pva. de Imbabura,  oil on canvas ,1913, 75 x 95 cm. 

Courtesy Colección Alicia Troya-Kennedy

The mountain 
Cayambe or Volcбn Cayambe (5,790 m -19,000 ft) is the name of a volcano located in the Cordillera Central, a range of the Ecuadorian Andes. It is located in Pichincha province some 70 km (43 mi) northeast of Quito. It is the third highest mountain in Ecuador.
Cayambe, which has a permanent snow cap, is a Holocene compound volcano which last erupted in March 1786. At 4,690 metres (15,387 ft) on its south slope is the highest point in the world crossed by the Equator and the only point on the Equator with snow cover. The volcano and most of its slopes are within the Cayambe Coca Ecological Reserve.  Studies conducted since 1995 by a joint team of Ecuadorian and French researchers have shown that during the last 4000, the Cayambe has experienced periods of intense eruptive activity about 700 years alternating with rest periods of 500 to 600 years. The resumption of eruptions must be considered.
Moreover, the region is home to numerous flower plantations for export; however, the non-secure management and toxic effects of these crops have caused serious damage to the environment and create health problems among employees of the plantations.

The painter 
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.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE WATZMANN BY EDWARD T. COMPTON

EDWARD T. COMPTON (1849-1921) 

The Watzmann (2, 713m - 8, 901ft) 

Germany 

In The Watzmann seen from the Hotel Post in Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, watercolour, 26 x 23, 5cm) 

Courtesy William Mitchell Gallery, London 

The mountain
The Watzmann (2,713m - 8,901ft) is a mountain in the Bavarian Alps south of the village of Berchtesgaden. It is the third highest in Germany, and the highest located entirely on German territory. Three main peaks array on a N-S axis along a ridge on the mountain's taller western half: Hocheck (2,651 m), Mittelspitze (Middle Peak, 2,713 m) and Sьdspitze (South Peak, 2,712 m).
The Watzmann massif also includes the 2,307 m Watzmannfrau (Watzmann Wife, also known as Kleiner Watzmann or Small Watzmann), and the Watzmannkinder (Watzmann Children), five lower peaks in the recess between the main peaks and the Watzmannfrau.
The entire massif lies inside Berchtesgaden National Park.
The Watzmann Glacier is located below the famous east face of the Watzmann in the Watzmann cirque and is surrounded by the Watzmanngrat arête, the Watzmannkindern and the Kleiner Watzmann. The size of the glacier reduced from around 30 hectares (74 acres) in 1820 until it split into a few fields of firn, but between 1965 and 1980 it advanced significantly again and now has an area of 10.1 hectares (25 acres). Above and to the west of the icefield lie the remains of a transport-bomber that crashed in October 1940.
Amongst the other permanent snow and icefields the Eiskapelle ("Ice Chapel") is the best known due to its easy accessibility from St. Bartholomä. The Eiskapelle may well be the lowest lying permanent snowfield in the Alps. Its lower end is only 930 metres high in the upper Eisbach valley and is about an hour's walk from St. Bartholomä on the Königssee. The Eiskapelle is fed by mighty avalanches that slide down from the east face of the Watzmann in spring and accumulate in the angle of the rock face. Sometimes a gate-shaped vault forms in the ice at the point where the Eisbach emerges from the Eiskapelle. Before entering there is an urgent warning sign that others have been killed by falling ice.
In the east face itself is another icefield in the so-called Schöllhorn cirque, called the Schöllhorneis, which is crossed by the Kederbach Way (Kederbacher-Weg). The cirque and icefield are named after the Munich citizen, Christian Schöllhorn, who was the first victim on the east face. On 26 May 1890 he fell at the upper end of the icefield into the randkluft and was fatally injured. Another small nameless snowfield is located several hundred metres below the Mittelspitze also in the east face.


The painter
Edward Theodore Compton, usually referred to as E. T. Compton was an English-born, German artist, illustrator and mountain climber, not to be confused with his son Edward Harrison Compton, also a mountain painter. He is well known for his paintings and drawings of alpine scenery, and as a mountaineer made 300 major ascents including no fewer than 27 first ascents.

Initially painting in the English romantic tradition, Compton later developed a more realistic representation of nature, being guided by his true artistic ideas while retaining topographical accuracy. Even his early watercolors show the great importance of brightness and light and his work is also remarkable for its portrayal of the elements such as water and air, including ascending mist and fog. He can be regarded as an impressionist.
He attended various art schools, including, for a time, the Royal Academy in London, but otherwise he was mainly self-taught in art. In 1867, wanting the best education for their artistically-talented son, and due to the high cost of schooling in England, the family decided to emigrate to Germany settling in Darmstadt. The city at that time was the seat of the Grand Duchy of Hesse under Grand Duke Ludwig III, and a community of artists had sprung up there. Entries in Compton's diary show that both he and his father were art teachers - Alice, the Princess of Hesse numbered amongst Edward's students.
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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

USHAS MONS BY NASA MAGELLAN MISSION

MAGELLAN MISSION (1989-1994)

Ushas Mons (2,000 m / 2 km - 6,561ft/1.25 mile)  

VENUS

The mountain 
Ushas Mons (2,000 m / 2 km - 6,561ft/1.25 mile) is a volcano in the southern hemisphere of Venus at 25 degrees south latitude, 323 degrees east longitude. Its name is derived from vedic goddess of dawn Ushas .The volcano is marked by numerous bright lava flows and a set of north-south trending fractures, many of which appear to have formed after the lavas were erupted onto the surface. In the central summit area, however, younger flows remain unfractured. An impact crater can be seen among the fractures in the upper center of the image. The association of faulting and volcanism is common on this type of volcano on Venus, and is believed to result from a large zone of hot material upwelling from the Venusian mantle, a phenomenon known on Earth as a "hotspot."


The mission
Magellan was launched on May 4, 1989, at 18:46:59 UTC by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration from KSC Launch Complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis during mission STS-30. Once in orbit, the Magellan and its attached Inertial Upper Stage booster were deployed from Atlantis and launched on May 5, 1989 01:06:00 UTC, sending the spacecraft into a Type IV heliocentric orbit where it would circle the Sun 1.5 times, before reaching Venus 15 months later on August 10, 1990.
Originally, the Magellan had been scheduled for launch in 1988 with a trajectory lasting six months. However, due to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986, several missions, including Galileo and Magellan, were deferred until shuttle flights resumed in September 1988. Magellan was planned to be launched with a liquid-fueled, Centaur-G upper-stage booster, carried in the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle. However, the entire Centaur-G program was canceled after the Challenger disaster, and the Magellan probe had to be modified to be attached to the less-powerful Inertial Upper Stage. The next best opportunity for launching occurred in October 1989.
Further complicating the launch however, was the launching of the Galileo mission to Jupiter, one that included a fly-by of Venus. Intended for launch in 1986, the pressures to ensure a launch for Galileo in 1989, mixed with a short launch-window necessitating a mid-October launch, resulted in replanning the Magellan mission. Weary of rapid shuttle launches, the decision was made to launch Magellan in May, and into an orbit that would require one year, three months, before encountering Venus.
On August 7, 1990, Magellan encountered Venus and began the orbital insertion maneuver which placed the spacecraft into a three-hour, nine minute, elliptical orbit that brought the spacecraft 295-kilometers from the surface at about 10 degrees North during the periapsis and out to 7762-kilometers during apoapsis
On September 9, 1994, a press release outlined the termination of the Magellan mission. Due to the degradation of the power output from the solar arrays and onboard components, and having completed all objectives successfully, the mission was to end in mid-October. The termination sequence began in late August 1994, with a series of orbital trim maneuvers which lowered the spacecraft into the outermost layers of the Venusian atmosphere to allow the Windmill experiment to begin on September 6, 1994.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

KILIMANDJARO (2) BY ROBERT MC LELLAN-SIM

ROBERT MC LELLAN-SIM  (1907-1985)

Kilimandjaro (5,885m - 19,340ft) 

Tanzania

The mountain 
Mount Kilimanjaro (5,885m - 19, 340ft) is a dormant volcano in Tanzania composed of three volcanic cones, "Kibo", "Mawenzi", and "Shira.  The Kilimandjaro is the highest mountain in Africa. The first recorded ascent to the summit  was by Hans Meyer and Ludwig Purtscheller in 1889.
The mountain is part of the Kilimanjaro National Park and is a major climbing destination. The mountain has been the subject of many scientific studies because of its shrinking glaciers, especially since 200.
The origin of the name "Kilimanjaro" is not precisely known, but a number of theories exist. European explorers had adopted the name by 1860 and reported that "Kilimanjaro" was the mountain's Kiswahili name. The 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopædia also records the name of the mountain as "Kilima-Njaro", as well as the title of the watercolor above. Johann Ludwig Krapf wrote in 1860 that Swahilis along the coast called the mountain Kilimanjaro. Although he did not support his claim, he claimed that "Kilimanjaro" meant either "mountain of greatness" or "mountain of caravans". Under the latter meaning, "Kilima" meant "mountain" and "Jaro" possibly meant "caravans". Jim Thompson claimed in 1885, although he also did not support his claim, that the term Kilima-Njaro "has generally been understood to mean" the Mountain (Kilima) of Greatness (Njaro). Though not improbably it may mean the "White" mountain. "Njaro" is an ancient Kiswahili word for "shining". Others have assumed that "Kilima" is Kiswahili for "mountain".
In the 1880s, the mountain became a part of German East Africa and was called "Kilima-Ndscharo" in German following the Kiswahili name components.
On 6 October 1889, Hans Meyer reached the highest summit on the crater ridge of Kibo. He named it "Kaiser-Wilhelm-Spitze" ("Kaiser Wilhelm peak").
That name apparently was used until Tanzania was formed in 1964, when the summit was renamed "Uhuru", meaning "Freedom Peak" in Kiswahili.The mountain
Mount Kilimanjaro (5,885m - 19, 340ft) is a dormant volcano in Tanzania composed of three volcanic cones, "Kibo", "Mawenzi", and "Shira.  The Kilimandjaro is the highest mountain in Africa. The first recorded ascent to the summit  was by Hans Meyer and Ludwig Purtscheller in 1889.
The mountain is part of the Kilimanjaro National Park and is a major climbing destination. The mountain has been the subject of many scientific studies because of its shrinking glaciers, especially since 2000....
Full wandering Vertexes entry  =>


The painter 
Robert McLellan-Sim (also known as RMS) was a prolific artist, and during his time in East Africa (he travelled throughout Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika and Zanzibar) he completed as many as 40 paintings a year. His work was in great demand, and over a period of some fifteen years he held ten One Man Exhibitions, mostly in Kenya, but at least one in England while on leave.
His work was purchased by many eminent people and was extremely popular as an official gift or a farewell present. The Colony of Kenya presented a McLellan-Sim painting to HM The Queen on the occasion of her Coronation in 1953, and HM The Queen Mother was presented with another to commemorate her Visit to Kenya in 1959. Many a departing dignitary at the time of independence received a McLellan-Sim painting as a farewell gift. Both Jake Fletcher and Amoeba Walker took McLellan-Sim works of art home with them to England when they left the Prince of Wales School. The Kenya Regiment presented a McLellan-Sim painting to Sir Patrick Renison as their departing Commander-in -Chief when he retired as Governor of Kenya in 1961.
RMS was a successful commercial artist, with his clients including the East African Tobacco Company, the East African Standard and the Uganda Tourist Board. His public works included the murals for the Kenya Agricultural Stand in the Rhodes Centenary Exhibition of 1952 in Bulawayo, the Nakuru Railway Station murals of 1957 and the 1960 mural for the National Assembly Building in Nairobi.
RMS designed the 1954 blue 10 shilling postage stamp depicting the Royal Lodge at Sagana, a signed mint copy of which has been presented by the McLellan-Sim family to The British Library. This is the one that caught my eye and got me started on this article in the first place.
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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

THABANA NTLENYANA PAINTED (2) BY JACOBUS HENDRIK PIERNEEFF

JACOBUS HENDRIK PIERNEEF (1886-1957)

Thabana Ntlenyana (3, 482m - 11, 424ft) 

South Africa, Lesotho 

In Maluti Mountains at Ficksburg , oil on canvas, 1910

The mountain
Thabana Ntlenyana  (3,482m - 11, 424ft)  which literally means "Beautiful little mountain" in Sesotho, is the highest point in Lesotho and the highest mountain in southern Africa. It is situated on the Mohlesi ridge of the Drakensberg/Maloti Mountains, north of Sani Pass.  The peak is usually climbed by groups completing a Grand Traverse of the Drakensberg - even though the peak is technically in the Maloti Mountains.
The Maloti Mountains, also spelled Maluti are a mountain range of the highlands of the Kingdom of Lesotho. They extend for about 100 km into the Free State. The Maloti Range is part of the Drakensberg system that includes ranges across large areas of South Africa. “Maloti” is also the plural for Loti, the currency of the Kingdom of Lesotho. The range forms the northern portion of the boundary between the Butha-Buthe District in Lesotho and South Africa’s Orange Free State.

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 

AIGUILLE DU DRU BY PIERRE TAIRAZ

PIERRE TAIRAZ (1933-2000) 

L'aiguille du Dru  (3,754 m -12,316 ft) 

France 

In L'Aiguille du Dru, Chamonix, France, Silver gelatin print  (140 x 30cm)
Courtesy John Mitchell Gallery London 

The peak 
The Aiguille du Dru  (3,754 m -12,316 ft) (also called Les Drus in French) is a mountain in the Mont Blanc massif in the French Alps. It is situated to the east of the village of Les Praz in the Chamonix valley. "Aiguille" means "needle" in French.
The mountain's highest summit is:
- Grande Aiguille du Dru (or the Grand Dru)
- Petite Aiguille du Dru (or the Petit Dru) 3,733 m.
The two summits are located on the west ridge of the Aiguille Verte (4,122 m) and are connected to each other by the Brèche du Dru (3,697 m). The north face of the Petit Dru is considered one of the six great north faces of the Alps. The southwest "Bonatti" pillar and its eponymous climbing route were destroyed in a 2005 rock fall.

The photographer 
Born in Chamonix, Pierre Tairraz, son, grandson and great-grandson of photographers, adheres very young to this instinct of the mountain and to this fabulous means of expression that the photography is. In the 50s, Pierre Tairaz studied at the Ecole Nationale de la Photographie Vaugirard (Paris) and also learns cinema at IDHEC (Paris). Following the family line, he continues photography, devotes himself to the profession of guide and also embarks on the footsteps of his father with the cinema at altitude. He takes part in many shootings. His career, starring an impressive number of high-altitude film shoots and photographic expeditions, continues to bring him closer to the mountain. Why photograph the mountain? "To testify of another world," answers Pierre Tairraz, "no artifice can match the creative power of nature." 
In this quest for harmony, each image becomes a symbol, the dream of an ideal architecture, a fantastic and grandiose utopia.
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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

OBSERVATION HILL BY EDWARD ADRIAN WILSON

EDWARD ADRIAN WILSON (1872-1912), 

Observation Hill (230m -754 ft) 

Antarctica  (Hut Point Peninsula)

 In Hut Point Midnight March 7, 1911- Terra nova expedition  Scott's Last Expedition", 

watercolor, 1913

The hill 

Observation Hill  (230m -754-ft) is a steep  hill adjacent to McMurdo Station in Antarctica and commonly called "Ob Hill." It is frequently climbed to get good viewing points across the continent. Regular clear skies give excellent visibility. 

Observation Hill is a lava dome and one of many volcanoes comprising the Hut Point Peninsula,  a long, narrow peninsula from 3 to 5 km (2 to 3 mi) wide and 24 km (15 mi) long, projecting south-west from the slopes of Mount Erebus on Ross Island, Antarctica. McMurdo Station (US) and Scott Base (NZ) are Antarctic research stations located on the Hut Point Peninsula.

After their deaths in early 1912, the last members of Robert Falcon Scott's party were found by a search party led by the surgeon Edward L. Atkinson. The relief party took their photographic film, scientific specimens, and other materials. They had to leave Scott and his men in their tent, and later parties could not locate the campsite, since that area had been covered in snow. A century of storms and snow have covered the cairn and tent, which are now encased in the Ross Ice Shelf as it inches towards the Ross Sea. In 2001 glaciologist Charles R. Bentley estimated that the tent with the bodies was under about 75 feet (23 m) of ice and about 30 miles (48 km) from the point where they died; he speculated that in about 275 years the bodies would reach the Ross Sea, and perhaps float away inside an iceberg.
The search party returned to their base camp in McMurdo Sound to await the relief ship. After it arrived, they worked to build a memorial – a nine-foot wooden cross (see above), inscribed with the names of the fatal party and the final line of the Alfred Tennyson poem "Ulysses", which reads "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." On 22 January 1913, after a difficult two-day sledge journey, the cross was erected on the summit of Observation Hill, overlooking the camp and facing out towards the "Barrier" – the Ross Ice Shelf, on which Scott's party had died. In 1972, the cross was declared as one of the initial Historic Sites and Monuments in Antarctica by the Antarctic Treaty signatories, as HSM-20.

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.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes.

Un blog de Francis Rousseau

MUZTAGH TOWER BY NICHOLAS ROERICH

NICHOLAS ROERICH (1874-1947),
Muztagh Tower (7,276m - 23, 871ft) 

Pakistan - China border

In   Himalayas 1938, oil on canavs,  Nicolas Roerich  Museum, New York City

The mountain 

Muztagh Tower (7,276m - 23, 871ft), is a mountain in the Baltoro Muztagh, part of the Karakoram range in Baltistan on the border of the Gilgit–Baltistan region of Pakistan and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. It stands between the basins of the Baltoro and Sarpo Laggo glaciers.
The Vittorio Sella's photographs of the Muztagh Tower in 1909  during the Italian Expediiton of the Duke of Abruzzi to K2,  inspired the first ascent.
Nearly fifty years after Sella's photo was taken, in 1956, his photograph inspired two expeditions to race for the first ascent. Both teams found their routes less steep than Sella's view had suggested. The British expedition, consisting of John Hartog, Joe Brown, Tom Patey and Ian McNaught-Davis, came from the Chagaran Glacier on the west side of the peak and reached the summit via the Northwest Ridge first on July 6, five days before the French team (Guido Magnone, Robert Paragot, André Contamine, Paul Keller) climbed the mountain from the east. The doctor François Florence waited for the two parties at the camp IV during 42 hours without a radio, when they went, reached the summit and came back to this camp.
Notable ascents and attempts:
- 1984: Northwest Ridge 2nd of route, 3rd of peak by Mal Duff, Tony Brindle, Jon Tinker and Sandy Allan (all UK).
- 1990: The fourth ascent was made by Gцran Kropp and Rafael Jensen.
- 2008: On 24 August 2008, the Northeast Face was climbed by two Slovenian alpinists, Pavle Kozjek and Dejan Miskovič. They bivouacked on the crest after 17 hours of climbing. They decided not to go to the summit because of strong wind. Just after they started descending, Kozjek fell to his death.
- 2012: On the day of 25 August, 56 years after the day when the first man climbed to the top of this mountain, three Russian alpinists made an ascent by the center Northeast Face. Sergei Nilov, Golovchenko Dmitry and Alexander Lange reached the top and made a new route. The ascent lasted for 17 days.

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).

Full Wandering Vertexes entry  =>

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT PEEL BY EDWYN TEMPLE

EDWYN TEMPLE (1835-1921)

Mount Peel   (1,743 m  - 5,719 ft) 

 New Zealand 

 

In Canterbury plain, New Zealand ( Mt Peel)

Christchurch Art Gallery / Te Puna o Waiwhetū

The mountain 
Mount Peel  often refered as Big Mount Peel   (1,743 m  - 5,719 ft) is a mountain located in South Canterbury, New Zealand. It consists of three peaks :  Big Mt Peel,  (1,743 m  - 5,719 ft),  Middle Mt Peel (1,583 m or 5,194 ft) and Little Mt Peel/Huatekerekere (1,311 m or 4,301 ft).
Mt Peel is  owned by the Department of Conservation and Mt Peel Station. It lies just south of the Rangitata river and is 22 kilometres (14 mi) north-west of Geraldine.
The Peel Forest Park Scenic Reserve is the largest in the Geraldine area, covering 769 hectares (1,900 acres) around Little Mt Peel/Huatekerekere.
The nearby forest was named by Francis Jollie, who settled in the area in late 1853. Jollie had named the forest after Sir Robert Peel, the British Prime Minister of the United Kingdom who had died in 1850, the year that Canterbury was founded. The mountain and the nearby community of Peel Forest also took Peel's name.
Mt Peel and the surrounding Peel Forest contain many well maintained and popular walking tracks.
Flora and fauna. There is lots of unique flora and fauna in Peel Forest. The three largest trees in Peel Forest belong to the family Podocarpaceae, a very ancient family going back in time more than 100 million years. The three large trees are kahikatea (white pine), tōtara, and mataī (black pine).
There are at least ten species of native bird occur in the forest including bellbird, silvereye, tomtit, rifleman, grey warbler, kererū, fantail, silvereye, shining cuckoo and longtailed cuckoo. There are also many lizards including the jeweled gecko and McCann's skink.

The artist 
 Edwyn Temple, or 'The Captain' as he was referred to by his friends and family, was born in England in 1835, the son of Lieutenant Colonel John Temple and the grandson of Grenville Temple-Temple 9th Baronet of Stowe.  Educated at Rugby School, he entered the military services in 1853. During a brief period in Italy a relative, Princess Pondalfina, recognised his ability and engaged a tutor to teach him the rudiments of painting.
Temple was ensigned in 1854 and became a Captain in the 55th Foot (Westmoreland) Regiment in 1858. He later served in the Crimea and in India from 1864 to 1866. By that time he had married and the first of a family of nine children had been born. It was more than nine years after retiring from the army that he decided to emigrate with his wife and family to New Zealand, arriving in Lyttelton on 25 October 1879.
Within a very short time of his arrival, he was established and developed a network of ex-military friends in Christchurch. Some of these were among the group that got together in June 1880 to form the Canterbury Society of Arts. Temple's role in its formation cannot be overstated and, in acknowledgment of this, he was elected to the key role of Secretary/Treasurer of the Society.
In 1882 he moved to Geraldine to a property, 'Castlewood', which he had purchased the previous year. There he lived and farmed for almost three decades, a Justice of the Peace from 1883, but mostly concentrating on painting before retiring to live in Timaru in the 1900s.
There is no question that Temple had an inner drive. He was a compulsive sketcher who drew on any piece of paper readily at hand as the mood took him; letters, ledgers, telegrams, envelopes, even wrapping paper were all targets for his pen, pencil or brush. His imagination was fertile and, coupled with a sardonic wit, resulted in many lively and amusing drawings and paintings. Though he was not considered to be a professional artist in the accepted sense, he was serious in his endeavours with painting and his approach was nothing short of professional. To have spent the time to produce such a quantity of work, of which those in this exhibition are only a small representation, shows that he was not just engaged in a diverting pastime.
Between 1880 and 1892, which was his most active period as an artist in New Zealand, Temple made many trips over the South Island with his relative and friend James Dupré Lance of Horsley Down Station. He also travelled with the government Surveyor John H. Baker. It was during these trips that he made sketches that were later developed into more major paintings, many of which he regularly showed at either the Canterbury Society of Arts, or the Otago Art Society annual exhibitions where they often received favourable notice from contemporary reviewers.
Temple also exhibited beyond New Zealand, first in 1880 in Melbourne, then in 1886 at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition London. He was also represented at the New Zealand Industrial Exhibition in Wellington in 1885 and the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition held in Dunedin in 1889–90.
He made return trips to England in 1892 and 1909 during which he made many landscape paintings.
Although the landscape was dominant in Temple's work, it was the alpine region of the South Island that particularly interested him and made him recognised in Canterbury as a specialist in this genre. Lakes Wanaka and Wakatipu were of special interest and these locales formed the backdrop to his imagery. From an early age Temple had visited Switzerland and the Lake District where several of his uncles had established themselves as gentry around Lake Ullswater and, in a sense, he had found a New Zealand equivalent to this experience. At the time of his death in 1920 Temple had amassed a considerable body of work that included paintings and drawings from his imagination that were pure fantasy as well as landscape, caricature and narrative subjects. Today, many hundreds of works are held by Temple's descendants scattered throughout the world but he is also represented in collections held by the National Library of Australia, Canberra; Hocken Library, Dunedin; Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington; Centre of Contemporary Art (incorporating Canterbury Society of Arts) Christchurch; as well as the Robert McDougall Art Gallery.

=> Courstesy Christchurch Art Gallery / Te Puna o Waiwhetū

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT TAMBO BY EUGENE VON GUERARD

EUGENE VON GUERARD  (1811-1901)

Mount Tambo  (1,430 m - 4,692 ft)

Australia (Victoria) 

In  Mount Tambo  from Oemo Station, oil on canvas, 1862- National Gallery of Australia 

The mountain 
Mount Tambo (1,430 m - 4,692 ft) is a mountain located to the north-east of Omeo in Victoria, Australia. It lies within the boundaries of the 6,050 hectare Marble Gully.  The 2,740 hectare Mount Tambo Reserve was listed on the Register of the National Estate in 1990. Rare plant species found in Marble Gully – Mount Tambo Nature Conservation Reserve include Marble Daisy Bush, Delicate New Holland-daisy, and Limestone Pomaderris. To the near north-east is Little Mount Tambo (1,227 m). The headwaters from Deep Creek, which feeds in to the Tambo River, are on the south-east slopes.
While travelling with Georg Neumayer's expedition to Mount Kosciuszko in 1862, the painter Eugene von Guerard produced a sketch Mt Tambo & Omeo Swamps 10 Nov 62 and later an oil painting Mount Tambo from the Omeo Station 1862. (see above)

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.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

PAO DA AÇUCAR BY AGOSTINHO JOSE DA MOTA

AGOSTINHO JOSE DA MOTA (1824-1878)
 Pao de Açucar  / Sugarloaf mountain  (396 m - 1,299 ft)

Brazil

In  Vista da Gambo no Rio de Janeiro,1852, oil on canvas 

The mountain
Pao de Açucar  (396 m - 1299ft), Sugarloaf Mountain in english, Pain de Sucre in French,  is a isolated peak (Inselberg) situated in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, at the mouth of Guanabara Bay on a peninsula that sticks out into the Atlantic Ocean. Rising above the harbor, its name is said to refer to its resemblance to the traditional shape of concentrated refined loaf sugar. It is known worldwide for its cableway and panoramic views of the city. The name "Sugarloaf" was coined in the 16th century by the Portuguese during the heyday of sugar cane trade in Brazil. According to historian Vieira Fazenda, blocks of sugar were placed in conical molds made of clay to be transported on ships. The shape given by these molds was similar to the peak, hence the name.

The painter 
Agostinho José da Mota was a painter, draftsman and Brazilian professor. Thus, in 1837, enrolled in the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. He was a brilliant student and for the merits and competence demonstrated, received the prize for a trip to Europe, in 1850. Returning to Brazil, in 1856, he is one of the founders of the Society Propagating Fine Arts of Rio de Janeiro. Two years later, he  painted the portraits of the imperial couple - Dom Pedro II (1825 - 1891) and Dona Teresa Cristina (1822 - 1889).
Most of Agostinho de Motta's artistic production consists of landscapes and still lifes. His representation of the Brazilian landscape is among the best that prints the values and standards of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts (AIBA), in which he studied and later was professor, both in the formation of the idea of a national image, as well as in the formation of the image of the empire. Agostinho Mota did this for his artistic works, such as the portrait of the imperial couple and the records of the scene of the time.
The landscapes of Agostinho Motta are the most famous works of the artist. They stand out for the topographical precision, for the exact register of the dimensions of the scenarios and for the competence with which it captures the transpositions between the various colors that constitute its worked exteriors. The scenarios chosen by the artist demonstrate the marked dimension of the national identity that Agostinho Motta intended to portray in his paintings, as the Landscape of Rio de Janeiro, 1857, influenced by the canons of AIBA.
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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

EL CHIMBORAZO (2) BY ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT  (1769-1859)

Chimborazo  (6,263 m - 20,549  ft)

Ecuador

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

The mountain

Chimborazo  (6,263 m -20,548 ft) is a currently inactive stratovolcano in the Cordillera Occidental range of the Andes ans the highest mountain in Ecuador and the Andes north of Peru ; it is higher than any more northerly summit in the Americas. Chimborazo is not the highest mountain by elevation above sea level, but its location along the equatorial bulge makes its summit the farthest point on the Earth's surface from the Earth's center.

Chimborazo is at the main end of the Ecuadorian Volcanic Arc, north west of the town of Riobamba. Chimborazo is in la Avenida de los Volcanes (the Avenue of Volcanoes) west of the Sanancajas mountain chain. Carihuairazo, Tungurahua, Tulabug, and El Altar are all mountains that neighbor Chimborazo.  The closest mountain peak, Carihuairazo, is 5.8 mi (9.3 km) from Chimborazo. There are many microclimates near Chimborazo, varying from desert in the Arenal to the humid mountains in the Abraspungo valley.

Its last known eruption is believed to have occurred around A.D. 550. 

Until the beginning of the 19th century, it was thought that Chimborazo was the highest mountain on Earth (measured from sea level), and such reputation led to many attempts on its summit during the 17th and 18th centuries.

In 1746, the volcano was explored by French academicians from the  French Geodesic Mission. Their mission was to determine the sphericity of the Earth. Their work along with another team in Lapland established that the Earth was an oblate spheroid rather than a true sphere. They did not reach the summit of Chimborazo.

In 1802, during his expedition to South America, Baron Alexander von Humboldt, accompanied by Aimé Bonpland and the Ecuadorian Carlos Montufar, tried to reach the summit. From his description of the mountain, it seems that before he and his companions had to return suffering from altitude sickness they reached a point at 5,875 m, higher than previously attained by any European in recorded history. (Incans had reached much higher altitudes previously). In 1831, Jean-Baptiste Boussingault and Colonel Hall reached a new "highest point", estimated to be 6,006 m.

On 4 January 1880, the English climber Edward Whymper reached the summit of Chimborazo. The route that Whymper took up Chimborazo is now known as the Whymper route. Edward Whymper, and his Italian guides Louis Carrel and Jean-Antoine Carrel, were the first Europeans to summit a mountain higher than 20,000 feet. As there were many critics who doubted that Whymper had reached the summit, later in the same year he climbed to the summit again, choosing a different route (Pogyos) with the Ecuadorians David Beltrбn and Francisco Campaсa.

The cartographer 

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.

At Callao, the main port for Peru, Humboldt observed the transit of Mercury. On 9 November and studied the fertilizing properties of guano, rich in nitrogen, the subsequent introduction of which into Europe was due mainly to his writings.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MONTE ROSA BY JEAN-FRANÇOIS ROFFIAEN

JEAN-FRANÇOIS ROFFIAEN ( 1820-1898) 

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

Switzerland- Italy border  

In Sunrise on Monte Rosa seen from Riffelsee, Zermatt, oil on canvas  (72.5 x 118cm), 1871, Courtesy John Mitchell Gallery, London 

About the painting 
In 1845 Roffiaen saw two paintings by Alexandre Calame at the Salon de Bruxelles. He was so impressed by them that the young Belgian was awarded a place to train in his new mentor’s Geneva studio for six months. His style and subject matter remained close to Calame’s throughout his life, but he travelled further afield to the Mediterranean. Roffiaen’s work was admired and collected by the royal families of Europe and this magnificent dawn view of Monte Rosa is probably the prototype version for a large two-and a half metre canvas, dated 1875, now in the Brussels museum together with several other pictures by him.

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

The painter 
Jean François Xavier Roffiaen was a Belgian landscape painter who specialized in painting Alpine landscapes. He followed his artistic studies at the Academy of Brussels (1839–1842), notably under the famous vedutiste, François Bossuet (1789–1889) who was responsible for teaching him perspective and who was the authority on landscapes and city views.
The years 1850–1860 were those of Roffiaen's  greatest success, including numerous sales in Belgium, in Great Britain and in the United States, having works acquired by the Shah of Persia, by the Belgian and British royal houses, a study tour of Scotland commissioned by Queen Victoria, but which unfortunately never took place because of the sudden death of Albert, Prince Consort.  His painting, constructed according to indefinitely repeated formulae and each year becoming a little more tired, finished however by wearying the art chroniclers : « Critics of the press have often reproached him for the bias he shows in his painting. M Roffiaen has ignored them, he has continued to accumulate landscapes of Belgium, Scotland, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, what do I know, combing them without rest, using the same formula, making do with the same sky, the same trees, the same rocks, unconcerned by the latitudes, according to the taste of a special public, who buy all of that and pay him handsomely. Leave M. Roffiaen alone, gentlemen of the press, he paints his little nature scenes one demands of him and knows well the reason why. » 
(G. H., L’Organe de Namur et de la Province, 1874).
François Roffiaen is equally illustrious in the domain of natural sciences, to which Jules Colbeau (1823–1881) introduced him in his youth. While children the two companions already took delight in observing nature in the little property that Colbeau’s parents owned in the suburbs of Namur. Once adult, they took a journey together to Switzerland (1852) where they collected insects, butterflies and molluscs.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT KATAHDIN (2) BY MARSDEN HARTLEY

MARSDEN HARTLEY (1877-1943)

Mount Katahdin (1,605 m - 5,267ft)

United States of America (Maine)  

In Mount Katahdin, First Snow, oil on canvas

The mountain  

Mount Katahdin (1,605 m - 5,267 feet)  is the highest mountain in the U.S. state of Maine and the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. The mountain, being a mile above sea level, towers above the comparatively low Maine lakes and forests. Named Katahdin by the Penobscot Indians, which means "The Greatest Mountain", Katahdin is the centerpiece of Baxter State Park.  The official name is "Mount Katahdin" as decided by the US Board on Geographic Names in 1893. Among some Native Americans, Katahdin was believed to be the home of the storm god Pamola, and thus an area to be avoidedIt is a steep, tall mountain formed from a granite intrusion weathered to the surface. 

Katahdin was known to the Native Americans in the region, and was known to Europeans at least since 1689. It has inspired hikes, climbs, journal narratives, paintings, and a piano sonata. The area around the peak was protected by Governor Percival Baxter starting in the 1930s. Katahdin  is located near a stretch known as the Hundred-Mile Wilderness.

Katahdin is referred to 60 years after Field’s climb of Agiokochuk (Mount Washington) in the writings of John Gyles, a teenage colonist who was captured near Portland, Maine in 1689 by the Abenaki. While in the company of Abenaki hunting parties, he traveled up and down several Maine rivers including both branches of the Penobscot, passing close to “Teddon”. He remarked that it was higher than the White Hills above the Saco River.

The first recorded climb of "Catahrdin" was by Massachusetts surveyors Zackery Adley and Charles Turner, Jr. in August 1804.[14] In the 1840s Henry David Thoreau climbed Katahdin, which he spelled "Ktaadn"; his ascent is recorded in a well-known chapter of The Maine Woods. A few years later Theodore Winthrop wrote about his visit in Life in the Open Air. Painters Frederic Edwin Church and Marsden Hartley are well-known artists who created landscapes of Katahdin. 

In the 1930s Governor Percival Baxter began to acquire land and finally deeded more than 200,000 acres (809 km2) to the State of Maine for a park, named Baxter State Park after him. The summit was officially recognized by the US Board on Geographic Names as "Baxter Peak" in 1931.

The painter 
Marsden Hartley  was an American Modernist painter, poet, and essayist.
Hartley began his art training at the Cleveland Institute of Art after his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1892.  He won a scholarship to the Cleveland School of Art.
In 1898, at age 22, he moved to New York City to study painting at the New York School of Art under William Merritt Chase, and then attended the National Academy of Design. Hartley was a great admirer of Albert Pinkham Ryder and visited his studio in Greenwich Village as often as possible. His friendship with Ryder, in addition to the writings of Walt Whitman and American transcendentalists Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, inspired Hartley to view art as a spiritual quest.
Hartley first traveled to Europe in April 1912, and he became acquainted with Gertrude Stein's circle of Avant-garde writers and artists in Paris.  Stein, along with Hart Crane and Sherwood Anderson, encouraged Hartley to write as well as paint.
In 1913, Hartley moved to Berlin, where he continued to paint and befriended the painters Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. He also collected Bavarian folk art.  His work during this period was a combination of abstraction and German Expressionism, fueled by his personal brand of mysticism.
In Berlin, Hartley developed a close relationship with a Prussian lieutenant, Karl von Freyburg. References to Freyburg were a recurring motif in Hartley's work, most notably in Portrait of a German Officer (1914). Freyburg's subsequent death during the war hit Hartley hard, and he afterward idealized their relationship. Many scholars believe Hartley to have been gay, and have interpreted his work regarding Freyburg as embodying his homosexual feelings for him.
Hartley finally returned to the U.S. in early 1916. He lived in Europe again from 1921 to 1930, when he moved back to the U.S. for good.  He painted throughout the country, in Massachusetts, New Mexico, California, and New York. He returned to Maine in 1937, after declaring that he wanted to become "the painter of Maine" and depict American life at a local level.  This aligned Hartley with the Regionalism movement, a group of artists active from the early- to-mid 20th century that attempted to represent a distinctly "American art." He continued to paint in Maine, primarily scenes around Lovell and the Corea coast, until his death in Ellsworth in 1943. His ashes were scattered on the Androscoggin River. Most of his mountains paintings of Maine are nowadays in the MET collections.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau