HALEMA'UMA 'U CRATER PAINTED BY DAVID HOWARD HITCHCOCK

 

DAVID HOWARD HITCHCOCK (1861-1943),

Halemaʻumaʻu Crater / Kilauea (1,247 m - 4,091 ft) 

United states of America (Hawaii) 

In Halemaumau, lake of fire, oil on board,  1888

The volcano

Halemaʻumaʻu Crater (six syllables: HAH-lay-MAH-oo-MAH-oo) is a pit crater within the much larger summit caldera of Kīlauea in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. The roughly circular crater was 770 meters (2,530 ft) x 900 m (2,950 ft) before collapses that roughly doubled the size of the crater after May 3, 2018. Halemaʻumaʻu is home to Pele, goddess of fire and volcanoes, according to the traditions of Hawaiian religion. Halemaʻumaʻu means "house of the ʻāmaʻu fern".

Halemaʻumaʻu contained an active lava lake for much of the time before 1924, and was the site of several eruptions during the 20th century. The crater again contained an active lava lake between 2008 and 2018, usually fluctuating between 20 to 150 meters below Halemaʻumaʻu's crater floor, though at times the lava lake rose high enough to spill onto crater floor.

As new volcanic vents opened in lower Puna in May 2018, the level of the lava lake began to drop in early May 2018, eventually to the point where the lava lake was no longer visible. The subsidence of the lava lake was accompanied by a period of explosions, earthquakes, large clouds of ash and toxic gas, and finally a gradual collapse of the summit caldera around Halemaʻumaʻu Crater, resulting in the closure of the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park from May 10 to September 22, 2018. The collapse events ceased abruptly on August 2, 2018.

In the summer of 2019, for the first time in recorded history, a water pond appeared in Halemaʻumaʻu. The greenish pond has deepened and enlarged since first being observed.

The painter
David Howard Hitchcock  was an American painter of the  so called Volcano School, known for his depictions of Hawaii.  Born in Hilo, Hawaii, Hitchcock attended Oberlin College in Ohio, where he saw his first art exhibition. Back in Hawaii, he wandered the volcano wilderness with a sketch pad and watercolors. French artist Jules Tavernier, painting in Hawaii, saw Hitchcock's sketches and convinced him to study art seriously.
After Tavernier's death in 1889 Hitchcock studied painting at the National Academy of Design in New York City and from 1891 to 1893 at the Académie Julian in Paris under Aldolphe Bourguereau and Gabriel Joseph Ferrier. His work was accepted at the Paris Salon of 1893. He returned to Hawaii in 1893.
In 1894, Hitchcock became one of the founders of the Kilohana Art League, an active art program in Honolulu at the turn of the century, exhibiting at least twice a year.
During extensive travels in the 1900s, Hitchcock explored the volcanic regions of the island of Hawaii, and in July 1907 he made his first visit to the island of Kauaʻi, where he painted Waimea Canyon. He toured and painted the island of Maui in 1915 and 1916. He was a leading member of Hawaii's Volcano School, and his most important paintings date from about 1905 to 1930.
His canvases were displayed in 1924 at the First Hawaiian and South Seas Exhibition in the Los Angeles Museum in Exposition Park. In 1927, he exhibited several paintings at the opening of the Honolulu Museum of Art, where he had a retrospective exhibition in 1936. In 1939 he exhibited in the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco and at the 1939 New York World's Fair.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

ROTUI PAINTED BY JOHN LA FARGE

JOHN LA FARGE (1835-1910)

Rotui ( 899 m - 2,949 ft)
French Polynesia

In Uponohu, End of Cooks Bay, Island of Moorea, watercolor

The mountain
Mount Rotui  ( 899 m - 2,949 ft )is a  peak on the island of Moorea (French Polynesia), beetwen Ōpūnohu Bay and Cook Bay. Despite the low altitude of the peaks, the mountains of Moorea are among the most rugged in the world and every bit as rugged as the Himalayas. Unlike the Himalayas however, most peaks on this and the surrounding islands are considered impossible to climb and many still await first ascents. 
Rotui is the easiest summit to climb on Moorea, but still is a nice and exciting climb. It can be a bit risky while descending in the rain, but it is not as dangerous to climb as Mouaputa.
While Moorea and Tahiti are very popular with tourist, expect to have the mountains all to yourself.

The Painter 

John La Farge was an American painter, muralist, stained glass window maker, decorator, and writer.

born in New York City to wealthy French parents and was raised bilingually; as a child, he and his brothers produced a handmade magazine in French entitled Le Chinois.  His interest in art began during his studies at Mount St. Mary's University in Maryland and St. John's College (now Fordham University) in New York.  He initially intended to study law, but this changed after his first visit to Paris, France in 1856. Stimulated by the arts in the city, he studied with Thomas Couture and became acquainted with notable literary people. La Farge also studied with the painter William Morris Hunt in Newport, Rhode Island.

La Farge's earliest drawings and landscapes, from his studies in Newport, show marked originality, especially in the handling of color values. Many of La Farge's mythological and religious paintings, including Virgil, were executed in an area of Rhode Island known as "Paradise," in a forest which La Farge called "The Sacred Grove" after Virgil.

He was a pioneer in the study of Japanese art, the influence of which is seen in his work. During his life, La Farge maintained a studio at 51 West 10th Street in Greenwich Village, which now is part of the site of Eugene Lang College at the New School University.

Between 1859 and 1870, he illustrated Tennyson's Enoch Arden and Robert Browning's Men and Women.

In the 1870s, La Farge began to do murals, which became popular for public buildings as well as churches. His first mural was done in Trinity Church, Boston, in 1873. Then followed his decorations in the Church of the Ascension  and St. Paul's Chapel, New York.  For the Minnesota State Capitol at St. Paul, he executed at age 71 four great lunettes representing the history of law. He created a similar series based on the theme of Justice for the State Supreme Court building at Baltimore, Maryland. He also took private commission from wealthy patrons (e.g. Cornelius Vanderbilt) and was reputedly worth $150,000 at one point.

La Farge made extensive travels in Asia and the South Pacific, which inspired his painting. He visited Japan in 1886, and the South Seas in 1890 and 1891, in particular spending time and absorbing the culture of Tahiti. Henry Adams accompanied him on these trips as a travel companion. He visited Hawaii in September 1890, where he painted scenic spots on Oahu and traveled to the Island of Hawaii to paint an active volcano.

In 1892, La Farge was brought on as an instructor with the Metropolitan Museum of Art Schools to provide vocational training to students in New York City. He served as President of the National Society of Mural Painters from 1899 to 1904.

La Farge died at Butler Hospital, in Providence, Rhode Island in 1910. His papers, together with some of those of certain children and grandchildren, are held by Yale University Library.


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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

KILAUEA BY CONSTANCE GORDON-CUMMING

 

CONSTANCE GORDON-CUMMING (1837–1924)

 Kilauea  (1,247 m - 4,091 ft) 

 United States of America  (Hawaii)

 In Kilauea Temporary Chimneys and Fire Fountains, watercolor, c.1880

The volcano

Kīlauea (1,247 m-4,091 ft) is a currently active shield volcano in the Hawaiian Islands, and the most active of the five volcanoes that together form the island of Hawaiʻi. Located along the southern shore of the island, the volcano is between 300,000 and 600,000 years old and emerged above sea level about 100,000 years ago. It is the second youngest product of the Hawaiian hotspot and the current eruptive center of the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain. Structurally, Kīlauea has a large, fairly recently formed caldera at its summit and two active rift zones, one extending 125 km (78 mi) east and the other 35 km (22 mi) west, as an active fault of unknown depth moving vertically an average of 2 to 20 mm (0.1 to 0.8 in) per year.

More about Kilauea

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

MOUNT EREBUS BY CHARLES HAMILTON SMITH

 

CHARLES HAMILTON SMITH (1776-1859) 

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

Antarctica (Ross Island)

In Mount Erebus and Beaufort Island- Watercolour from Views of Polar region, 

 Yale Center for British arts, Connectitcut, USA

The mountain
Mount Erebus (3, 794 m - 12, 448ft), not to be confused with Mount Elbrus is the second-highest volcano in Antarctica (after Mount Sidley) and the southernmost active volcano on Earth. It is the sixth highest ultra mountain on an island, located on Ross Island, which is also home to three inactive volcanoes: Mount Terror, Mount Bird, and Mount Terra Nova.
The volcano has been active since c. 1.3 million years ago and is the site of the Mount Erebus Volcano Observatory run by the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.
Mount Erebus was discovered on January 27, 1841 (and observed to be in eruption) by polar explorer Sir James Clark Ross who named it and its companion, Mount Terror, after his ships, Erebus and Terror (which were later used by Sir John Franklin on his disastrous Arctic expedition). Erebus is a dark region in Hades in Greek mythology. Present with Ross on the Erebus was the young Joseph Hooker, future president of the Royal Society and close friend of Charles Darwin. Erebus was an Ancient Greek primordial deity of darkness, the son of Chaos.
The mountain was surveyed in December 1912 by a science party from Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition who also collected geological samples. Two of the camp sites they used have been recognised for their historic significance:
- Upper “Summit Camp” site (HSM 89) consists of part of a circle of rocks, which were probably used to weight the tent valances.
- Lower “Camp E” site (HSM 90) consists of a slightly elevated area of gravel as well as some aligned rocks, which may have been used to weight the tent valances.
They have been designated Historic Sites or Monuments following a proposal by the United Kingdom, New Zealand and the United States to the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting.
Mount Erebus is classified as a polygenetic stratovolcano. The bottom half of the volcano is a shield and the top half is a stratocone. The composition of the current eruptive products of Erebus is anorthoclase-porphyritic tephritic phonolite and phonolite, which are the bulk of exposed lava flow on the volcano. Erebus is the world's only presently erupting phonolite volcano.

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

THE MZAB PLATEAU PAINTED BY NASR'EDDINE ETIENNE DINET

 

NASR'EDDINE ETIENNE DINET (1861-1929),

The Mzab Plateau (526m - 1,725ft)

Algeria (Sahara)

In Caravane se dirigeant vers Ghardaia (Caravan on the way to Ghardaia), oil on canvas

The formation
The Mzab plateau is a rocky formation whose altitude varies between 300 and 800 meters.  The average altitude is 500 meters (Ghardaia: 526 meters).This relief, of which the origin is  from the Upper Cretaceous, is in the form of a vast stony expanse and brown and blackish rocks. The grounds are limestone. Their roughly horizontal structure indicates that they have remained in place, away from the orogenic movements, since their formation.
The deepest valleys bordered by rocky cliffs with steep slopes have a gradient that rarely exceeds 100 meters in relation to the plateau.
The M'zab is therefore generally a flat region but where fluvial erosion, combined with the action of the desert climate, has created a multitude of superficial accidents that make communications most difficult.
Due to  the low latitude and the moderate altitude, the temperature is very high in summer (absolute maximum in Ghardaia: 50 ° C), moderately cool in winter (absolute minimum: minus 1 ° C in Ghardaia).  In winter as in summer, the diurnal variation of temperature is important, due to the perfect dryness of the atmosphere. For the same reason, the brightness is intense.
Sandwash from the southwest periodically accentuate the dryness of the climate. They are particularly frequent and violent in late winter and early spring.
The Mzab Valley is part of World Heritage since 1982, as an untouched example of a traditional human habitat perfectly adapted to the environment.

The painter 

Nasr'Eddine Dinet (born as Alphonse-Étienne Dinet in Paris) was a French orientalist painter.

Compared to modernist painters such as Henri Matisse, who also visited northern Africa in the first decade of the 20th century, Dinet’s paintings are extremely conservative. They are highly mimetic, indeed ethnographic, in their treatment of their subject.

Dinet’s understanding of Arab culture and language set him apart from other orientalist artists. Surprisingly, he was able to find nude models in rural Algeria. Before 1900, most of his works could be characterized as "anecdotal genre scenes". As he became more interested in Islam, he began to paint religious subjects more often. He was active in translating Arabic literature into French, publishing a translation of an Arab epic poem by Antarah ibn Shaddad in 1898.

Dinet was born the son of a prominent French judge.   From 1871, he studied at the prestogious Lycée Henry IV in Paris, where the future president Alexandre Millerand was also among the students. Upon graduation in 1881 he enrolled in the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts and entered the studio of Victor Galland. The following year he studied under William Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury at the Académie Julian. He also exhibited for the first time at the Salon des artistes français.

Dinet made his first trip to Bou Saâda by the Ouled Naïl Range in southern Algeria in 1884, with a team of entomologists. The following year he made a second trip on a government scholarship, this time to Laghouat. At that time he painted his first two Algerian pictures: les Terrasses de Laghouat  (Laghouat Terraces) or  Oued M’Sila après l’orage (Oued M'Sila after the storm).

He won the silver medal for painting at the Exposition Universelle in 1889, and in the same year founded the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts along with Meissonier, Puvis de Chavannes, Rodin, Carolus-Duran and Charles Cottet. In 1887 he further founded with Léonce Bénédite, director of the Musée du Luxembourg, the Société des Peintres Orientalistes Français.

In 1903 he bought a house in Bou Saâda and spent three quarters of each year there.

He announced his conversion to Islam in a private letter of 1908, and completed his formal conversion in 1913, upon which he changed his name to Nasr’Eddine Dinet. In 1929 he and his wife undertook the Hajj to Mecca. The respect he earned from the natives of Algeria was reflected by the 5,000 who attended his funeral on 12 January 1930 in Bou Saâda. There he was eulogized by the former Governor General of Algeria Maurice Viollette.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE KILIMANDJARO PAINTED BY ANTHONY MWANGI

 

ANTHONY MWANGI (bn. 1969)
Kilimandjaro (5,885m - 19, 340ft)
Tanzania

In Kilimandjaro Morning, oil on canvas

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.
- More informations about Kilimandjaro

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

___________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
 

KIYANJA / MOUNT BAKER BY VITTORIO SELLA

 

 

VITTORIO SELLA (1859-1943) 

Kiyanja or Mount Baker (4,844m- 15,892 ft) 

Uganda

In Mount Baker,  panoramic from Grauer's Rock 1906,The Duke of the Abruzzi expedition 

The mountain
Kiyanja or Mount Baker (4,844m- 15,892 ft) is a mountain in the Rwenzori Mountains National Park in Uganda, 2.8 kilometres (1.7 mi) from the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is the sixth highest mountain in Africa. Together with Mount Stanley and Mount Speke, it forms a triangle enclosing the upper Bujuku Valley. The nearest peak is Mount Stanley, which is 2.26 kilometres (1.40 mi) to the west. The mountains lie within an area called "The Mountains of the Moon".
Like all peaks in the Ruwenzori Range, Mount Baker has multiple jagged peaks along a ridge. The highest is Edward Peak. The ridge line of Mount Baker was first reached in January 1906 by the Austrian mountaineer Rubert Grauer accompanied by two British missionaries, H. E. Maddox and H. W. Tegart. In February of that year and again in April, the same rocky point was reached by an English expedition, including Alexander F. R. Wollaston, A. B. Wosnam, and M. Carruthers. The highest point of Mount Baker was finally climbed in June by an expedition led by the Duke of the Abruzzi, with Vittorio Sella which climbed all peaks of the other five highest mountains of the Rwenzori (photo above)
The Bakonjo name for the mountain seems to have been (and currently is) "Kiyanja". On his June 1891 expedition into the Ruwenzori, Franz Stuhlmann observed the peak and named it either "Semper" or "Ngemwimbi". The Duke of the Abruzzi renamed the mountain after Samuel Baker, a 19th-century British explorer who in 1864 was the first European to sight and visit Lake Albert, just northeast of the Ruwenzori Mountains, and who had reported to glimpse "great mountainous masses away in the distance, to the south of Lake Albert."

The artist
Vittorio Sella is a mountain italian climber and photographer who took his passion for mountains from his uncle, Quintino Sella, founder of the Italian Alpine Club. He accomplished many remarkable climbs in the Alps, the first wintering in the Matterhorn and Mount Rose (1882) and the first winter crossing of Mont Blanc (1888) and Les Rouies (1900).
He took part in various expeditions outside Italy:
- Three in the Caucasus in 1889, 1890 and 1896 where a summit still bears his name;
- The ascent of Mount Saint Elias in Alaska in 1897;
- Sikkim and Nepal in 1899;
- Possibly climb Mount Stanley in Uganda in 1906 during an expedition to the Rwenzori;
- Recognition at K2 in 1909;
- In Morocco in 1925.
During expeditions in Alaska, Uganda and Karakoram, he accompanied the Duke of Abruzzi, Prince Luigi Amedeo di Savoia.
More about Vittorio Sella 

_______________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

KANGCHENJUNGA AT NIGHT BY NICHOLAS ROERICH

 

NICHOLAS ROERICH (1874-1947), 

Kangchenjunga (8, 538m - 28,169 ft) 

India, Népal

 In  Himalayas at night, Sikkim, 1928-29, tempera on canvas, Private collection

The mountain 
 Kangchenjunga (8,586 m - 28,169 ft) is the  third highest mountain in the world. It  lies partly in Nepal and partly in Sikkim, India.  Kangchenjunga is the second highest mountain of the Himalayas after Mount Everest. Three of the five peaks – Main, Central and South – are on the border between North Sikkim and Nepal. Two peaks are in the Taplejung District, Nepal.
Kangchenjunga Main is the highest mountain in India, and the easternmost of the mountains higher than 8,000 m (26,000 ft).  

Until 1852, Kangchenjunga was assumed to be the highest mountain in the world, but calculations based on various readings and measurements made by the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India in 1849 came to the conclusion that Mount Everest., known as Peak XV at the time, was the highest.  

It is listed int the  Eight Thousanders and as Seven Third Summits
Kangchenjunga is the official spelling adopted by Douglas Freshfield, A. M. Kellas, and the Royal Geographical Society that gives the best indication of the Tibetan pronunciation. Freshfield referred to the spelling used by the Indian Government since the late 19th century. There are a number of alternative spellings including Kangchendzцnga, Khangchendzonga, and Kanchenjunga.  

Local Lhopo people believe that the treasures are hidden but reveal to the devout when the world is in peril; the treasures comprise salt, gold, turquoise and precious stones, sacred scriptures, invincible armor or ammunition, grain and medicine. Kangchenjunga's name in the Limbu language is Senjelungma or Seseylungma, and is believed to be an abode of the omnipotent goddess Yuma Sammang.
It rises in a section of the Himalayas called Kangchenjunga Himal that is limited in the west by the Tamur River, in the north by the Lhonak Chu and Jongsang La, and in the east by the Teesta River. It lies about 128 km (80 mi) east of Mount Everest.
Allowing for further verification of all calculations, it was officially announced in 1856 that
Kangchenjunga was first climbed on 25 May 1955 by Joe Brown and George Band, who were part of a British expedition. They stopped short of the summit as per the promise given to the Chogyal that the top of the mountain would remain inviolate. Every climber or climbing group that has reached the summit has followed this tradition...

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.

More about the painter = >

_______________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

TATEYAMA / 立山 BY KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAÏ

 

KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAÏ (1760-1849)

Tateyama / 立山 / Mount Tate (3,015 m - 9,892 ft)

Japan

In Tateyama, wood block print

The mountain
Tateyama / 立山 /  Mount Tate  (3,015 m  - 9,892 ft) commonly referred to as simply Tateyama, is a mountain located in the southeastern area of Toyama Prefecture, Japan. It is one of the tallest mountains in the Hida Mountains and along with Mount Fuji and Mount Haku, it is one of Japan's "Three Holy Mountains" (三霊山 Sanreizan). Tateyama is a term for the mountain consisting of three peaks: Ōnanjiyama (大汝山, 3,015m), Oyama (雄山, 3,003m), and Fuji-no-Oritateyama, (富士ノ折立, 2,999m)  which run along a ridge. Public transportation will take climbers and tourists as far as the Murodo Plateau Station at an elevation of 2,450 m (8,038 ft), from where individuals may climb to the peak on foot. These are the only glaciers identified in Japan so far.
It was first climbed by Saeki no Ariyori during Japan's Asuka period. The area was designated the Chūbu-Sangaku National Park on December 4, 1934.

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

_______________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT FUJI / 富士山 BY T. ENAMI / 江南 信國

T. ENAMI NOBUKUNI /  江南 信國  (1859 -1929)

Mount Fuji  (3,776 m  - 12,389 ft)

Japan

In Mount Fuji, colorized gelatine print, 1880

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

The photographer
T. Enami / 江南 信國 or  Enami Nobukuni  was the trade name of a Meiji period Japanese photographer. The T. of his trade name is thought to have stood for Toshi, though he never spelled it out on any personal or business document.
Born in Edo (now Tokyo) during the Bakumatsu era, Enami was first a student of, and then an assistant to the well known photographer and collotypist, Ogawa Kazumasa. Enami relocated to Yokohama, and opened a studio on Benten-dōri (Benten Street) in 1892. Just a few doors away from him was the studio of the already well known Tamamura Kōzaburō. He and Enami would work together on at least three related projects over the years.
Enami became quietly unique as the only photographer of that period known to work in all popular formats, including the production of large-format photographs compiled into what are commonly called "Yokohama Albums". Enami went on to become Japan's most prolific photographer of small-format images such as the stereoview and glass lantern-slides. The best of these were delicately hand-tinted. His images in all formats eventually appeared in books and periodicals having press-runs in the millions. The Japanese stereoview lines of at least three major American publishers were made up entirely of T. Enami images.
Enami survived the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, and rebuilt his studio which had been destroyed by the quake and subsequent fire. After his death at age 70 in 1929, his first son Tamotsu took over the studio until it was once again demolished in 1945 by the Allied bombing of Yokohama during World War II.
Because Tamotsu shared the initial "T" with his father, photo-historians later confused attribution of the father's photographs with those produced by his son. Terry Bennett, in his book Photography in Japan 1853–1912 offered interesting commentary concerning the "father or son" attribution problem. The Enami family in Yokohama later resolved the mystery: Tamotsu was not a photographer, and T. Enami never stood for Tamotsu Enami. Rather, the son maintained the studio, and continued the production and sale of his father's old photographs. Fortunately, due to sharing the same first-name initial with his father, he didn't have to change the letterheads or labels of the company ephemera. These revelations, and other biographical data appeared in an essay and stereoview index entry written by Okinawa-based photo researcher Rob Oechsle, and published in Bennett's follow-up volume, Old Japanese Photographs – Collectors' Data Guide.
Philbert Ono of Photo Guide Japan has also speculated on the possibility that T. Enami intentionally named his son with a leading T in the hope that he would someday take over the studio.
Perhaps the greatest posthumous honor conferred on Enami was the selection of one of his images to be the sole inset-photograph appearing on the first-edition cover of the monumental Odyssey, The Art of Photography at National Geographic. Early in their history, Enami had been a contributing photographer to the magazine.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT TABOR BY JACOB PEETERS

 

JACOB PEETERS (1637-1695)

Mount Tabor (575 m -1,886 ft)

Israel (Galilee)

In Den bergh Thabor in Palestynen, 1692, engraving from World Atlas

The mountain 
Mount Tabor  (575 m - 1,886 ft), (not to be confused with Mount Thabor int he French Alps ) is located in Lower Galilee, Israel, at the eastern end of the Jezreel Valley, 11 miles (18 km) west of the Sea of Galilee.  Mount Tabor is a Inselberg : an isolated hill or small mountain rising abruptly from gently sloping or level surrounding land, and is not volcanic.
In the Hebrew Bible (Joshua, Judges), Mount Tabor is the site of the Battle of Mount Tabor between the Israelite army under the leadership of Barak and the army of the Canaanite king of Hazor, Jabin, commanded by Sisera.
In Christian tradition, Mount Tabor is the site of the Transfiguration of Jesus.
Mount Tabor is shaped almost like half a sphere, suddenly rising from rather flat surroundings and dominating  the town in the plain below, Kfar Tavor. At the top of the mountain are two Christian monasteries, one Greek Orthodox on the northeast side and one Roman Catholic on the southeast side. The Catholic church at the top is easily visible from afar.
At the base it is almost fully surrounded by the Arab villages of Daburiyya, Shibli, and Umm al-Ghanam. Mount Tabor is located off Highway 65, and its summit is accessible by road via Shibli. A hiking tracks starts from the Bedouin village Shibli and is about five kilometers long. It is part of the Israel National Trail.

The artist
Flemish engraver and book-seller, Jacob Peeters (1637-1695) was descended from a family of artists. He kept a shop in Antwerp, where he “sold every kind of prints and engravings, small and larger geographical maps, drawn in ink, coloured, as well as of a larger size...”
Peeters is known mainly for his “World Atlas”, published in 1692.
The album forms part of a series of dithyrambic publications, which exalted the brilliant victories of the Venetians on the Ottomans. Similar books were published by the Accademia Cosmografica degli Argonauti, which had been founded by Vincenzo Coronelli.
The plates of the edition were based on drawings by Jacob Peeters' brother, Johannes or Jan Peeters (1625-1677), who made several views of cities, later etched by Merian. Johannes was a pupil of their older brother, Bonaventura Peeters, also a very well-known painter who specialized in seascapes.
Most of the plates were etched by Gaspar Bouttats (1640-1695), a well-known books merchant and engraving master. The description of each city and subject is given at the beginning of the edition, while each copy of the work includes a different number of plates. There are plates showing locations, cities and ports at Montenegro, Albania, Croatia, the Ionian and Aegean seas, Central Greece (the Peloponnese, Attica and Thessaly), Asia Minor, Syria, Cyprus, the Holy Land, Turkey, Yemen, Irak, Armenia, the Caspian Sea and other places all the way to Iran and India...

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MT ST HELEN AND MT ADAMS PAINTED BY CHILDE HASSAM

CHILDE HASSAM (1859-1935)

Mount St. Helens / Louwala-Clough (2, 549 m - 8, 363 ft) 

Mount Adams / Patho or Klikitat (3, 473m - 12, 281ft) 
United States of America (Washington State)

In Adams and St. Helen's, Early Morning, watercolor, 1887, Private collection

The mountains

Mount St. Helens or Louwala-Clough (2, 549m- 8,363 ft) knownas Lawetlat'la to the Cowlitz people, and Loowit to the Klickitat people, is an active stratovolcano located in Skamania County, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is 96 miles (154 km) south of Seattle, Washington, and 50 miles (80 km) northeast of Portland, Oregon. Mount St. Helens takes its English name from the British diplomat Lord St Helens, a friend of explorer George Vancouver who made a survey of the area in the late 18th century.The volcano is located in the Cascade Range and is part of the Cascade Volcanic Arc, a segment of the Pacific Ring of Fire that includes over 160 active volcanoes. This volcano is well known for its ash explosions and pyroclastic flows.

More about Mt St Helens 

Mount Adams or Patho or Klikitat (3, 473m - 12, 281ft)  is a potentially active stratovolcano in the Cascade Range, USA. Although Adams has not erupted in more than 1,000 years, it is not considered extinct. It is the second-highest mountain in the U.S. state of Washington, after Mount Rainier/Tacoma. Mount Adams is a member of the Cascade Volcanic Arc, and is one of the arc's largest volcanoes, located in a remote wilderness approximately 34 miles (55 km) east of Mount St. Helens. The Mount Adams Wilderness consists of the upper and western part of the volcano's cone. The eastern side of the mountain is designated as part of the territory of the Yakama Nation.

More about Mt Adams

The painter
Frederick Childe Hassam was an American Impressionist painter, noted for his urban and coastal scenes. Along with Mary Cassatt and John Henry Twachtman, Hassam was instrumental in promulgating Impressionism to American collectors, dealers, and museums. He produced over 3,000 paintings, oils, watercolors, etchings, and lithographs over the course of his career, and was an influential American artist of the early 20th century.
In 1904 and 1908, he traveled to Oregon and was stimulated by new subjects and diverse views, frequently working out-of-doors with friend, lawyer and amateur painter Colonel C. E. S. Wood.
He produced over 100 paintings, pastels, and watercolors of the High Desert, the rugged coast, the Cascades, scenes of Portland. As usual, he adapted his style and colors to the subject at hand and the mood of place, but always in the Impressionist vein. With the art market now eagerly accepting his work, by 1909 Hassam was enjoying great success, earning as much as $6,000 per painting. His close friend and fellow artist J. Alden Weir commented to another artist : "Our mutual friend Hassam has been in the greatest of luck and merited success. He sold his apartment studio and has sold more pictures this winter, I think, than ever before and is really on the crest of the wave. So he goes around with a crisp, cheerful air."
The most distinctive and famous works of Hassam's later life comprise the set of some 30 paintings known as the "Flag series". He began these in 1916 when he was inspired by a "Preparedness Parade" (for the US involvement in World War I), which was held on Fifth Avenue in New York (renamed the "Avenue of the Allies" during the Liberty Loan Drives of 1918).Thousands participated in these parades, which often lasted for over twelve hours.
Being an avid Francophile, of English ancestry, and strongly anti-Germany, Hassam enthusiastically backed the Allied cause and the protection of French culture.
In 1919, Hassam purchased a home in East Hampton, New York. Many of his late paintings employed nearby subjects in that town and elsewhere on Long Island. In 1920, he received the Gold Medal of Honor for lifetime achievement from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and numerous other awards through the 1920s. Hassam traveled relatively little in his last years, but did visit California, Arizona, Louisiana, Texas, and Mexico.
He died in East Hampton in 1935, at age 75.
He denounced modern trends in art to the end of his life, and he termed "art boobys" all the painters, critics, collectors, and dealers who got on the bandwagon and promoted Cubism, Surrealism and other avant-garde movements. Until a revival of interest in American Impressionism in the 1960s, Hassam was considered among the "abandoned geniuses". As French Impressionist paintings reached stratospheric prices in the 1970s, Hassam and other American Impressionists gained renewed interest and were bid up as well.
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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

GLACIER DU RHONE / RHONEGLETSCHER BY FELIX VALOTTON

FELIX VALOTTON (1865-1925),
Rhone Glacier / Rhonegletscher (3,600/2,500m -
Switzerland

In Glacier du Rhône, woodcut, 1892

About the work

Those very famous woodcuts and  illustrations in black and white brings to the young Swiss painter Felix Valotton an international fame. In 1891, he literally renewed the art of xylography following the publication of an article by Albert Aurier, "Le Symbolisme en peinture", calling for an "idealistic" and decorative art, from which would be banished "Concrete truth, illusionism, trompe-l'oeil". The engravings that Valotton show in 1892 made such a sensation that he was invited to take part in various shows (Salon des artistes français, Salon des indépendants, Salon d'automne).

In the begining of 1892 Valotton engraved on wood a series of mountains from the French and Swiss Alps, which he exhibited at the first Salon de la Rose-Croix in 1892. They were immediately noticed by the Nabis, a group he rallied from 1893 to 1903 before making a long friendship with Édouard Vuillard.

The Glacier
The Rhône glacier (Rhonegletscher or Rottengletscher in German) is located at the north-eastern end of the canton of Valais in Switzerland. It gives birth to the Rhone, upstream of Gletsch, which flows then into the valley of Conches.
The Rhône glacier begins on the southwestern face of the Dammastock massif at an altitude of about 3,600 meters. The first 2,500 meters of the glacier consists of a firn, the Eggfirn, which undergoes a difference of 600 meters. At an altitude of 3,081 meters, the glacier is connected to the Trift Glacier by a small pass, the Undri Triftlimi. This other glacier flows north on the Bernese territory towards the Susten pass. The Rhône glacier then follows a gentler slope with a gradient of about 14% towards the south. It is bordered on the east by the Galenstock (3,586 m), and on the west by the Tieralplistock (3,383 m) and the Gärstenhörner Bar (3,189 m). The glacial tongue ends at an altitude of about 2,250 m1 and gives birth to the Rhone.
The Rhône glacier is one of the most studied glaciers in the Alps. In 1546, Sebastian Münster described it in his book Cosmographia Universalis5. The erratic blocks of the Swiss plateau with their imposing mass could not have been brought by the force of the water and it is this observation which pushed the scientists to take a closer interest in the alpine glaciers, thus establishing the bases of the glaciology. Louis Agassiz was one of the leading pioneers in the field and studied among others the Rhone glacier.
The first measurements on the Rhone glacier date back to 18746, thanks to the work of engineer Philipp Gosset. Since this year, the length, thickness of the ice and other observations are carefully recorded.  Its thickness decreases annually by 25 centimeters.
 
The painter 

Félix Edouard Vallotton was a Swiss/French painter and printmaker associated (from 1892) with Les Nabis, a group of young artists that included Pierre Bonnard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Maurice Denis, and Edouard Vuillard, with whom Vallotton was to form a lifelong friendship. During the 1890s, when Vallotton was closely allied with the avant-garde, his paintings reflected the style of his woodcuts, with flat areas of color, hard edges, and simplification of detail. His subjects included genre scenes, portraits and nudes. Examples of his Nabi style are the deliberately awkward Bathers on a Summer Evening (1892–93), now in the Kunsthaus Zurich, and the symbolist Moonlight (1895), in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

Vallotton's paintings of the post-Nabi period found admirers, and were generally respected for their truthfulness and their technical qualities, but the severity of his style was frequently criticized. Typical is the reaction of the critic who, writing in the March 23, 1910 issue of Neue Zurcher Zeitung, complained that Vallotton "paints like a policeman, like someone whose job it is to catch forms and colors. Everything creaks with an intolerable dryness ... the colors lack all joyfulness."

In its uncompromising character his art prefigured the New Objectivity that flourished in Germany during the 1920s, and has a further parallel in the work of Edward Hopper.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE MONT BLANC (2) PAINTED BY CESARE MAGGI

 

 CESARE MAGGI (1881-1962)  

The Mont Blanc (4,808 m -15,777 ft)
 (from Italian side)

France - Italy

In  The Mont Blanc seen from Italy, Oil on canvas, 70 x 100 cm, Prviate collection

The mountain
The Mont-Blanc (in French) (4 ,808.73 m -15,777 ft) or Monte Bianco (in Italian), both meaning "White Mountain", is the highest mountain in the Alps and the highest in Europe after the Caucasus peaks. It is ranked 11th in the world in topographic prominence. The Mont Blanc is one of the Seven Summit, which includes the highest mountains of each of the seven continents. Summiting all of them is regarded as a mountaineering challenge, first achieved on April 30, 1985 by Richard Bass. The 7 highest summit, (which are obviously 8 with 2 in Europe !) are : Mount Everest (8,848m), Aconcagua (6,961m), Mt Denali or Mc Kinley (6,194m), Kilimandjaro (5,895m), Mt Elbrus (5,642m), Mount Vinson (4,892m) and Mount Kosciuszko (2,228m) in Australia.

The overcrowding threshold of Mont Blanc is reached, with 300 to 400 departures per day in summer.

 At the summit of the National Mountain Council held in Sallanches at the end of August 2006, it was estimated that between 25,000 and 30,000 people set out in 2005 to conquer Mont Blanc. With the opening of new markets (Russia, China, India), 50,000 to 100,000 people could tomorrow try the adventure, the figure of 200,000 has even been advanced. 

These prospects are nightmarish for the defenders of the site and for some political leaders of the valley, such as the mayor of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, common on which Mont Blanc is located.

- More about the Mont-Blanc

The painter
The italian painter Cesare Maggi was born into a family of actors, Maggi embarked on classical studies at his father’s wish but also took up painting at a very early age His debut in Florence at the Esposizione Annuale della Società di Belle Arti di Firenze in 1898 was followed by a short trip to Paris to catch up with the latest developments.
The crucial turning point in Maggi’s art came in 1889 with the posthumous show of work by Giovanni Segantini held by the Milanese Society of Fine Arts, which prompted a definitive shift to landscape painting of a Divisionist character. After a short stay in the Engadin, he returned to Milan before finally settling in Turin. Commercial collaboration with Alberto Grubicy until 1913 enabled Maggi to establish himself quickly as one of the leading representatives of the second generation of Divisionist painters in Italy. He painted a repertoire of readily comprehensible mountain landscapes focusing primarily on aspects of the visual perception of the reflection of light and colour but lacking the deep spirituality of Segantini’s work. He took part in the major Italian and European exhibitions and the Venice Biennale devoted an entire room to his work at the Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte of Venice in 1912. After an interlude devoted to portrait painting in the same decade, the artist’s mature work focused on greater simplification of subject matter, mostly in landscapes.
Maggi obtained the chair in painting at the Albertina Academy, Turin, in 1936.
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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MONTE VERITA PAINTED BY MARIANNE WEREFKIN

                  

MARIANNE WEREFKIN (1860-1938)
Monte Verita (332 m-1,089 ft)
Switzerland

In The Sorrowful City, circa 1930, Οil on canvas, Municipal Foundation, Ascona

The hill
Monte Verità (332 m - 1,089 ft) (Mount Truth) is a hill above Ascona. At the end of the nineteenth century, a small group of people, led by the son of an Antwerp industrialist, Henri Oedenkoven (1875-1935) and his girlfriend, German pianist and feminist Ida Hofmann (1864-1926), bought the hill and constituted themselves into a community. The founders then practiced a life close to nature, vegetarian and naturist, openly advocating free love. They stayed on Monte Verità until 1920 and then left for Brazil.
The hill became the meeting place of famous thinkers and artists, such as Hermann Hesse, Bruno Goetz, Carl Gustav Jung, or Erich Mühsam6, then Gilbert Durand, Henry Corbin, Gershom Sholem and many others, who also animated the Eranos Circle, which met near Lake Maggiore in Casa Eranos.
In 1989, the Monte Verità Foundation was created in collaboration with the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, which now operates a scientific center that regularly organizes seminars. 

The painter
Marianne von Werefkin (Марианна Владимировна Веревкина) is a Russian-Swiss painter of the Expressionist period. Marianna Vladimirovna Verëvkina is the daughter of the commander of the Yekaterinburg regiment in the Urals. In 1880 she was a pupil of Ilia Repin, the greatest realist painter in Russia.
In 1888, she had a hunting accident in which she pulled herself into the right hand with which she was painting. In 1892, she met Alexi von Jawlensky who then met Helene Neznakomova who came to live with the couple of painters. All three then made a trip through Germany in 1896. For nearly ten years she did not paint anymore.
They then resided in France from 1905 to 1906.
In 1909, Alexi von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, Vassily Kandinsky and others founded the New Association of Munich Artists (NKV), which held its first exhibition at the Thannhauser Gallery in Munich in December and which gave birth in 1912 to the group named "Der Blaue Reiter" (The Blue Rider).
In 1907, she began her expressionist work. It adopts the style of Paul Gauguin and Louis Anquetin.
At the outbreak of the First World War, they emigrated to Switzerland, near Geneva, then to Zurich. In 1918, they separate, and Werefkin settles in Ascona. In 1924, she created the artist group "Großer Bär". In the years that followed, she painted posters. His friends Carmen and Diego Hagmann preserve her from poverty.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

EL CAPITAN PAINTED BY THOMAS HILL

 

THOMAS HILL  (1829-1908)

El Capitan (2,309m - 7,573 ft) 

United States of America

In El Capitan, oil on cnavas,  Oakland Museum of California

The mountain
El Capitan  (2,309m - 7,573 ft) is a vertical rock formation in Yosemite National Park, located on the north side of Yosemite Valley, near its western end. The granite monolith extends about 3,000 feet (900 m) from base to summit along its tallest face and is one of the world's favorite challenges for rock climbers.
The formation was named "El Capitan" by the Mariposa Battalion when it explored the valley in 1851. El Capitan ("the captain") was taken to be a loose Spanish translation of the local Native American name for the cliff, variously transcribed as "To-to-kon oo-lah" or "To-tock-ah-noo-lah".
It is unclear if the Native American name referred to a specific tribal chief or simply meant "the chief" or "rock chief". In modern times, the formation's name is often contracted to "El Cap", especially among rock climbers and BASE jumpers.
The top of El Capitan can be reached by hiking out of Yosemite Valley on the trail next to Yosemite Falls, then proceeding west. For climbers, the challenge is to climb up the sheer granite face. There are many named climbing routes, all of them arduous, including Iron Hawk and Sea of Dreams, for example.
The Nose was first climbed in 1958 by Warren Harding, Wayne Merry and George Whitmore in 47 days using "siege" tactics: climbing in an expedition style using fixed ropes along the length of the route, linking established camps along the way.
In September 1973, Beverly Johnson and Sibylle Hechtel were the first team of women to ascend El Capitan via the Triple Direct route.

The painter
Thomas Hill produced many fine paintings of the California landscape, in particular of the Yosemite Valley, as well as the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Hill’s work was often driven by a vision resulting from his experiences with nature.
Hill was loosely associated with the Hudson River School of painters. The Hudson River School celebrated nature with a sense of awe for its natural resources, which brought them a feeling of enthusiasm when thinking of the potential it held. Mainly the earlier members of the Hudson River School, around the 1850-60’s, displayed man as in unison with nature in their landscape paintings by often painting men on a very small scale compared to the vast landscape. Thomas Hill often brought this technique into his own paintings in for example in his painting, Yosemite Valley, 1889.
He made early trips to the White Mountains with his friend Benjamin Champney and painted White Mountain subjects throughout his career. An example of his White Mountain subjects is Mount Lafayette in his Mount Lafayette in Winter.
Hill acquired the technique of painting en plein air. These paintings in the field later served as the basis for larger finished works.
Hill’s move to California in 1861 brought him new material for his paintings. He chose monumental vistas, like Yosemite. During his lifetime, Hill’s paintings were popular in California, costing as much as $10,000. Hill's best works are considered to be these monumental subjects, including Great Canyon of the Sierra, Yosemite, Vernal Falls and Yosemite Valley.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MT LIEBIG PAINTED BY ALBERT NAMATJIRA

ALBERT NAMATJIRA (1902-1959) 

Mount Liebig (1, 274 m- 4, 180 ft)

Australia ( Northern Territories) 

In Haasts Bluff, watercolour, 24.5 x 60 cm, 1930, National Gallery of Australia 

The mountain
Mount Liebig (1, 274 m - 4, 180 ft) is a mountain in the southern part of the Northern Territory of Australia. It is one of the highest peaks of the MacDonnell Ranges and was named by the explorer Ernest Giles after the German chemist Justus von Liebig.
Nearby settlements include Haasts Bluff. also known as Ikuntji, an Indigenous Australian community. At the 2006 census, the community, including outstations, had a population of 207.
The Haasts Bluff community takes its name from the nearby outcrop, given this name in 1872 by the explorer Ernest Giles, after the New Zealand geologist, Julius von Haast.
The locality is home to Western Arrernte, Pintupi and Pitjantjatjara people.

The Painter
Albert Namatjira born Elea Namatjira, was a Western Arrernte-speaking Aboriginal artist from the MacDonnell Ranges in Central Australia. As a pioneer of contemporary Indigenous Australian art, he was the most famous Indigenous Australian of his generation.
Born and raised at the Hermannsburg Lutheran Mission outside Alice Springs, Namatjira showed interest in art from an early age, but it was not until 1934 (aged 32), under the tutelage of Rex Battarbee, that he began to paint seriously. Namatjira's richly detailed, Western art-influenced watercolours of the outback departed significantly from the abstract designs and symbols of traditional Aboriginal art, and inspired the Hermannsburg School of painting. He became a household name in Australia—indeed, reproductions of his works hung in many homes throughout the nation—and he was publicly regarded as a model Aborigine who had succeeded in mainstream society.
Although not the first Aboriginal artist to work in a European style, Albert Namatjira is certainly the most famous. Ghost gums with luminous white trunks, palm-filled gorges and red mountain ranges turning purple at dusk are the hallmarks of the Hermannsburg school. Hermannsburg Mission was established by Lutheran missionaries in 1877 on the banks of the Finke River, west of Mparntwe (Alice Springs). Namatjira learnt watercolour technique from the artist, Rex Battarbee.
More about Albert Namatjira ...

_____________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MT MANAIA BY JOHN BARR CLARK HOYTE

JOHN BARR CLARK HOYTE (1835-1913) 

Mount Manaia (420m- 1,378ft)

New Zealand (North Island)

 In Mount Manaia- Whangarei Head, oil on canvas, 1890  

The mountain 
Mount Manaia   (420m- 1,378ft) is a dominant landmark approximately 30 kilometres southeast of Whangarei city on the Whangarei Heads peninsula.
The summit offers outstanding views of  Bream Bay and the Hauraki Gulf to the south, Whangarei Harbour to the west and the Poor Knights Islands and Northland coast to the north.
Mt Manaia - along with Mt Lion, Bream Head and the Hen and Chicken Islands, are the scattered remnants of a large, 50 kilometer diameter volcano that erupted with force 20 million years ago during the early miocene period. Its jagged outline is similar to that of its neighbours and other volcanic outcrops in Northland that erupted in a similar period.
Today blanketed by native bush, Manaia's jagged peaks and steep bluffs are protected within a Department of Conservation reserve which features a well-maintained 1½ hour track to the summit.

The Painter
John Barr Clark Hoyte was born in England, probably in London, Nothing is known of Hoyte's education and artistic training and we are reduced to the obvious deduction that he was heir to the English tradition of topographic draughtsmanship and watercolour painting. Firm drawing underlies his landscapes, making it appropriate to group him with colonial surveyor–architect artists such as Edward Ashworth, Edmund Norman and George O'Brien.
During his years in New Zealand John Hoyte travelled assiduously in search of new scenes to exploit. His pictorial exploration of the colony's principal dramatic landscapes was completed when he took a cruise circumnavigating the South Island in early 1877, exploring the coast of Fiordland with particular attention. New Zealand subjects would continue to inspire his production long after he had settled in Australia, where they shared his attention with coastal and mountain views drawn chiefly from the neighbourhood of Sydney.
Despite his apparent commercial success, however, Hoyte's standing, like that of George O'Brien, waned in the 1870s: a decade which marked a major shift in New Zealand colonial taste as the Turnerian Romantics such as Gully, J. C. Richmond and W. M. Hodgkins moved into greater prominence. They and their style were to dominate the following decades.
__________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

SPRINGBROOK MOUNTAIN / MT MUMJIN BY ALBERT TUCKER

ALBERT TUCKER (1914-1999)

Springbrook Mountain / Mt Mumjin (1,020 m - 3,350 ft) 

Australia (Queensland)

In Springbrook Landscape, c. 1971, watercolor

The mountain
Springbrook Mountain or Mt Mumjin (1,020 m - 3,350 ft) is the highest point of Springbrook plateau in the Gold Coast hinterland of South East Queensland, Australia.  The plateau is covered in subtropical rainforest and crossed by many small creeks. The area has excellent views to the Gold Coast and is known for its cliffs, waterfalls and forest walks, most of which are protected in the Springbrook National Park.
The timbered plateau was settled relatively late with both the area's inaccessibility and timber reserve status acting as deterrents. In 1906, the area ceased to be a timber reserve and was opened for agricultural settlement.  In the same year the first group of settlers, including James Hardy, arrived from northern New South Wales and referred to the new settlement as Springwood. Following the request of postal officials to change the name to avoid confusion with another location in New South Wales, the area became known as Springbrook.  Dairying was encouraged but the settlers found farming difficult and instead cleared for the land for timber.  By the 1930s Springbrook was almost completely cleared of trees.  In 1911, a school opened and by 1947 a community hall had been built.  Tourism has been the major industry since the 1920s, with many guesthouses opening during this period. A decent road up the mountain was built in the mid 1920s with the first car reaching the settlement in June 1926.  The first declaration of a national park on the plateau was Warrie National Park in 1937.[ The post office was closed in 1958. A memorial to the pioneering settlers of the area was built in 1961 to celebrate 50 years since opening of the former Springbrook State School.
Springbrook was originally known as the Numinbah Plateau.  Springwood was the first name chosen for the locality, however it was changed to Springbrook to avoid confusion with mail deliveries to another Springwood located in the Blue Mountains.

Road access to this eastern Scenic Rim mountain is via Mudgeeraba along the Springbrook Road and from Numinbah Valley via Pine Creek Road. The plateau is part of a biodiversity hot spot. It is part of the Scenic Rim Important Birdlife Area.

The painter
Albert Lee Tucker was an Australian artist, and member of the Heide Circle, a group of modernist artists and writers that centred on the art patrons John and Sunday Reed, whose home, "Heide", located in Bulleen, near Heidelberg (outside Melbourne), was a haven for the group.
Tucker's main inspirations include post-impressionists, expressionists and social realists, as well as personal experience. Tucker's work was strongly influenced by the realistic reflections of two important émigré artists, Josl Bergner and Danila Vassilieff, who arrived in Melbourne in the late 1930s about the same time that Tucker began to explore images of the Great Depression.

Tucker also met Sunday and John Reed, members of the Contemporary Art Society, which was set up in 1938 by George Bell, in opposition to the government Australian Academy of Art, which was believed to promote conservative art and not the modernists.
Tucker's first significant works were produced during his involvement in the army.

 In 1940, Tucker was called up for army service and spent most of his time working in Heidelberg Military Hospital drawing patients suffering from wounds and mental illnesses as a result of war. He produced three important works at this stage, Man at Table, a pen and ink illustration of a man whose nose had been sliced off by a shell fragment, The Waste Land, an image of death sitting on a stool watching and waiting, and Floating Figures, of two figures floating down a hall, a third with a demented smile. All of these images illustrated the horror and madness of war, but in a style reflecting his social realists surrealistic and expressionistic style.
In 1942, Tucker was discharged from the war and returned to Melbourne. An impression of Australian soldiers, clutching young women was the catalyst for his series of works known as the Images of Modern Evil, Victory Girls, depicting Melbourne nightlife. Tucker also took to photography, both of his own paintings, and to record the ideas and scenes he used to compose them, and inadvertently created a document of his time.
In early 1947, Tucker traveled to Japan with the Australian army as an art correspondent. He produced a monochrome pen drawing called Hiroshima; it contains no figures, just the aftermath of the atomic bomb blast, with tents and shelters littering the landscape. In 1954 he met Sidney Nolan in Rome, when he produced Apocalyptic Horse and began painting Australia from memory. He was exhibited in the Venice Biennale in 1956 and then spent two years in London painting the Thames Series.
He then moved to New York in 1958 and his subjects switched from the city to outback Australia. Where some works of Sidney Nolan and Russell Drysdale had reached international level, Tucker rejected them as being nationalistic. He depicted the landscape as being a harsh, barren and sterile wasteland. He distorted stereotypes and icons of the Australian bush, including convicts, Burke and Wills and the Kelly Gang. He was influenced by the sheer barrenness and hopelessness that the outback conveyed, and added these icons as pawns to the outback’s deadly game.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau