MOUNT MINTO & MOUNT ADAM BY CHARLES HAMILTON SMITH

CHARLES HAMILTON SMITH (1776-1859)

Mount Minto  (4,165m - 13,665 ft)

Mount Adam (4, 010m -  13,516 ft)

 Antarctica (Victoria Land) 

In Mount Minto and Mount Adams,  watercolor and graphite on moderately thick, moderately textured, cream wove paper , 32, 7x 41cm, from Views of Polar Regions 

Yale Center for British Art, Connecticut USA

The mountains 
Mount Minto (4,165m - 13,665 ft) not to be confused with Mount Minto (Canada British Columbia) is the highest peak of The Admiralty Mountains (alternatively Admiralty Range), a large group of high mountains and individually named ranges and ridges in northeastern Victoria Land, Antarctica. This mountain group is bounded by the Ross Sea, the Southern Ocean, and by the Dennistoun, Ebbe, and Tucker glaciers. The mountain range is situated on the Pennell Coast, a portion of Antarctica lying between Cape Williams and Cape Adare. It was discovered in January 1841 by Captain James Ross, who named them for the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty under whose orders he served. The first ascent was made in 1988 by the Australian Bicentennial Antarctic Expedition led by Greg Mortimer and included Lincoln Hall.
Mount Adam (4,010m - 13,516 ft), not to be confused with Mount Adams / Pahto (USA)  is the second highest peak of The Admiralty Mountains. Mount Adam is situated 4 km (2.5 mi) WNW of Mount Minto. Discovered in January 1841 by Captain Ross who named this feature for Vice Admiral Sir Charles Adam, a senior naval lord of the Admiralty.

The artist 
The artist 
Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Hamilton Smith,  was an English artist, naturalist, antiquary, illustrator, soldier, and... spy as well !. His military career began in 1787, when he studied at the Austrian academy for artillery and engineers at Mechelen and Leuven in Belgium (his native country). Although his military service, which ended in 1820 and included the Napoleonic Wars, saw him travel extensively (including the West Indies, Canada, United States, Southern and Northern Europe and ...Antarctica).
As a prolific self-taught illustrator (over 38,000 drawings!) He left quite an important number of books of  beautifully watercolored landscapes taken all around the world. those nooks of watercolors are nowadays in the collections of  the Yale Center From British Art. Among them  :

- Views of France, Volume I (81 watercolors), Views of France, Volume II (93 watercolors), 

- Views of England and Wales, Volume I (82  watercolors),  Views of England and Wales, Volume II (74  watercolors),

- Views of Northern Europe, Volume I (68watercolors) , Views of Northern Europe, Volume II (78)  watercolors),  

- Views of Polar Regions (75  watercolors) (see above) 

- Views of Spain, Volume I (69 watercolors), Views of Spain, Volume II (72 watercolors), 

But one of his noteworthy achievements was an 1800 experiment to determine which color should be used for military uniforms.  He is also known in military history circles for Costume of the Army of the British Empire, produced towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars and an accurate depiction of contemporary British uniform.

As an antiquarian, he also produced, in collaboration with Samuel Rush Meyrick, Costume of the Original Inhabitants of the British Islands, 1815, and The Ancient Costume of England, with historical illustrations of medieval knights, ladies, shipsm and battles. 

He also wrote on the history of the Seven Years' War and TheNatural history of dogs.

Quite a productive fellow ! 

___________________________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT KENYA PAINTED BY ANTHONY MWANGI

ANTHONY MWANGI  (bn. 1969)

Mount Kenya (5,199 m -17,057 ft) 

Kenya 

In Mount Kenya at dawn, oil on canvas 

The artist
The kenyan artist Anthony Mwangi, born in 1969, is a painter and a photographer. Apparently self educated in arts, he exhibited his works in Kenya and sold several pieces in Kenyan Galleries. Nowadays he works on commissions and sell canvas prints in his own local Gallery called Small Digger Art Gallery. 

Unfortunately this very talented young artist is not very well known in Europe, His painting style is very close to Askeli Gallen Kallela's one. His palette often reminiscent of the great welsh landscaper Sir Kiffin Williams. The future will surely tell us more about his own style and his own pictorial orientations.  

Anthony Mwangi, worked as well in 2D, 3D modeling and Animation film. In 2013, he worked on a 21 minute Animated Movie (Makmende II Begins).
To see more of his works  click here

The mountain 
Mount Kenya  (5,199 m -17,057 ft)  is the highest mountain in Kenya and the second-highest in Africa, after Kilimanjaro.   The origin of the name Kenya is not clear, but perhaps linked to the Kikuyu, Embu and Kamba words Kirinyaga, Kirenyaa and Kiinyaa which mean "God's resting place" in all three languages.  Mount Kenya is located in central Kenya, about 16.5 kilometres (10.3 mi) south of the equator, around 150 kilometres (93 mi) north-northeast of the capital Nairobi.
Mount Kenya is the source of the name of the Republic of Kenya.
Mount Kenya is a stratovolcano created approximately 3 million years after the opening of the East African rift.   Before glaciation, it was 7,000 m (23,000 ft) high. It was covered by an ice cap for thousands of years. This has resulted in very eroded slopes and numerous valleys radiating from the centre.  There are currently 11 small glaciers and 8 peaks of which the highest are : Batian (5,199 m -  (17,057 ft), Nelion (5,188 m - 17,021 ft)) and Point Lenana (4,985 m - 16,355 ft).   The forested slopes are an important source of water for much of Kenya.
There are several vegetation bands from the base to the summit. The lower slopes are covered by different types of forest. Many alpine species are endemic to Mount Kenya, such as the giant lobelias and senecios and a local subspecies of rock hyrax. An area of 715 km2 (276 sq mi) around the centre of the mountain was designated a National Park and listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997.  The park receives over 16,000 visitors per year.
The main ethnic groups living around Mount Kenya are Kikuyu, Ameru, Embu and Maasai.
The first three are closely related. They all see the mountain as an important aspect of their cultures.  The most famous Maasai  are semi-nomadic people, who use the land to the north of the mountain to graze their cattle. They believe that their ancestors came down from the mountain at the beginning of time.  The Maasai name for Mount Kenya is Ol Donyo Keri, which means 'mountain of stripes', referring to the dark shades as observed from the surrounding plains.  At least one Maasai prayer refers to Mount Kenya: " God bless our children, let them be like the olive tree of Morintat, let them grow and expand, let them be like Ngong Hills like Mt. Kenya, like Mt. Kilimanjaro and multiply in number. "
All these cultures arrived in the Mount Kenya area in the last several hundred years.

___________________________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

WATERBERG / THABA MEETSE BY RUDOLF HELLGREWE

RUDOLF HELLGREWE (1860–1935)

Waterberg / Thaba Meetse (1,830 m- 6,004 ft)

South Africa (Limpopo)

In Am Waterberg oil on canvas, 1900 Private collection 

The mountain
The Waterberg / Thaba Meetse (1,830 m- 6,004 ft) is a mountain located in northeastern South Africa in Limpopo Province. Since 2001, the Waterberg includes a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve of 6,540 km21. Its average altitude is 600 m; some peaks exceed 1400 m, the highest summit being Geelhoutkop (1830m-This vast rock formation has been shaped by hundreds of millions of years of fluvial erosion that have created various steep or mounded reliefs. The ecosystem is that of a dry deciduous forest (bushveld). The Waterberg has yielded archaeological traces dating back to the Stone Age and, nearby, were made discoveries relating to the first moments of the history of human evolution.
The city of Vaalwater is located in the north of the massif.

The artist
The landscape painter and illustrator Rudolf Hellgrewe is the most famous painter of Germany's colonies. He taught for a long time at the Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Decorative Arts) in Berlin. He attended the Königstädtische Realschule and later the Andreas Realschule in Berlin before studying under Eugen Bracht and Christian Wilberg at the Berliner Kunstakademie (Berlin Art Academy). He was drawn to landscape painting, and became known as the "painter of Brandenburg's lakes and sunsets".
In 1885–86, Hellgrewe travelled to East Africa, where he made numerous paintings. He later illustrated the books of the African explorers Carl Peters and Hermann von Wissmann, and produced dioramas of life in Germany's tropical colonies for use in schools. In 1888 at Berlin he published many of his works as a book, Aus Deutsch-Ostafrika. He took part in the colonial exhibitions of 1896 and 1907, and was one of the founding members of the Deutsches Kolonialmuseum (German Colonial Museum) in 1899. He also joined the Berlin Writers' Club. 

In 1903 the German Colonial House was constructed based on the native architecture of the colonies. Hellgrewe provided the ceiling paintings.
Hellgrewe received Medal for Art and Science from the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and the Honorary Medal of the Geographical Society of Jena. He died at Berlin in 1935.
___________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

VESUVIUS PAINTED BY THOMAS JONES

THOMAS JONES (1742-1803) 

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

Italy

In Mount Vesuvius from Torre dell Annunziata  oil on canvas, 1783, Tate Gallery 

The painter
Thomas Jones was a Welsh landscape painter, the pupil of Richard Wilson. He  was best known in his lifetime as a painter of Welsh and Italian landscapes in the style of his master. However, Jones's reputation grew in the 20th century when more unconventional works by him, not originally intended for exhibition, came to light. Most notable among these is a series of views of Naples which he painted from 1782 to 1783. By breaking with the conventions of classical landscape painting in favour of direct observation, they look forward to the work of Camille Corot and the Barbizon School in the 19th century.

Jones made his first visit to Naples in September 1778, staying there for five months. He returned to Rome for a time, living in a house near the Spanish Steps built by Salvator Rosa.  He took on a Danish widow called Maria Moncke as his "Maid Servant" in April 1779, eloping with her to Naples a year later. Then the largest city in Italy, Naples promised more opportunities for patronage than had Rome, and Jones sought the patronage of the British Ambassador Sir William Hamilton in particular.Maria gave birth to two daughters in Naples, Anna Maria (in 1780) and Elizabetha (in 1781). His autobiography, Memoirs of Thomas Jones of Penkerrig, went unpublished until 1951 but is now recognised as an important source of information on the 18th-century art world.

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.

___________________________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

THE WATZMANN BY JOHAN CHRISTIAN DAHL

JOHAN CHRISTIAN DAHL  (1788-1857) 

The Watzmann (2, 713m - 8, 901ft) 

Germany 

In Der Watzmann, 1825, oil on canvas, 45 x 33 cm, Nasjonalgalleriet,  Oslo

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...
Full entry  =>

The painter
Johan Christian Claussen Dahl, often known as J. C. Dahl or I. C. Dahl, was a Norwegian artist who is considered the first great romantic painter in Norway, the founder of the "golden age" of Norwegian painting, and, by some, one of the greatest European artists.  He is often described as "the father of Norwegian landscape painting". He was the first to acquire genuine fame and cultural renown abroad. As one critic has put it, "J.C. Dahl occupies a central position in Norwegian artistic life of the first half of the 19th century.
Although Dahl spent much of his life outside of Norway, his love for his country is clear in the motifs he chose for his paintings and in his extraordinary efforts on behalf of Norwegian culture generally. Indeed, if one sets aside his own monumental artistic creations, his other activities on behalf of art, history, and culture would still have guaranteed him a place at the very heart of the artistic and cultural history of Norway. He was, for example, a key figure in the founding of the Norwegian National Gallery and of several other major art institutions in Norway, as well as in the preservation of Norwegian stave churches and the restoration of the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim and Håkonshallen in Bergen
Many of his works may be seen in Dresden, and in The Bergen Kunstmuseum in Bergen, as well as in  The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design  The National Gallery in  Oslo  which has a large collection of Dahl's.

___________________________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

SCHNEEKOPPE (4) BY CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH

CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH (1774-1840)

Schneekoppe or Sněћka or Śnieżka (1,603m - 2,259ft) 

Poland - Czech Republic border

 In Riesengebirgslandschaft mit aufsteigendem Nebel, 
c. 1819-20 oil, on canvas

About the painting
The painting shows the view of the Seven Reasons in the Giant Mountains, above which appears The Snow Pic (Schneekoppe or Sněћka or Śnieżka in German, polish and Czech). In the barren, quiet highlands, the vegetation is scanty, isolated dead trees that have withered over the years. Even moss and lichen are thin and leave the piled boulders uncovered. The image section gives one's view of the pulling and falling of mountain ridges, which seem to weigh in the fog; no sign of civilization is visible, instead timelessness seems to dominate and the view of a primeval landscape falls. The way in which the motives are composed, as well as the differentiated, melancholic color values, suggest the basic idea of ​​a mystification of the natural phenomenon. In addition, it has been possible to make credible that Friedrich has created a Christian-religious expression vocabulary for his pictures, which in this case z. For example, the abysses and valleys are understood as a parable of earthly existence, and its threat through death symbolizes the dead trees. The rocks symbolize the faith, the mountains God. In Friedrich's oeuvre the present one is the earliest of several versions of treeless regions of the Giant Mountains.

The mountain 

Schneekoppe (1,603m  - 2,259ft) in German or Sněћka in Czech or Śnieżka in Polish, is a mountain on the border between the Czech Republic and Poland, the most prominent point of the Silesian Ridge in the Krkonoše mountains. Its summit is the highest point in the Czech Republic, in the Krkonoše and in the entire Sudetes range system.

The first historical account of an ascent to the peak is in 1456, by an unknown Venetian merchant searching for precious stones. The first settlements on the mountain soon appeared, being primarily mining communities, tapping into its deposits of copper, iron and arsenic. The mining shafts, totalling 1.5 kilometres (0.93 mi) in length, remain to this day.

Full Wandering Vertexes entry  =>

The painter 
Caspar David Friedrich was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, considered as the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic ruins. His primary interest as an artist was the contemplation of nature, and his often symbolic and anti-classical work seeks to convey a subjective, emotional response to the natural world. Friedrich's paintings characteristically set a human presence in diminished perspective amid expansive landscapes, reducing the figures to a scale that, according to the art historian Christopher John Murray, directs "the viewer's gaze towards their metaphysical dimension".
Full Wandering Vertexes entry  =>

___________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

PIC ISLAND PAINTED BY LAWREN S. HARRIS

LAWREN S. HARRIS (1885-1970) 

Pic Island (312 m- 1024 ft)

Canada (Ontario) 

 In Pic Island, lake Ontario, oil on beaverboard, 1924, National Gallery of Canada.

The hill 
Pic island ((312 m- 1024 ft) is part of the Neys Provincial Park is a Natural Environment Class provincial park on the north shore of Lake Superior, just west of Marathon, Ontario, Canada. The ghost village of Coldwell, which lies just outside the east boundary of the park, was home to an old railway and fishing community until the 1960s. All that remains of the village now are a few foundations, shipwrecks in the harbour and a cemetery. Within park boundaries is also the muse for Group of Seven member Lawren Harris (see above), who in 1924 painted the now famous image of Pic Island. Only the hardy survive here, including subarctic plants and a rare herd of woodland caribou.

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

___________________________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT HOOD / WY'EAST BY WILLIAM SAMUEL PARROTT

Wlliam Samuel Parrott (1844 -1915) 

Mount Hood / Wy 'east (3,429m - 11, 249ft)

United States of America (Oregon) 

In Mount Hood, oil on canvas , ca 1885, Portland Art museum 

The mountain
Mount Hood / Wy'east (3,429m-11,249ft) is a potentially active stratovolcano in the Cascade Volcanic Arc of northern Oregon. It was formed by a subduction zone on the Pacific coast and rests in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located about 50 miles (80 km) east-southeast of Portland, on the border between Clackamas and Hood River counties. In addition to being Oregon's highest mountain, it is one of the loftiest mountains in the nation based on its prominence.
The height assigned to Mount Hood's snow-covered peak has varied over its history.
The peak is home to 12 named glaciers and snowfields. It is the highest point in Oregon and the fourth highest in the Cascade Range. Mount Hood is considered the Oregon volcano most likely to erupt, though based on its history, an explosive eruption is unlikely. Still, the odds of an eruption in the next 30 years are estimated at between 3 and 7 %, so the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) characterizes it as "potentially active", but the mountain is informally considered dormant.

The artist
 The american painter and printmaker William Samuel Parrott arrived in Oregon with his family in 1847. He had a natural talent for drawing and as a child had a strong desire to reproduce scenes in color. He opened his first studio in the old National Bank Building in Portland in 1867. Students who claimed to have studied with him, often just observed him at work; although there are artists who paint in his style, the so called "Parrott School" probably does not exist. 

Parrott closed his Portland studio in 1887 to travel the wilds of Oregon, Washington, and California. His years of solitude in the mountains made him something of a recluse, often moody and temperamental. It was rumored that he would not sign any paintings he gave as gifts, to insure they would not achieve the commercial value of his signed works. According to family records, he eventually settled in Oakland, California with his second wife, Sue Hendershott Parrott, also a painter of some renown. When his health began to fail in 1911, he returned to the Northwest where he spent the years until his death with his sister Jane in Goldendale, Washington. Another sister Elizabeth Parrott Pond, was a well-known Washington state artist.
His mountain landscapes were very popular and were commissioned more than any subject. Variations of Sunrise over Mt. Hood from Lost Lake, with his recognizable atmospheric effects, appear in many collections. One of his paintings of Mt. Hood hung in the Louvre while other mountain canvases can be found in museums and collections worldwide. 

Artist biography reproduced with from  the book Oregon Painters: the First Hundred Years (1859-1959), by Ginny Allen and Jody Klevit.

___________________________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT DOMETT PAINTED BY EDWYN TEMPLE

Edwyn Temple (1835-1921)

Mount Domett (1, 942m - 6, 370 ft)

 New Zealand (South Island) 

  In Mount Domett and Tarn Roslyn, Waitaki river, watercolor on paper, 1883, Private collection 

The mountain 
Mount Domett (1, 942m- 6, 370 ft) is a peak on the North Otago western horizon when viewed from the coastal town of Oamaru. It was named by Commissioner Walter Mantell on 25th October 1848 in honour of the New Zealand politician, Alfred Domett. It would have been first ascended sometime after 1854 when the area went through an extensive period of European settlement. No doubt an ascent was made by a landowner or shepherd on an exploratory excursion into the range.
Mount Domett and the other peaks of the St. Marys Range are frequent objectives for tramping and climbing parties from Oamaru, although the peak is within day-trip range from the southern city of Dunedin, two hours away by main roads. Road access to the peak ends no closer than 10 kilometres, although further access on foot or by 4WD vehicle is possible over old, disused vehicle tracks (although often washed out).
The mountain offers views of the North Otago and South Canterbury coastal plains and the Waitaki River and its hydro-electric lakes, to New Zealand's highest peak, Aoraki/Mount Cook, and the chain of the Southern Alps running south towards Mount Aspiring/Tititea. There are further spectacular views to the south and west, towards the Strath Taieri and the Maniototo Basin and the western ranges of the Otago province.

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.
Full Wandering vertexes  entry  =>

___________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT BARKER BY EUGENE VON GUERARD

EUGENE VON GUERARD (1811-1901)

Mount Barker  (517 m - 1,696 ft)

Australia 

In Mount Barker and the Murray Plains from top of Mt Lofty, near Adelaide, 1858  

 Pen and ink and wash over pencil, 31.6 × 49.1 cm,
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

The mountain
Mount Barker   (517 m - 1,696 ft) is a hill in the Mount Lofty Ranges in South Australia and namesake of the nearby town of Mount Barker.  Mount Barker was first sighted by Captain Charles Sturt in 1830, although he thought he was looking at the previously discovered Mount Lofty. Captain Collet Barker fixed this error when he surveyed the area in 1831. Sturt named the mountain in honor of Captain Barker after he was killed days later by Aborigines.
The first Europeans to ascend the mountain, on 27 November 1837, were a six-man party comprising John Barton Hack, John Morphett, Samuel Stephens, Charles Stuart (South Australian Company's stock overseer), Thomas Davis (Hack's stockman), and John Wade (a "gentleman from Hobart Town").
There are numerous activities such as walking trails on Mt Barker.This hill is nowadays the home to a transmission tower that services SAGRN and mobile phone transmissions throughout the area. Microwave radio equipment is also installed on the tower, providing various forms of communication such as broadband internet connections and voice services to Mount Barker residents and businesses.

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.

_______________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT ARAGATS PAINTED BY GEVORK BASHINJAGHIAN

GEVORK BASHINJAGHIAN (1857-1925) 

Mount Aragats (4,090 m -13,420 ft)

Armenia

In Mount Aragats at sunset , oil on canvas, 1905, National Gallery of Armenia  

The mountain
Mount Aragats (4,090 m -13,420 ft) in Armenian: Արագած, is an isolated four-peaked volcano massif in Armenia. Its northern summit, above sea level, is the highest point of the Lesser Caucasus and Armenia. It is also one of the highest points in the Armenian Highlands. Situated 40 kilometers (25 mi) northwest of Armenian capital Yerevan, Aragats is a large volcano with numerous fissure vents and adventive cones. Numerous large lava flows descend from the volcano and are constrained in age between middle Pleistocene and 3,000 BCE. The summit crater is cut by a 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) long line of cones which generated possibly Holocene-age lahars and lava flows. The volcanic system covers an area of 5,000 km2 and is one of the largest in the region. The magmas feeding Aragats are unusually hot for arc-derived magmas, resulting in long and voluminous lava flows.
The Aragats massif is surrounded by Kasagh River on the east, Akhurian River on the west, Ararat plain on the south and Shirak plain on the north.
According to an ancient Armenian legend, Aragats and Mount Ararat were loving sisters who parted after a quarrel and separated permanently. Currently, the mountains are further separated politically, with Mount Ararat being located in Turkey.
Another legend tells that Gregory the Illuminator, who converted Armenia into Christianity in the early 4th century, "used to pray on the peak of the mountain. At nighttime an icon-lamp shone to give light for him, the lamp hanging from heaven using no rope. Some say that the icon-lamp is still there, but only the worthy ones can see it."
Mt. Aragats plays a special role in Armenian history and culture. Along with Ararat, it is considered a sacred mountain for the Armenians.
Aragats is a male first name in Armenia, used especially in areas surrounding the mountain.
Mt. Aragats is often associated with Gyumri, Armenia's second largest city. The mountain is depicted on the coat of arms of Gyumri. It is also depicted on the obverse side of the 10,000 Armenian dram banknote (in use since 2003) in the background of Avetik Isahakyan, a poet born in Gyumri.

The Painter
Quite a lot of painters painted MountArarat since the Middle age. Among the numerous représentations avalaible on the web nowadays, this blog has choosen the on by Gevorg Bashinjaghian, an Armenian painter who had significant influence on Armenian landscape painting.
Bashinjaghian was born in 1857 in eastern Georgian province of Kakheti, part of the Russian Empire at the time. In 1878, Bashinjaghian moved to the Russian capital St. Petersburg, where he became a student at the Imperial Academy of Arts a year later. Mikhail Clodt was one of his teachers. He graduated from the Academy in 1883, also winning a silver medal for his Birch Grove. He returned to his hometown Sighnaghi the same year and soon started to travel throughout the Caucasus: Lake Sevan, Yerevan, Ashtarak and the holy capital of the Armenian Church - Ejmiatsin, Georgia and the Northern Caucasus, which caused the artist to make a row of canvas of the local landscapes. During the next year, Bashinjaghian visited Italy and Switzerland, where he learnt about the classic European art and also saw the Alps. He later wrote that "the Alps are beautiful, but they cannot win your heart if you have seen the Caucasus."
He returned to Russia and settled in Tiflis, the largest city of the Caucasus and the cultural center of Armenians of Russia. In 1890s Bashinjaghian had exhibitions in Moscow, Odessa, St. Petersburg and Novocherkassk. In 1897, he created a series of oil painting of Ani, the medievial Armenian capital of thousand churches. From 1899 to 1901, Bashinjaghian lived in Paris with his wife Ashkhen Katanian and their three children. In France, he made a trip throughout the country and produced over 30 paintings. In 1923 Bashinjaghian became a member of the Armenian Artists' Society.
Bashinjaghian died on 1925 in Tiflis and was buried at the side of Sayat-Nova's tomb in the backyard of Saint George Cathedral.
Exhibitions of Bashinjaghian's works were held in Yerevan, Moscow St. Petersburg and Riga, many of them in 1957-1958, in memory of the 100th anniversary of his birth.
A street in Yerevan is named after him.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

GUNUNG RINJANI BY SUDJONO ABDULLAH

SUDJONO ABDULLAH (1911-1993) 

Gunung Rinjani (3,727m - 12,224ft) 

Indonesia (Lombok) 

In Landscape with vulcano and sawahs, oil on canvas,  Private collection 

The mountain
Gunung Rinjani (3,727m - 12,224ft) is an active volcano in Indonesia on the island of Lombok, the second highest volcano in Indonesia. On the top of the volcano is a 6-by-8.5-kilometre (3.7 by 5.3 mi) caldera, which is filled partially by the crater lake known as Segara Anak or Anak Laut (Child of the Sea), due to the color of its water, as blue as the sea.This lake is approximately 2,000 metres (6,600 ft) above sea level and estimated to be about 200 metres (660 ft) deep; the caldera also contains hot springs. Sasak tribe and Hindu people assume the lake and the mount are sacred and some religious activities are occasionally done in the two areas.

 On 27 September 2016 14:45 WITA Rinjani erupted.
UNESCO has made Mount Rinjani Caldera a part of the Global Geoparks Network in April 2018.

The painter
Raden Soedjono Abdullah was born in Yogyakarta, the son of Abdullah Suriosubroto, a famous landscape painter and was also the brother of Basoeki Abdullah. He used to help his father cleaning the pallet from which he found his way to be a painter. He finished his school from HIS Indonesian Dutch School and worked as a poster artist for the Rex Theater in Yogyakarta. During the Japanese colonization in Indonesia, Sudjono went to Parangtritis, Parangkusumo where he continued to paint. During the 1970s, Soedjono moved to Kertosono in East Java, where he lived up to his death.


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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE LLANBERIS PASS PAINTED BY DAVID CHARLES READ

DAVID CHARLES READ (1790-1851) 

The Llanberis Pass  (359 m - 1,178 ft)

United Kingdom  (Wales)

In The Pass of Llanberis, oil on panel, Ashmolean Museum 

The pass
The Llanberis Pass  (359 m - 1,178 ft) lies between the mountain massifs of Snowdon and the Glyderau in the county of Gwynedd, in northwestern Wales, United Kingdom. The summit of the pass is 359 m (1,178 ft) above sea level, and is the site of the Pen-y-Pass Hotel, now a Youth Hostel. The A4086 road traverses the pass. The Nant Peris valley lies to the northwest descending to the town of Llanberis, the Llyn Peris and Llyn Padarn lakes and continues on as the Afon Rhythallt to Caernarfon and the Menai Strait. The valley is narrow, straight and steep-sided, with rocky crags and boulders on either side of the road.
The Cromlech Boulders are used for bouldering. These roadside boulders were saved from destruction in a 1973 road widening scheme by a six-year protest by local people, climbers, historians, conservationists and geologists.
Climbers particularly associated with the area include John Menlove Edwards (in the 1930s and 1940s) and Joe Brown (in the 1950s and 1960s). The British 1953 Mount Everest expedition also trained in the area, and were based at the Pen-y-Gwryd Hotel at the eastern end of the pass.

The painter
David Charles Read (1790–1851) was an English painter and etcher. In early days, Read engraved plates for a Pilgrim's Progress published by William Sharp at Romsey (1816–17), and other works. He worked mainly in the open air. In 1826 he began etching, and produced plates to 1844: the total number of his etchings is 237. Sixteen of those were portraits; the rest are landscapes. Technically, Read's work is interesting from the use of dry-point, unusual with English etchers of the period.
Read sent his earliest plates to be printed in London, but then obtained a press and made the impressions. Six series of etchings were published by him between 1829 and 1845. The fifth of these (1840) was a series of thirteen views of the English lakes. The remainder were selected from his miscellaneous works. Two series were dedicated to Queen Adelaide. In 1845 he destroyed 63 of the plates; the rest were destroyed by his family after his death.
On his return from Italy, Read concentrated on painting in oils, producing some pictures for Dr. Coope between 1846 and 1849, though he did not exhibit after 1840. Between 1823 and 1840 he sent one landscape to the Royal Academy, seven to the British Institution, and six to the Suffolk Street Gallery.
Read etched his own portrait from a water-colour sketch by John Linnell (1819). A short catalogue of the etchings was printed at Salisbury in 1832. An exhaustive manuscript catalogue, with a memoir of the artist, compiled (1871–4) by his son, Raphael W. Read, F.R.C.S., went to the print-room at the British Museum.
Read presented to the British Museum in 1833 and 1842 two volumes containing 168 of his etchings. Another collection, formed by his patron Chambers Hall, went to the university ga galleries, Oxford, and then to the Ashmolean Museum; a third was at Bridgewater House, collected by Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

THE STOCKHORN PAINTED BY FERDINAND HODLER

FERDINAND HODLER (1853-1918) 

The Stockhorn (2,190 m - 7, 185ft) 

Switzerland

In Thurnersee mit Storlkhornette im Winter, 1912/1913, Oil on canvas, 63 x 85 cm, Private Collection ( by Sotheby's)

About the painting
Between November 1912 and May 1913 Ferdinand Hodler spent several times at Lake Thun, where he visited his girlfriend Valentine Godé-Darel, who was in Hilterfingen for recreation. On the occasion of his stays, Hodler painted several views of the snow-covered Stockhorn chain. As location, he chose the immediate vicinity of Oberhofen on the northern shore of Lake Thun. He probably executed some of the paintings on site, but he probably painted some more later in his Geneva studio. The area around Lake Thun was familiar to Hodler since his youth.
The half-hour walk from Steffisburg to Thun, which he completed during his apprenticeship with Ferdinand Sommer's Vedutenwerkstatt (1867-1871), showed him the magnificent mountains around Lake Thun every day. He later told his biographer Carl Albert Loosli about his fascination for the Stockhorn chain. The Bernese Alps also played a crucial role in Hodler's artistic development. The painter chose the mountain for the first time as a central subject for his Calame competition picture "Un site alpestre", with which he won first prize in 1883.
Dr. Monika Brunner, in Catalog raisonné of paintings by Ferdinand Hodler, Swiss Institute for Art Research SIK-ISEA


The mountain
The Stockhorn (2,190 m - 7, 185ft) is the highest peak in the Stockhorn range. in the Bernese Oberland (Switzerland). The striking Stockhorn summit is immediately noticeable when you drive through the Gürbetal or the Aare valley towards the Bernese Oberland. Since it consists of an almost vertical rock plate, it appears wide or pointed depending on the angle.
The Voralpenkette is about 13 km long and separates the Simmental in the south of the Stockental in the north in OSO / NNW direction. It begins at Reutigen , where the Simme leaves their valley and separates the described chain from the Burgfluh, respectively from the sneeze. The first striking peak is the Simmenfluh (1,422 m), which shapes the region with its massive appearance. After the Simmenfluh, the ridge drops slightly again and soon turns into a broad ridge, the Alp Heiti. From Stockental a second ridge climbs up, overlooking the previous ridge and the Alp. The Nüschleten (1,987 m), the Lasenberg (2,019 m) and the Solhorn (2,017 m) are the three highest elevations on this ridge section to the Stockhorn, which then expires in the Straitligrat. To the north of the Stockhorn is the broad Walalpgrat (1,920 m), the beginning of the last ridge section of the Stockhorn chain.This is followed by the Möntschelenspitz (2,020 m ), the Hohmad (2,075 m), the Stubenfluh (2,004 m) and the Chrummenfadenfluh (2,074 m ). The latter is actually already part of the Gantrisch group , which is adjacent to the Stockhorn chain in the NNW.
In the Stockhorn area there are several climbing gardens for sport climbers. 120 routes in 12 sectors offer difficulty levels from 2 to 7 in compact limestone rocks around the summit and at the intermediate station.
In 1974, an extensive cave system was discovered in the area around the Oberstocken Alp.

The painter
Ferdinand Hodler is one of the best-known Swiss painters of the 19th century. His early works were portraits, landscapes, and genre paintings in a realistic style. Later, he adopted a personal form of symbolism he called Parallelism.
In the last decade of the nineteenth century his work evolved to combine influences from several genres including Symbolism and Art Nouveau. In 1890 he completed Night, a work that marked Hodler's turn toward symbolist imagery. It depicts several recumbent figures, all of them relaxed in sleep except for an agitated man who is menaced by a figure shrouded in black, which Hodler intended as a symbol of death. Hodler developed a style he called "Parallelism" that emphasized the symmetry and rhythm he believed formed the basis of human society. In paintings such as The Chosen One, groupings of figures are symmetrically arranged in poses suggestive of ritual or dance.
Hodler painted number of large-scale historical paintings, often with patriotic themes. In 1897 he accepted a commission to paint a series of large frescoes for the Weapons Room of the Schweizerisches Landesmuseum in Zurich. The compositions he proposed, including The Battle of Marignan which depicted a battle that the Swiss lost, were controversial for their imagery and style, and Hodler was not permitted to execute the frescoes until 1900.
Hodler's work in his final phase took on an expressionist aspect with strongly coloured and geometrical figures. Landscapes were pared down to essentials, sometimes consisting of a jagged wedge of land between water and sky

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

PUIG MAJOR PAINTED BY SANTIAGO RUSIÑOL I PRATS

SANTIAGO RUSIÑOL I PRATS (1861-1931)

Puig Major de son Torella (1, 445m - 4,741 ft)

Spain, Balearic Islands (Majorca) 

In Serra de Tramuntana, oil on board, Municipal Museum of Valldemossa 

The mountain
The Puig Major (1, 445m - 4,741 ft) is the highest peak of the island of Majorca and the Balearic Islands in Spain. Its southern spur is called the Penyal des Migdia. In Majorcan, Puig means "peak" or "summit". "Major" indicates that this is the highest mountain in the range called the Serra de Tramuntana. the complete denomination of the mountain is Puig de son Torrella or Puig Major de son Torrella. This mountain is located on the eastern segment of the Serra de Tramuntana, between Soller and Pollença. It is less than five kilometers from the sea. Like the entire Serra de Tramuntana, the Puig Major appeared between the Paleozoic and the Miocene. It is the northeastern prolongation in the Mediterranean of the Betic Cordilleras which appeared on the peninsula.
It is a karst formation where limestone dominates.
In 1936, the Spanish Civil War halted the construction of a funicular. The engineer Antoni Parietti Coll (Palma, 1899-1979) designed the project in 1934, from Cals Reis to the summit, for the construction of an astronomical observatory. In the early 1950s, this project competed with another, of a military nature. Since 1953, a radar of the Ejercito del Aire, the Spanish air force, has taken the top of the mountain and forbidden access to it, from its base, where there is a military ground. Originally, the United States installed the first radar, in order to give NATO air traffic control capabilities in the western Mediterranean. In 1958, an asphalt road leads from the base to the top.
The facilities were modernized in 2000.
In 2011, the Serra de Tramuntana, a chain of mountains among which the Puig Major dominates, is registered as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
Given the military destination of the place, hikes are practically prohibited. However, the Air Force agrees to derogations. The military site also includes a botanical observatory.

The painter
The spanish painter Santiago Rusiñol i Prats was also poet and playwright. He was one of the leaders of the Catalan modernisme movement. He influenced Pablo Picasso as a modern artist, and also left a number of modernist buildings in Sitges (Catalonia). Much of his work in Paris belonged to the Symbolism painting style. While there, he also attended the Gervex Academy, where he discovered his love for modernism. After returning to Spain, he settled in Sitges, founding a studio/museum named Cau Ferrat. When back in Barcelona, he was a frequent client of the café Els Quatre Gats, noted for its association the young Pablo Picasso. He went to Mallorca with the painter Joaquin Mir Trinxet, where they met the mystic Belgian painter William Degouve de Nuncques in 1899.
He was most known for his plays, landscape and garden paintings.
Rusiñol was born in Barcelona to a family of industrialists in textiles with origins in Manlleu. Despite the fact that he was the heir to the family's lucrative operations, by the time he was a teenager Rusiñol already showed a strong interest in painting and travel.
His training as painter started at Centro de Acuarelistas de Barcelona under the direction of Tomás Moragas. Like so many artists of the day, he travelled to Paris in 1889, living in Montmartre with Ramon Casas and Ignacio Zuloaga.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

LA SOUFRIÈRE BY AUGUSTE LACOUR

AUGUSTE LACOUR (1805-1869)

La Soufrière (1, 467m - 4, 813ft)

France - Guadeloupe

In La Soufrière - Histoire de la Guadeloupe, Basse-terre, 1857

The mountain 

La Soufrière (1, 467m - )  in Guadeloupean Creole "vié madanm la", (literally "the old lady" in French) is a volcano in activity located on the territory of the commune of Saint-Claude in Guadeloupe, in the national park of the same name, in the south of the island of Basse-Terre. 

It is the only active volcano on the island, since the last 10,000 years, currently in a state of eruptive rest.The Soufrière is part of a volcanic ensemble comprising several eruptive mouths.  Surrounding the main eruptive mouth, other structures formed during eruptions. These are lava domes (Morne Amic, Morne Dongo, Madeleine), volcanic cones (Le Morne Carmichael, La Citerne, L'Echelle, La Grande Découverte, Le Gros Fougas, Le Morne Lenglet) and small craters on the main dome (Amic, gouffres Dupuis et Tarissan, Le cratère Napoléon)

The summit of LA Soufrière is called La Découverte ; it is the highest peak of Guadeloupe and the Lesser Antilles. This lava dome takes the form of a truncated cone 900 meters in diameter at its base. There is no real crater but several eruptive mouths, chasms from which sulphurous vapors escape and deep gashes. The landscape is rocky and chaotic, almost lunar, bristling with pitons. 

It is often covered with mists. 

Several marked trails run through the volcanic summit.

It is an active volcano of the Pelican type - explosive with fiery clouds -, therefore very dangerous, and of recent formation (100 000 to 200 000 years). Its activity is marked by fumaroles, sulphurous vapors and hot springs on different points of the summit. 

The first explosive magmatic eruption of the Soufrière is established around the fifteenth century2,4 or perhaps around 1530 with more or less 30 years of uncertainty5.

The first description of the Soufrière is the fact of the father Jacques Du Tertre in The General History of the Antilles inhabited by the François published in 1667-1671.

In 1797, an important phreatic eruption took place. It can not be ruled out that this eruption was also that of a captive sheet and not of a water table, that is to say put at atmospheric pressure. 

An other minor phreatic eruption occurred in 1956.

The last eruption of the Soufrière dates from 1976; it was a phreatic eruption. It led to the evacuation of the southern part of Basse-Terre and the prefecture, 73,600 people over three and a half months. No deaths were deplored.

The artist

Born in Guadeloupe, Auguste Lacour studied law in Paris and obtained a degree in September 1828. He entered the magistracy and was appointed provisional auditor judge, at Basse-Terre, on October 2, 1830. He held, in turn, the functions of public prosecutor, lieutenant of judge at Marie-Galante and Martinique.  In 1839 he returned to Basse-Terre as a Royal judge.

Under the Second Empire, he was appointed advisor to the Imperial Court of Guadeloupe.

Between 1855 and 1860, Auguste Lacour took advantage of the leisure hours left to him by his duties as Imperial Court Adviser to write and illustrate with unpublished documents, a "Histoire de  Guadeloupe", in four volumes, since the time of its discovery until 1830.

This work was needed, and, in publishing it, Auguste Lacour rendered a true service to his country. Today one always consult with interest those volumes which, with time, have become very rare.

 "L'Impremerie du gouvernement"  (nowadays "Imprimerie Nationale")  in France was responsible for publishing the book in 1857 with some remarquables illustrations including the one above. 

Auguste Lacour obtained, in August 1864, the Corix de Chevalier de la Legion d'HOnneur (Knight's Cross of the Legion of Honor).  

He died at the age of sixty-four,  in Guadeloupe,  leaving manuscripts that his heirs refused to publish.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

WUYI MOUNTAINS / 武夷山 BY TSUKIOKA YOSHITOSHI / 月岡 芳年

TSUKIOKA YOSHITOSHI / 月岡 芳年 (1839-1892) 

Wuyi Mountains  / 武夷山   (2,158 m - 7,080 ft) 

China

In Rising Moon over Mt Nanping, Series 100 Views of the Moon, Woodblock print, c.1885

The mountains 
The Wuyi Mountains (2,158 m - 7,080 ft) in Chinese 武夷山, also known as Bohea Hills in earlier Western documents are a mountain range located in the prefecture of Nanping, in northern Fujian province near the border with Jiangxi province, China.
The highest peak in the area is Mount Huanggang on the border of Fujian and Jiangxi, making it the highest point of both provinces; the lowest altitudes are around 200 metres (660 ft). Many oolong and black teas are produced in the Wuyi Mountains, including Da Hong Pao (Big Red Robe) and most famous Lapsang souchong.
Human settlement on the slopes of Mount Wuyi can be traced back 4,000 years by archeological remains. During the Western Han Dynasty, the ancient city of Chengcun was the capital of the Minyue kingdom. In the 7th century, the Wuyi Palace was built for emperors to conduct sacrificial activities, a site that tourists can still visit today. The mountains were an important center of Taoism and later Buddhism. Remains of 35 academies erected from the era of the Northern Song to the Qing Dynasty and more than 60 Taoist temples and monasteries have been located. However, most of these remains are very incomplete. Some of the exceptions for which authentic remains are preserved are the Taoyuan Temple, the Wannian Palace, the Sanqing Hall, the Tiancheng Temple, the Baiyun temple, and the Tianxin temple. The area is the cradle of Neo-Confucianism, a current that became very influential since the 11th century.
Mountain call and Mountain open are ceremonies held in the Wuyi imperial tea garden. The County magistrate used to take the chair of the Mountain Call ceremony on Jingzhe Day.  In the formal ceremony, tea planters call out together “tea, tea, sprout”. By doing this, they pray for the blessings in the tea harvest.

The mountains have been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, for cultural, scenic, and biodiversity values since 1999.

The artist
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi /月岡 芳年) also named Taiso Yoshitoshi / 大蘇 芳年 was a Japanese artist.
He is widely recognized as the last great master of the ukiyo-e genre of woodblock printing and painting. He is also regarded as one of the form's greatest innovators. His career spanned two eras – the last years of Edo period Japan, and the first years of modern Japan following the Meiji Restoration. Like many Japanese, Yoshitoshi was interested in new things from the rest of the world, but over time he became increasingly concerned with the loss of many aspects of traditional Japanese culture, among them traditional woodblock rinting.
By the end of his career, Yoshitoshi was in an almost single-handed struggle against time and technology. As he worked on in the old manner, Japan was adopting Western mass reproduction methods like photography and lithography. Nonetheless, in a Japan that was turning away from its own past, he almost singlehandedly managed to push the traditional Japanese woodblock print to a new level, before it effectively died with him.
His reputation has only continued to grow, both in the West, and among younger Japanese, and he is now almost universally recognized as the greatest Japanese artist of his era.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

ADAM PEAK / SAMANALA BY CONSTANCE GORDON-CUMMING

CONSTANCE GORDON-CUMMING (1837–1924)

Adam Peak (2,243 m - 7360 ft)

Sri Lanka

In Adam's Peak in Ceylon, 1873, watercolor heightened with white and gum arabic 58.7 x 80.5 cm. Private collection 

The mountain
Adam Peak (2,243 m - 7360 ft) called in singhalese Sri Pada or Samanala, is one of the most important summits of the island of Sri Lanka. Conical, it is considered a holy place by Shaivite Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims.
It is located southwest of the island in Ratnapura district, about 40 kilometers north-east of Ratnapura. The small town of Nuwara Eliya, in the neighboring district, is often used as a base for its ascent.
Hindu pilgrims climb the thousands of steps that lead to the summit so as to reach for the sunrise and see the triangular shape of its shadow sweep the surrounding countryside. This climb lasts several hours and is usually done in April.
At the summit of the mountain is found, hollowed out in the rock, a cavity of almost two meters, supposed to be a footprint. Hindus see the trace of the passage of Vishnu or Shiva. For Muslims it is the footprint of Adam's foot, when he left the Garden of Eden, whose island of Ceylon is very symbolically close, and fell on Earth, which explains the name given to the mountain. For Buddhists it is the footprint of Buddha, and there are other origins, which attribute the imprint to Shiva or even to St. Thomas.
Ibn Battuta is the first author to record his rise, in the fourteenth century, he confirms the presence of iron chains installed as a handrail and which had been described by Marco Polo.
The peak of Adam is however not the highest point of the island, which is Mount Pidurutalagala, with 2,524 m.

The painter
Constance Frederica “Eka” Gordon-Cumming was a noted Scottish travel writer and painter. Born in a wealthy family, she travelled around the world and painted described scenes and life as she saw them.
Constance Gordon-Cumming was a prolific landscape painter, mostly in Asia and the Pacific. She painted over a thousand watercolors and worked with a motto to ‘never a day without at least one careful-coloured sketch’ starting her day at 5 am while in India. Places she visited include Australia, New Zealand, America, China, and Japan.
She arrived in Hilo, Hawaii in October 1879, and was among the first artists to paint the active volcanoes. Her Hawaii travelogue, Fire Fountains: The Kingdom of Hawaii, was published in Edinburgh in 1883. She had several dangerous moments but her travel ended in 1880 when the Montana that she was on ran into rocks at Holyhead. While most of the passengers took the lifeboat, she stayed on last along with the captain to save her paintings and was rescued many hours later. She returned to live at Crieff with her widowed sister Eleanor and continued to write books.
Her best known books are At Home in Fiji and A Lady's Cruise on a French Man-of-War. The latter book resulted from an invitation to join a French ship put into service for the Bishop of Samoa so that he could visit remote parts of his far-flung diocese.
Miss Gordon-Cumming received much criticism from male writers of the era, perhaps because she did not fit in the traditional Victorian role of women, as she often traveled alone and unaided.
In any case, her landscape drawings and watercolors seem to be universally admired.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

LUSHAN / 庐山 PAINTED BY WANG YUANQUI / 王原祁

WANG YUANQUI / 王原祁  (1642-1715)

Lushan / 庐山 or Mount Lu (1,474m- 4,834ft) 

China

In Lu shan, National Palace Museum, Taipei

The mountain
Mount Lu or Lushan (庐山) is situated in the northern part of Jiangxi province in southeastern China, and is one of the most renowned mountains in the country. Mount Lushan is one of the spiritual centres of Chinese civilization. Buddhist and Taoist temples, along with landmarks of Confucianism, where the most eminent masters taught, blend effortlessly into a strikingly beautiful landscape which has inspired countless artists who developed the aesthetic approach to nature found in Chinese culture.
The oval-shaped mountains are about 25 km long and 10 km wide, and neighbors Jiujiang city and the Yangtze River to the north, Nanchang city to the south, and Poyang Lake to the east. Its highest point is Dahanyang Peak (1,474m- 4,834ft) and is one of the hundreds of steep peaks that towers above a sea of clouds that encompass the mountains for almost 200 days out of the year. Mount Lu is known for its grandeur, steepness, and beauty, and is part of Lushan National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996, and a prominent tourist attraction, especially during the summer months when the weather is cooler.
Lushan was a summer resort for Western missionaries in China. Absalom Sydenstricker, the father of Pearl Buck was one of the first five missionaries to acquire property in the Kuling Estate on the mountain.
Mount Lu was once dubbed the xiadu ("summer capital") of the Republic of China. Chiang Kai-Shek, China's leader at the time, would frequently spend his summers here. In June 1937, Zhou Enlai, then a major leader in the Communist Party, met with Chiang on the mountain to discuss a united front against the Japanese invasion. In July 1937, Chiang Kai-shek announced his intention for a full mobilization for war against Japan from Mount Lu. In 1946, following the war, the U.S. special diplomatic mission led by General George C. Marshall met with Chiang Kai-Shek to discuss the role of post-WWII China.
Mao Zedong convened three large conferences of senior party officials at Mount Lu, in 1959, 1961, and 1970. The 1959 conference became known as the Lushan Conference. The meeting saw the purge of decorated Chinese Civil War and Korean War general Peng Dehuai, who was critical of Mao's Great Leap Forward policies. The 1970 Lushan Conference took place during the Cultural Revolution, and marked the increasing antagonism between those loyal to Mao and those loyal to his chosen successor Lin Biao.
Mount Lushan has rich cultural and natural heritage, which authentically preserve the unique elements and characteristics of Mount Lushan’s creation, development and inheritance, including cultural, historical and natural elements such as ancient monuments and sites, villas, ancient stone inscriptions, paintings and poems dating to different historic periods, and streams and waterfalls, peaks and valleys. Temporary or partial damage of the ecological environment can be quickly and effectively restored. Restoration and intervention have followed principle of retaining the historic condition of the heritage in terms of design, materials, methods, and techniques. Thus, the property retains its historical authenticity, which permanently preserves the value of this “famous cultural mountain”.
In 1982, Mount Lushan became one of the first National Scenic Areas and one of the First Class National Nature Reserves, with the property area and buffer zone delimited. All attributes of Mount Lushan are effectively protected by the laws and regulations pertaining to the management of national scenic areas, and to the protection of cultural heritage and its setting. Any measures and projects that may significantly impact the heritage value must be authorized by the relevant national authorities.
The Lushan Scenic and Historic Interest Administrative Bureau focused on sustainable development of the property, and made increased investments in conservation and management. Both mid-term and long-term master plans for protecting the property have been made. Special attention has been placed on protecting the cultural heritages and their settings as a whole, and how to protect them more scientifically. Additional efforts have been made towards researching rational use of the property. Broad cooperation and exchanges have been undertaken. Conservation measures are strictly carried out. Environmental management and development projects are being tightly controlled. The right balance between heritage conservation and tourism development has been maintained, making it possible for the sustainable development of the property.

The painter
Wang Yuanqi / 王原祁 was a Chinese painter of the Qing dynasty. Wang was born in Taicang in the Jiangsu province and tutored in painting by his grandfather Wang Shimin (1592–1680). His style name was ' Mao-ching ' and his sobriquet was ' Lu-t'ai '. Wang is a member of the Six Masters of the early Qing period, also known as the 'Four Wangs, a Wu and a Yun'. They are also often regarded as the principal figures of the 'Orthodox School' of Chinese landscape painting.
Wang Yuanqi was two years old when the New Qing Dynasty was founded (1644). He rose to prominence as a court official and eventually was appointed curator of the imperial collection during the reign of the Qing Emperor Kangxi. He remained a court official throughout his long career and died at age 73 in 1715.
His landscapes followed the model of the Yuan Dynasty artists who broke away from the Northern Song tradition of rendering landscapes "real enough to walk through" to more personal abstractions. His style and technique demonstrates influences from, for example, the artist Huang Gongwang, especially in the use of dry brush strokes and ink washes and his use of colour, often making "colour patterns a component of his dense compositional structure, complementing the force of abstract design with the rhythmic flow of colour." His 1711 ink and color-on-silk painting, Landscape in the Style of Huang Gongwang, is in Singapore's Asian Civilisations Museum collection and his version of Wang Wei's (now lost) eighth century hand scroll, The Wang River Villa, also painted in 1711, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau