MONTE BIANCO PAINTED BY CESARE MAGGI

 

 CESARE MAGGI (1881-1962)
The Mont Blanc (4,808.13 m - 15,776.7 ft)
France - Italy border

In  A view of Monte Bianco from Entrèves, Oil on canvas, 70x100 cm,  Private collection 

 

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.

The mountain
Mont Blanc (in French) 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 rises 4,808.73 m (15,777 ft) above sea level and 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 mountain lies in a range called the Graian Alps, between the regions of Aosta Valley, Italy, and Savoie and Haute-Savoie, France. The location of the summit is on the watershed line between the valleys of Ferret and Veny in Italy and the valleys of Montjoie, and Arve in France. The Mont Blanc massif is popular for mountaineering, hiking, skiing, and snowboarding.
The three towns and their communes which surround Mont Blanc are Courmayeur in Aosta Valley, Italy, and Saint-Gervais-les-Bains and Chamonix in Haute-Savoie, France. A cable car ascends and crosses the mountain range from Courmayeur to Chamonix, through the Col du Géant. Constructed beginning in 1957 and completed in 1965, the 11.6 km (7¼ mi) Mont Blanc Tunnel runs beneath the mountain between these two countries and is one of the major trans-Alpine transport routes.
Since the French Revolution, the issue of the ownership of the summit has been debated.
From 1416 to 1792, the entire mountain was within the Duchy of Savoy. In 1723 the Duke of Savoy, Victor Amadeus II, acquired the Kingdom of Sardinia. The resulting state of Sardinia was to become preeminent in the Italian unification.[ In September 1792, the French revolutionary Army of the Alps under Anne-Pierre de Montesquiou-Fézensac seized Savoy without much resistance and created a department of the Mont-Blanc. In a treaty of 15 May 1796, Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia was forced to cede Savoy and Nice to France. In article 4 of this treaty it says: "The border between the Sardinian kingdom and the departments of the French Republic will be established on a line determined by the most advanced points on the Piedmont side, of the summits, peaks of mountains and other locations subsequently mentioned, as well as the intermediary peaks, knowing: starting from the point where the borders of Faucigny, the Duchy of Aoust and the Valais, to the extremity of the glaciers or Monts-Maudits: first the peaks or plateaus of the Alps, to the rising edge of the Col-Mayor". This act further states that the border should be visible from the town of Chamonix and Courmayeur. However, neither the peak of the Mont Blanc is visible from Courmayeur nor the peak of the Mont Blanc de Courmayeur is visible from Chamonix because part of the mountains lower down obscure them. A Sardinian Atlas map of 1869 showing the summit lying two thirds in Italy and one third in France.
After the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna restored the King of Sardinia in Savoy, Nice and Piedmont, his traditional territories, overruling the 1796 Treaty of Paris. Forty-five years later, after the Second Italian War of Independence, it was replaced by a new legal act. This act was signed in Turin on 24 March 1860 by Napoleon III and Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy, and deals with the annexation of Savoy (following the French neutrality for the plebiscites held in Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna to join the Kingdom of Sardinia, against the Pope's will). A demarcation agreement, signed on 7 March 1861, defines the new border. With the formation of Italy, for the first time Mont Blanc is located on the border of France and Italy.
The 1860 act and attached maps are still legally valid for both the French and Italian governments. One of the prints from the 1823 Sarde Atlas positions the border exactly on the summit edge of the mountain (and measures it to be 4,804 m (15,761 ft) high). The convention of 7 March 1861 recognises this through an attached map, taking into consideration the limits of the massif, and drawing the border on the icecap of Mont Blanc, making it both French and Italian.Watershed analysis of modern topographic mapping not only places the main summit on the border, but also suggests that the border should follow a line northwards from the main summit towards Mont Maudit, leaving the southeast ridge to Mont Blanc de Courmayeur wholly within Italy.
Although the Franco-Italian border was redefined in both 1947 and 1963, the commission made up of both Italians and French ignored the Mont Blanc issue. In the early 21st century, administration of the mountain is shared between the Italian town of Courmayeur and the French town of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, although the larger part of the mountain lies within the commune of the latter.

 
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2021- Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

VOLCAN PUNTIAGUDO PHOTOGRAPHED IN 1932 BY ROBERT GERSTMANN

ROBERT GERSTMANN (1896-1960)
Volcàn Puntiagudo (2, 493 m - 8, 179ft)
Chile

In Volcàn Puntiagudo, photograph,1932, Private collection

The volcano
Volcàn Puntiagudo (2, 493 m - 8, 179ft) also called Cerro Cenizas or Cerro Puntiagudo is a volcano in Chile remarkable for its volcanic chimney released by erosion and forming a summit neck. Puntiagudo is located in central Chile, in the Andes mountain range, between the Rupanco lakes to the north and Todos Los Santos to the south. Administratively, it is located on the border between the provinces of Llanquihue and Osorno of the Region of Lakes. Puntiagudo is an andesitic stratovolcano whose flanks have been eroded by glaciers, especially in their upper par1. Its summit is thus made up of a neck by the release of the volcanic chimney. This physiognomy makes it resemble Corcovado, another Chilean volcano located further south. Cordón Cenizos is a group of fissures and volcanic cones, stretches from Puntiagudo to the northeast. Puntiagudo began to be built at the end of the Pleistocene. However, its last eruption occurred on an unknown date.


The photographer
Robert Gerstmann was a photographer very famous in South America. Gerstmann was a Vienna born electrical engineer who, as a young man, developed an interest in photography. In 1924, he immigrated to Chile and from there traveled to Bolivia, where he made some 5000 photographs, a selection of which appear as photogravures in his Bolivia, 150 Grabados en Cobre (1928), which was reissued in 1996 by the Fundación Quipus in La Paz. Gerstmann ranged far, photographing the altiplano from La Paz south to the Argentine border, west to the Chilean border, and east to the Yungas, Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, and the lowlands along the Ríos Beni and Mamoré. Only Tarija and the Chaco escaped his lens. Five of his photographs illustrate Stewart E. McMillan's "The Heart of Aymara Land" National Geographic Magazine (February 1927), and several appear in Gustavo-Adolfo Otero's Bolivia (Guía Sinóptica) 1929. Gerstmann settled in Santiago in 1929. He published other photo albums, including Chile: 280 grabados en cobre (1932), Colombia: 200 grabados en cobre (1951), and Chile en 110 cuadros (1960?), and dabbled in film-making in Bolivia. He is thought to have died in Santiago ca. 1960. Several thousand of his glass plates are said to be at a university in Antofagasta.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

CEMBA VELLEY PAINTED BY ALBRECHT DÜRER

ALBRECHT  DÜRER (1471-1528)
Cemba Valley (200 m - 656 ft)
Italy

 In Landscape near Segonzano in the Cembra Valley (1495), Watercolour on paper, 21 x 31.2 cm.
The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

About this watercolor
Dürer called this landscape watercolor, which was created during his second Italian journey, "wehlsch pirg" (Italian hills). Its topographical location was long disputed. The most convincing suggestion is that this is a depiction of the Cembra Valley near Segonzano. The free manner in which the scene is captured, with the relaxed light brushstrokes in the foreground while the background is recorded with a naturalistic delicacy, makes it understandable why Dürer's watercolor technique at this time has been compared with that of Paul Cézanne. Watercolours by Dürer mark him as one of the first European landscape artists, while his woodcuts revolutionized the potential of that medium.


The valley
Trentino Alto Adige is the northernmost Italian region and is overwhelmingly mountainous, marked by the steep and picturesque shapes of the Dolomites, with the exception of the Adige Valley and the Dei Laghi Valley, both located below 200 m altitude and therefore considered as a plain. These valleys include large flat areas such as Piana Rotaliana and Piana dell'Alto Garda. While in the southern part of the region, on the shores of Lake Garda, the altitude drops to 65m, the highest mountain ranges peak at over 3,900m. The topographic prominence thus reaches almost 4,000 m. The region is bordered to the east and southeast by Veneto, to the west and southwest by Lombardy, to the north and northeast by the Austrian Land of Tyrol and Salzburg, and to the north -west with the Swiss canton of Graubünden 2. Predoi is the northernmost municipality in the region and in Italy; the municipality is the only one in Italy to be located further north than the 47th parallel.
The region lies between the central and eastern Alps, while to the south the border is delimited by Lake Garda and the Vicentine Pre-Alps.

The artist
Within three months of his marriage, Dürer left for Italy, alone, perhaps stimulated by an outbreak of plague in Nuremberg. He made watercolour sketches as he traveled over the Alps. Some have survived and others may be deduced from accurate landscapes of real places in his later work, for example his engraving Nemesis. In Italy, he went to Venice to study its more advanced artistic world. Through Wolgemut's tutelage, Dürer had learned how to make prints in drypoint and design woodcuts in the German style, based on the works of Schongauer and the Housebook Master. He also would have had access to some Italian works in Germany, but the two visits he made to Italy had an enormous influence on him. He wrote that Giovanni Bellini was the oldest and still the best of the artists in Venice. His drawings and engravings show the influence of others, notably Antonio Pollaiuolo, with his interest in the proportions of the body; Lorenzo di Credi; and Andrea Mantegna, whose work he produced copies of while training. Dürer probably also visited Padua and Mantua on this trip.  Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, and theorist of the German Renaissance. Born in Nuremberg, Dürer established his reputation and influence across Europe in his twenties due to his high-quality woodcut prints. He was in contact with the major Italian artists of his time, including Raphael, Giovanni Bellini and Leonardo da Vinci, and from 1512 was patronized by Emperor Maximilian I. Dürer's vast body of work includes engravings, his preferred technique in his later prints, altarpieces, portraits and self-portraits, watercolours and books. The woodcuts series are more Gothic than the rest of his work. His well-known engravings include the three Meisterstiche (master prints) Knight, Death and the Devil (1513), Saint Jerome in his Study (1514) and Melencolia (1514). Dürer's introduction of classical motifs into Northern art, through his knowledge of Italian artists and German humanists, has secured his reputation as one of the most important figures of the Northern Renaissance. This is reinforced by his theoretical treatises, which involve principles of mathematics, perspective, and ideal proportions.

_______________________________
2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

LA TETE D'AUGUSTE PAINTED BY PAUL CEZANNE

PAUL CEZANNE (1839-1906)

La Tête d'Auguste (278m
 - 912ft)
France (Bouche du Rhône)


In Au fond du ravin, L’Estaque, 1882 Huile sur toile, 73 x 54 cm, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

 

The Hill
The Tête d'Auguste (278m - ) is the highest point of the Chaîne de l'Estaque or the Nerthe chain, a massif of white limestone hills around 28 kilometers long which extends from L'Estaque to Martigues. The Estaque chain is part of the Pyrenean-Provençal chain, a former massif which stretched continuously before the Oligocene, from the Pyrenees to the Estaque massif, in place of the current Gulf of Lion. Nowadays, it forms a sort of isthmus about 8 kilometers wide between the Mediterranean Sea to the south and the Etang de Berre to the north.
The coastline of the Estaque range forms the Côte Bleue with its steep shores cut into deep creeks. The railway line from Miramas to Estaque runs along the coast clinging to the side of the massif. The Estaque range is also home to several gray limestone quarries, two of which are exploited for the manufacture of lime, the others for the general and aggregates and other quarry products (Lafarge).



The painter

The mount Sainte-Victoire appears to have been the subject of a true love story with the painter (Paul Cézanne). He painted this subject more than 80 times, in oil paintings, watercolors and drawings ! but he diddn't painted only the Sainte Victoire... others landscape and mountains of Provence were in his mind too... 
Cézanne had a considerable influence on the art of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. Acknowledged master of his time, he attended during stays in Paris between 1862 and 1882, the Impressionist band: Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir (who also ended his life in the Provencal brightness), Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley and others. He participated in the Impressionist adventure while keeping his personality: it is the time of the shock of the en plein air, easels in the grass, looking for natural light and emotion. 
The influence of the Aix painter is recognized in the history of art since it would be the cause of the Cubist movement embodied in 1906 by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. The first historically so called Cubist painting ' Les Demoiselles d'Avignon' would, a true artistic shock shown by Picasso in 1907 (one year after the death of Cézanne) is today one of the masterpieces of the MoMA in New York. 
It is the search of volumes around which leads to the appearance of geometry in landscapes or still lifes of Cézanne.In 20 years, Cézanne pushes his style to express the emotion of the landscape, suggesting the wind, involving movement just like if we can breathe the air of the scene.


 
__________________________________________
2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT VESUVIUS PAINTED BY CHARLES-FRANÇOIS DE LA CROIX DE MARSEILLE

CHARLES-FRANÇOIS DE LA CROIX DE MARSEILLE (1700-1782)
Mount Vesuvius (1,281m - 4,203ft)
Italy

In Eruption du Vésuve en 1770, oil on canvas, Private collection
 

The volcano
Mount Vesuvius (1,281 meters- 4,203 ft at present) is one of those legendary and mythic mountains the Earth paid regularly tribute. Monte Vesuvius or 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.  Since the eruption of AD 79, Vesuvius has erupted around three dozen times.
It erupted again in 203, during the lifetime of the historian Cassius Dio.
In 472, it ejected such a volume of ash that ashfalls were reported as far away as Constantinople (760 mi.; 1,220 kms).
The eruptions of 512 were so severe that those inhabiting the slopes of Vesuvius were granted exemption from taxes by Theodoric the Great, the Gothicking of Italy.
Further eruptions were recorded in 787, 968, 991, 999, 1007 and 1036 with the first recorded lava flows. The volcano became quiescent at the end of the 13th century and in the following years it again became covered with gardens and vineyards as of old. Even the inside of the crater was moderately filled with shrubbery.
Vesuvius entered a new phase in December 1631, when a major eruption buried many villages under lava flows, killing around 3,000 people. Torrents of lahar were also created, adding to the devastation. Activity thereafter became almost continuous, with relatively severe eruptions occurring in 1660, 1682, 1694, 1698, 1707, 1737, 1760, 1767, 1779, 1794, 1822, 1834, 1839, 1850, 1855, 1861, 1868, 1872, 1906, 1926, 1929, and 1944.  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 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.

The painter
Charles François Grenier de Lacroix, called Charles Francois Lacroix de Marseille, was a French painter
reknown for his landscapes and marines, in the style of Claude Joseph Vernet, Jean-Joseph Kapeller and Henry of Arles. He was a pupil and imitator of Joseph Vernet, and stayed in Rome in 1754. From 1776, he exhibited with great success and spent a good part of his life between Italy and Provence. In 1780, he published an ad to welcome students in his studio in Paris. Jean-Jacques Le Veau and Noël Le Mire engraved some of his paintings.

__________________________________________
2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT SINAI / JABAL MUSA PAINTED BY JAN ASSELIJN

Jan Asselijn (c.1610 – October 1, 1652)
Mount Sinaï / Jabal Musa (2,285 m - 7,496ft)
Egypt

In Flight into Egypt, c. 1640, oil on canvas, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

 

About the painting 

Flight into Egypt used to be a very popular subject. Hundreds of canvas were painted on this subject between the 14th and 19th centuries, showing Mary with the baby on a donkey, led by Joseph, borrowing older iconography from the rare Byzantine journey to Bethlehem. Nevertheless, Joseph sometimes holds the child on his shoulders. Prior to about 1525, it was generally part of a larger cycle, whether it was the Nativity, the Life of Christ, or the Life of the Virgin. The background of these scenes generally (until the Council of Trent tightened up on such additions to the Scriptures) included a number of apocryphal miracles and provided an opportunity for the emerging genre of landscape painting.  The mountain deputed is supposed to be Mount Sinaï,  each painter giving his own vision of the sacred mountain or taking inspiration from what had already been painted in the past. The painted mountain  has generally very little to do with what Mount Sinaï really is.

The mountain
Mount Sinaï (2,285 m - 7,496 ft) or Jabal Mūsā or Gabal Mūsā (in arab : "Moses' Mountain" or "Mount Moses"), also known as Mount Horeb or Jebel Musa (a similarly named mountain in Morocco), is a mountain in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt that is a possible location of the biblical Mount Sinai. The latter is mentioned many times in the Book of Exodus (and other books of the Bible) and the Quran. According to Jewish, Christian, and Islamic tradition, the biblical Mount Sinai was the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments.
Mount Sinai is a moderately high mountain near the city of Saint Katherine in the Sinai region.
It is next to Mount Katherine (2,629 m - 8,625 ft), the highest peak in Egypt.
Mount Sinai's rocks were formed in the late stage of the Arabian-Nubian Shield's (ANS) evolution. Mount Sinai displays a ring complex that consists of alkaline granites intruded into diverse rock types, including volcanics. The granites range in composition from syenogranite to alkali feldspar granite. The volcanic rocks are alkaline to peralkaline and they are represented by subaerial flows and eruptions and subvolcanic porphyry. Generally, the nature of the exposed rocks in Mount Sinai indicates that they originated from differing depths.
There are two principal routes to the summit. The longer and shallower route, Siket El Bashait, takes about 2.5 hours on foot, though camels can be used. The steeper, more direct route (Siket Sayidna Musa) is up the 3,750 "steps of penitence" in the ravine behind the monastery.
The summit of the mountain has a mosque that is still used by Muslims. It also has a Greek Orthodox chapel, constructed in 1934 on the ruins of a 16th-century church, that is not open to the public. The chapel encloses the rock which is considered to be the source for the biblical Tablets of Stone. At the summit also is "Moses' cave", where Moses was said to have waited to receive the Ten Commandments.

The painter

Asselijn was born at Dieppe from a French Huguenot family as Jean Asselin. He received instruction from Esaias van de Velde (1587–1630), and distinguished himself particularly in landscape and animal painting, though his historical works and battle pieces are also admired. He traveled in France and Italy, and modeled his style after Bamboccio (Pieter van Laer), also a member of the Bentvueghels. Nicolaes de Helt Stockade and Asselijn married two sisters in Lyons in 1645, both daughters of Houwaart Koorman of Antwerp. According to Houbraken, he heard this story from Abraham Genoels, who in turn heard it from Laurens Frank, an artist who was staying in the Koorman household with Artus Quellinus in Lyons at the time. Their marriages brought both Asselijn and Helt-Stockade back to the Netherlands after their travels. Asselijn had a withered hand and was small of stature, which gave him the nickname in France of petit Jean Hollandois, and which gave him the nickname Krabbetje (little claw) in the Bentvueghels. He seems to have befriended Rembrandt. In the etching that Rembrandt made of him, Asselijn appears in some states to be standing before an easel. His hands are not shown. Frederick de Moucheron, another Italianate landscape painter, was his pupil. He was one of the first Dutch painters who introduced a fresh and clear manner of painting landscapes in the style of Claude Lorrain, and his example was speedily followed byer artists. Asselijn's pictures were in high estimation at Amsterdam, and several of them are in the museums of that city. Twenty-four, painted in Italy, were engraved. One of his paintings, The Threatened Swan, which portrays a swan aggressively defending its nest, became a symbol of Dutch national resistance, although it is unknown if Asselijn intended it to be so.  The painting has been dated to the 1640s. It is considered to be Asselijn's most famous work  and was the Rijksmuseum's first acquisition.

__________________________________________
2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

ANAMUNDI & WESTERN GHATS BY HENRY SALT

HENRY SALT (1780-1827)
Anamundi (2,479 m - 8,133 ft)
India

In The Baramahal, Poonah,1809, hand colored aquatints, private collection

The mountain
Anamudi is a mountain located in the Indian state of Kerala. It is the highest peak in the Western Ghats and South India.  It lies on the border of Devikulam Taluk, Idukki district and Kothamangalam Taluk, Ernakulam district. The name Anamudi literally translates to "elephant's head" a reference to the resemblance of the mountain to an elephant's head. Anamudi Shola National Park (ASNP) was declared as National Park in December 2003. Anamudi is the highest mountain in peninsular India as well as the largest mountain in Kerala. 
The first recorded ascent of Anamudi was by General Douglas Hamilton of the Madras Army on 4 May 1862, but it is likely that there had been earlier ascents by local people. Anamudi peak is one of only three ultra prominent peaks in South India. It is also the peak with the greatest topographic isolation within India. It is the highest point in India south of Himalayas. Thus it is known as "Everest of South India".

 
The artist
Henry Salt was an English artist, traveller, collector of antiquities, diplomat, and Egyptologist.
After a time as a portrait painter, Salt was permitted to travel with the English nobleman George Annesley, Viscount Valentia as his secretary and draughtsman after being recommended by Thomas Simon Butt. They started on an eastern tour in June 1802, traveling on the British East India Company's extra (chartered) ship Minerva to India via the Cape Colony. In 1805, Valentia sent Salt on a journey into the Abyssinian area (now Ethiopia) to meet with the ras of Tigré to open up trade relations on behalf of the English. While visiting there, Salt gained the respect of the ras. He returned to England on 26 October 1806. His journey home took him through Egypt where he met the pasha Mehmet Ali. Salt's paintings from the trip were used in Valentia's Voyages and Travels to India, published in 1809. The originals of all the drawings were kept by Valentia, as also the copper plates after Salt's death. The format and style of the plates is similar to Thomas and William Daniell's work, "Oriental Scenery" (1795-1808).
Salt returned to Ethiopia in 1809 on a government mission to explore trade and diplomatic links with the Tigrayan warlord Ras Wolde Selassie. Upon arrival, he was unable to meet with the king due to unrest in the country, so instead he went to stay with his friend the ras of Tigré. During this venture, Salt took on the side mission of verifying and correcting the information about the region reported by the Scottish traveler, James Bruce many years earlier. Salt came back to England in 1811 with numerous specimens of both plants and animals.

___________________________________________
2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

HUANGSHAN / 黄山 (3) BY HONG REN / 弘仁

HONG REN / 弘仁 (1610-1663)
Huangshan / 黄山 (1,864m - 6,115ft)
China

In Painting with shitang, ink on paper, 60.2 x 46.8 cm, Qing dynasty, ca. 1657–58,
Yale University Art Gallery - Mary Griggs Burke Collection

The mountain 
Huangshan  /  黄山, sometimes called Yellow Mountains, is a mountain range in southern Anhui province in eastern China. Vegetation on the range is thickest below 1,100 meters (3,600 ft), with trees growing up to the treeline at 1,800 meters (5,900 ft). The Huangshan mountain range has many peaks, some more than 1,000 meters (3,250 feet) high. The three tallest and best-known peaks are Lotus Peak (Lian Hua Feng, 1,864 m), Bright Summit Peak (Guang Ming Ding, 1,840 m), and Celestial Peak (Tian Du Feng, literally Capital of Heaven Peak, 1,829 m).
The area is well known for its scenery, sunsets, peculiarly-shaped granite peaks, Huangshan pine trees, hot springs, winter snow, and views of the clouds from above. Much of Huangshan's reputation derives from its significance in Chinese arts and literature.  In addition to inspiring poets such as Li Bai, Huangshan and the scenery therein has been the frequent subject of poetry and artwork, especially Chinese ink painting and, more recently, photography.  Overall, from the Tang Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty, more than 20,000 poems were written about Huangshan, and a school of painting named after it.  The mountains also have appeared in modern works.  James Cameron, director of the 2009 film Avatar, cited Huangshan as one of his influences in designing the fictional world of that film.  The area also has been a location for scientific research because of its diversity of flora and wildlife. In the early part of the twentieth century, the geology and vegetation of Huangshan were the subjects of multiple studies by both Chinese and foreign scientists. The mountain is still a subject of research.  For example, in the late twentieth century a team of researchers used the area for a field study of Tibetan macaques, a local species of monkey.
Huangshan is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and one of China's major tourist destinations.  The World Heritage Site covers a core area of 154 square kilometres and a buffer zone of 142 square kilometres. In 2002, Huangshan was named the "sister mountain" of Jungfrau in the Swiss Alps.

The painter 
Hong Ren  / 弘仁 who is also known as Hongren, was an early Qing dynasty painter and a member of the Anhui (or Xin'an) school of painting. His birth name was Jiang Fang. After the fall of the Ming dynasty he became a monk, as did Zhu Da, Shitao, and Kun Can. They protested the fall of the Ming dynasty by becoming monks. Hong Ren's style has been said to "represent the world in a dematerialized, cleansed version ... revealing his personal peace through the liberating form of geometric abstraction."

___________________________________________
2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE MOUNT STANLEY BY VITTORIO SELLA

 

VITTORIO SELLA (1859-1943)
Margherita Peak / Mont Stanley (5,109 m-16,763 ft)
Congo - Uganda border

In Mt Stanley from the Esward Peak of Mt Baker - Photographed in 1906 during the Duke of Abruzzi expedition

The Mountain
Mount Stanley (5,109 m -16,762 ft) is located in the Rwenzori range and is the highest mountain of both the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, and the third highest in Africa, after Mount Kilimanjaro (5,895 m -19,340ft) and Mount Kenya (5,199 m - 17,057ft). The peak and several other surrounding peaks are high enough to support glaciers. Mount Stanley is named for the journalist and explorer, Sir Henry Morton Stanley. It is part of the Rwenzori Mountains National Park, a UNESCO world Heritage Site.
Mt. Stanley consists of two twin summits and several lower peaks which are :
Margherita Peak (5,109m - 16,763ft), Alexandra Peak (5,091m - 16,703ft), Albert Peak (5,087m - 16,690ft), Savoia Peak (4,977m - 16,330ft), Ellena Peak (4,968m -16,300ft), Elizabeth Peak (4,929m - 16,170 ft), Phillip Peak (4,920m - 16,140ft), Moebius Peak (4,916m - 16,130 ft) and Great Tooth (4,603m - 15,100ft).
Mt. Stanley was first climbed in 1906 by the Prince Luigi Amedeo di Savoia , Duke of the Abruzzi, (1873-1933), J. Petigax, C. Ollier, and J. Brocherel. He is known as well for his Arctic explorations and for his mountaineering expeditions, particularly to Mount Saint Elias (Alaska–Yukon) and K2 (Pakistan–China). Margherita Peak is named after Queen Margherita of Italy the prince's cousin.
The Rwenzori Mountains National Park is considered a model for integration of cultural values into the Protected Area Management framework as an innovative approach to resource management, the first of its kind in Africa. As a result the local communities have embraced collaborative resource management initiatives. Given its significance as one of the biodiversity hotspots in the Albertine Rift, various local and international NGOs have supported the management and conservation of the property. A General Management Plan guides management operations on-site. Key challenges to address include illegal felling of trees, snow recession due to global warming, human population pressure adjacent to the property and management of waste generated through tourism operations. UWA is addressing the above threats through resource protection, community conservation education, research and ranger-based monitoring, ecotourism and transboundary initiatives with the DRC. The long-term maintenance of the integrity of the property will be achieved through sustainable financing, ecological monitoring, continued collaboration with key stakeholders andregional cooperation.

The photographer
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).
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 and Mustagh Tower in 1909
- In Morocco in 1925.
During expeditions in Alaska, Uganda and Karakoram (K2-Chogolisa), he accompanied the Duke of Abruzzi, Prince Luigi Amedeo di Savoia.
Sella continues the practice of climbing into his old age, completing his final attempt in the Matterhorn at the age of 76; a climb he had to interrupt the rise following an accident in which one of his guides injured. He died in his hometown during World War II. His photographic collection is now managed by the Sella Foundation.
His photos mountain are still considered today to be among the finest ever made.
Jim Curran believes that "Sella remains probably the greatest photographer of the mountain. His name is synonymous with technical perfection and aesthetic refinement. "
The quality of the pictures of Vittorio Sella is partly explained by the use of a view camera 30 × 40 cm, despite the difficulty of the transportation of such a device, both heavy and fragile in places inaccessible; to be able to transport it safely, he had to make special pieces that can be stored in saddle bags. His photographs have been widely distributed, either through the press or in the galleries, and were unanimously celebrated; Ansel Adams, who was able to admire thirty-one in an exhibition that was organized at Sella American Sierra Club, said they inspired him "a religious kind of sense of wonder." Many of his pictures were taken in the mountains for the very first time in the History, which give them a much artistic, historical but also scientific value ; for example, one could measure the decline in the Rwenzori glaciers in Central Africa.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

AIGUILLE NOIRE DE PEUTEREY PAINTED BY CHARLES-HENRI CONTENCIN

CHARLES-HENRI CONTENCIN (1898 - 1955)
Aiguille Noire de Peuterey (3,773 m - 12,379 ft)
Italy

 In The Aiguille Noire de Peuterey, Mont Blanc, France Huile sur toile 54x73, John Mitchell Gallery London

The mountain  

The Aiguille Noire de Peuterey (3,773 m - 12,379 ft) is a mountain of the Mont Blanc massif in Italy, forming part of the Peuterey ridge to the summit of Mont Blanc with its higher neighbour, the Aiguille Blanche de Peuterey. The best-known route on the mountain is the south ridge (TD), first climbed by Karl Brendelet and Hermann Schaller, on 26 and 27 August 1930; it remains one of the great classic rock routes in the massif. The first ascent of the complete Peuterey ridge including the Aiguille Noire de Peuterey (the Intégrale) was on 28–31 July 1934 by Adolf Göttner, Ludwig Schmaderer and Ferdinand Krobath. On 21 August 2010 23-year-old Chloé Graftiaux, a leading Belgian sport climber, fell to her death on the mountain.

The painter
Charles-Henri Contencin (1898-1955) is a French painter who painted many landscapes of mountains and high mountains of the great Alpine peaks (mainly Mont Blanc and Massif and the Écrins). His palette is very characteristic. He particularly used the effects of sunrise or sunset over snow or glaciers. Raised in the Bernese Oberland to the age of 10-12 years, it was a lifelong mountain lover. Good climber, he was a member of the French Alpine Club, where he made the connection with the Mountain Painters Society (SPM). He made the First World War in the infantry and he received the War Cross. He then worked in an architectural office and at the Compagnie des chemins de Fer du Nord before joining the french national railways company, the SNCF, where he was responsible for engineering structures.
In addition to his professional designs it is also author of posters and handbills for the railways under the pseudonym "Charles-Henri." He is best known for its mountain paintings and left an important work. After many years of contempt coming mainly from parisian critics and intelligentsia, Contencin is now recognized worldwide as one of the major mountain painters of the 20th century.

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2021 -  Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE JUNGFRAU PAINTED BY GIORGIO AVANTI

 

 

GIORGIO AVANTI (c.1946)

Jungfrau (4,158 m - 13, 642 ft) 

Switzerland

 

In Jungfrau 2019, oil on acrylic on canvas, 100 x 120 cm. Courtesy John Mitchell Gallery, London

The artist
A recognized Swiss author, poet and painter, Peter Studer uses ‘Giorgio Avanti’ as a pseudonym. He lives and works from a studio in Walchwil on the eastern shore of Lake Zug, in the heart of Switzerland.
Avanti’s use of intense colour has earned him the epithet as the colourist of the Alps and a lengthy article published about his life and work that came out in the October and November 2020 edition of Munich’s art magazine, Mundus, was subtitled The Kolorist der Alpen. Drawing parallels with the Polish colourists of the 1930s and 1940s, the closest living counterpart to Avanti is the recently deceased American painter, Wolf Kahn.
Studer was born in Luzern and studied for a career in law before taking up abstract painting in the 1980s. Moving to portraiture and genre scenes a decade later, Studer has spent the latter half of his career concentrating on the Swiss Alps. Mundus’s journalist, Lena Naumann, characterizes Avanti as a twenty-first century disciple of Giovanni Segantini in his interpretation of the Alps whereas the painter would align himself just as closely with the work of Ferdinand Hodler, the leading Swiss painter of the late nineteenth century and Willy Guggenheim, known as Varlin.
Peter Studer refers to his gift for poetry and short stories as ‘painting with words’. His vibrant canvases display their own poetry, one derived entirely from colour.

The mountain
The Jungfrau (4,158 m - 13,642 ft) ("The virgin" in german) is one of the main summits of the Bernese Alps, located between the northern canton of Bern and the southern canton of Valais, halfway between Interlaken and Fiesch. Together with the Eiger and Mönch, the Jungfrau forms a massive wall overlooking the Bernese Oberland and the Swiss Plateau, one of the most distinctive sights of the Swiss Alps. It is one of the most represented by artists summits with the Matterhorn and the Mont Blanc. The summit was first reached on August 3, 1811 by the Meyer brothers of Aarau and two chamois hunters from Valais. The ascent followed a long expedition over the glaciers and high passes of the Bernese Alps. It was not until 1865 that a more direct route on the northern side was opened. The construction of the Jungfrau railway in the early 20th century, which connects Kleine Scheidegg to the Jungfraujoch, the saddle between the Mönch and the Jungfrau, made the area one of the most-visited places in the Alps. Along with the Aletsch Glacier to the south, the Jungfrau is part of the Jungfrau-Aletsch area, which was declared a World Heritage Site in 2001.
Politically, the Jungfrau is split between the municipalities of Lauterbrunnen (Bern) and Fieschertal (Valais). It is the third-highest mountain of the Bernese Alps after the nearby Finsteraarhorn and Aletschhorn, respectively 12 and 8 km away. But from Lake Thun, and the greater part of the canton of Bern, it is the most conspicuous and the nearest of the Bernese Oberland peaks; with a height difference of 3,600 m between the summit and the town of Interlaken. This, and the extreme steepness of the north face, secured for it an early reputation for inaccessibility.
The landscapes around the Jungfrau are extremely contrasted. Instead of the vertiginous precipices of the north-west, the south-east side emerges from the upper snows of the Aletsch Glacier at around 3,500 metres. The 20 km long valley of Aletsch on the south-east is completely uninhabited and also surrounded by other similar glacier valleys. The whole area constitutes the largest glaciated area in the Alps as well as in Europe.
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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

FUJIYAMA / 富士山 BY SHIRO KASAMATSU / 笠松 紫浪

SHIRO  KASAMATSU / 笠松 紫浪) (1898-1991)
FujiYama / 富士山 (3,776 m - 12,389 ft)
Japan

In Fuji from Yoshida Yamanashi, 1958,  Woodblock Print Ink and color on paper, Private collection

 
The artist
Shiro Kasamatsu (笠松 紫浪) was a Japanese engraver and print maker trained in the Shin-Hanga and Sōsaku-Hanga styles of woodblock printing. Kasamatsu was born in Tokyo in 1898 and apprenticed at the age of 13 to Kaburagi Kiyokata (1878-1973), a traditional master of Bijin-ga, pictures of beautiful women. Kasamatsu however took an interest in landscape and was given the pseudonym Shiro by his teacher, which he used as a signature mark in his prints.  Kasamatsu made woodblock prints for the publisher Shōzaburō Watanabe from 1919.  Almost all the woodblocks were destroyed in a fire in Watanabe's print shop following the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. Around 50 prints were published by Watanabe by the late 1940s. Kasamatsu began to partner with Unsodo in Kyoto from the 1950s and produced nearly 102 prints by 1960. He also began to print and publish on his own in the Sōsaku-Hanga style. He produced nearly 80 Sōsaku-Hanga prints between 1955 and 1965.

The mountain
Mount Fuji or Fujiyama (富士山) 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 (The High Peak of Fuji), Fuyō-hō (The Lotus Peak), and Fugaku , 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 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....

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

LES ROCHERS DU PARQUET (VERCORS) PAINTED BY JEAN-BAPTISTE NÉE

 

JEAN-BAPTISTE NÉE (b.1986)
Les Rochers du Parquet  2, 004 m - 6, 574 ft)
France

In "Vercors, hiver, plateau, vent",gouache sur papier  2019, 32, 5  x 50cm,

©Jean-Baptiste Née @jeanbaptiste.nee

The artist
Jean-Baptiste Née, born in 1986. is a french painter, scenographer and visual artist, graduated from Arts-Décoratifs of Paris in 2012. Jean-Baptiste Née works in the mountains and high mountains, always in situ, in direct confrontation with the movements of the earth and water and wind. He gives a growing place for the action of the elements on the work in progress (rain, snow, frost, etc.). He established his "large workshop" in the Swiss Alps or in the Vercors massif - especially in winter -, as well as during long hikes in the Italian Alps. In the winter of 2018, he worked in the massifs of Wudangshan and Lushan, in China, and became interested in the Taoist notion of "Sky" (t’ien.
Since 2016, Jean-Baptiste Née exhibits regularly in galleries in France and Switzerland. His workshop is in Montreuil, France. Next exhibition th 8th April  in Galeria Obsucra in Paris. A book was recently published about his work  "Le monde nu" Éditions Hartpon. Contact @jeanbaptiste.nee

The mountain  

The Rochers du Parquet (2,004 m-) make the eastern edge of the Vercors to the west of Mont Aiguille. They take the form of a long cliff  facing Mont Aiguille. They support the highlands of Vercors and its nature reserve. A few climbing routes have been traced there. They are separated from the more northerly steep slopes of the Grand Veymont by the deep notch of the Pas des Bachassons. The deep indentation of the cliff separates the towers of Rochers du Parquet from the rest of the long cliff which runs towards the Pas de l'Aiguille. 
The crossing of the Rochers du Parquet is a superb hike typical of the Hauts Plateaux du Vercors. 

The course takes place in a landscape where Mont Aiguille is constantly visible.

The Vercors presents the characteristic of presenting numerous possible passages, talwegs, ridges, valleys and basins, without any obvious particularity to facilitate the description of a route - no cairns either at the beginning of the crossing.

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2021- Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

PIZ ROSEG PAINTED BY JOHANNES SCHÜTZ

JOHANNES SCHÜTZ (1886-1953)
Piz Roseg (3,937 m -12,917 ft)
Switzerland - Italy border

In Piz Roseg and the Sellagruppe as seen from Fuorcla-Surlej, Graubunden, Switzerland. oil on canvas, 82 x 62cm, 1934, Courtesy John Mitchell Gallery

The mountain
Piz Roseg (3,937 m -12,917 ft)  is a mountain of the Bernina Range, overlooking the Val Roseg in the Swiss canton of Graubünden.There are two summits on its main ridge:
- the south-east and higher summit (3,937 m)
- the north-west summit, known as the Schneekuppe (3,920 m). There is also a prominent top on the east-north-east ridge, called the Roseg Pitschen (3,868 m) (Italian border).
The first ascent of the mountain to the Schneekuppe was by F. T. Bircham with guides Peter Jenny and Alexander Fleury on 31 August 1863. The highest point of the mountain was reached two years later by A. W. Moore and Horace Walker with guide Jakob Anderegg on 28 June 1865.
Piz Roseg is separated from the neighbouring Piz Scerscen by the Porta da Roseg (3,522 m), also called the Güssfeldtsattel. The Swiss side of this col – a steep ice slope of up to 70° – was first climbed by Paul Güssfeldt, with guides Hans Grass, Peter Jenny and Caspar Capat on 13 September 1872. Grass and Capat had spent the previous day cutting steps up the first two-fifths of the route. The following day they added at least another 450 steps on the first ascent.
The 700-metre north-east face of Piz Roseg was first climbed by Christian Klucker and L. Norman-Neruda on 16 July 1890; the face – with a notable serac band halfway up – sports a number of difficult routes. Klucker, together with M. Barberia, also made the first traverse from the Italian side of the Porta da Roseg on 21 June 1898.

The artist
Schütz is a academic Swiss painter, born in the Netherlands. He comes from a family of artists. He is reknown for having painted the Swiss and Italian Alps mountains. No biographical details are avalaible about him, even if his works appears quite often in auctions.

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2021- Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MONT-BLANC DU TACUL PAINTED BY CESARE MAGGI

 

CESARE MAGGI (1881-1962)
Mont Blanc du Tacul (4,248m -13,937 ft)
France ( Haute-Savoie)

 In Mont Blanc du Tacul seen from the Glacier du Géant, Chamonix, France. oil on panel, 27 x 37cm, courtesy John Mitchell Gallery, London 

The mountain
Mont Blanc du Tacul (4,248m - 13,937 ft) is a mountain in the Mont Blanc massif of the French Alps situated midway between the Aiguille du Midi and Mont Blanc. The Mont Blanc du Tacul looks like a large, snow-covered trapezoid. It is part of the peaks of the Alps over 4,000 meters, of which it is the twenty-fourth highest. To the north of the summit is the Aiguille du Midi, from which it is separated by the Col du Midi (3,532 m), to the south the Mont Maudit, from which it is separated by the Col Maudit (4,035 m), at the is the Aiguilles du Diable then the Glacier du Géant and to the west the Aiguille de Saussure (3,839 m) then the Bossons glacier which rises to its summit. It has a secondary summit, the eastern summit (4,247 m), which is the exit from the Gervasutti pillar. The official first ascent of Mont Blanc du Tacul was by a guideless party comprising Charles Hudson, Edward John Stevenson, Christopher and James Grenville Smith, E. S. Kennedy, Charles Ainslie and G. C. Joad on 8 August 1855. However, Courmayeur guides may have already ascended the peak during their attempts in 1854 and 1855 to force a way up Mont Blanc from the Italian side.

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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2021- Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

BLACK MESA ( 2) PAINTED BY GEORGIA O'KEEFFE

 

 

GEORGIA O' KEEFFE (1887-1986)
Black Mesa (1,739 m - 5,705 ft)
United States of America (Colorado, New Mexico, and Oklahoma)

In Mesa and Road East, oil on canvas, 1952, Private collection

The mountain
Black Mesa (1,739 m - 5,705 feet) is a mesa in the U.S. states of Colorado, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. It extends from Mesa de Maya, Colorado southeasterly 28 miles (45 km) along the north bank of the Cimarron River, crossing the northeast corner of New Mexico to end at the confluence of the Cimarron River and Carrizo Creek near Kenton in the Oklahoma panhandle. Its highest elevation is in Colorado. The highest point of Black Mesa within New Mexico is 1,597 m - 5,239 feet. The plateau that formed at the top of the mesa has been known as a "geological wonder" of North America. There is abundant wildlife in this shortgrass prairie environment, including mountain lions, butterflies, and the Texas horned lizard. The plateau has been home to Plains Indians. In the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century the area was a hideout for outlaws such as William Coe and Black Jack Ketchum. The outlaws built a fort known as the Robbers' Roost. The stone fort housed a blacksmith shop, gun ports, and a piano. The present-day Oklahoma Panhandle area, which was then considered a no man's land, lacked law enforcement agencies and hence the outlaws found it safe to hide in the region. However, as new settlers arrived in the area for copper and coal mining and also for cattle ranching activities by grazing cattle in the mesa region, law enforcement became more effective, and the outlaws were brought under control.


The painter
Georgia O’Keeffe is one of the most significant and intriguing artists of the twentieth century, known internationally for her boldly innovative art. Her distinct flowers, dramatic cityscapes, glowing landscapes, and images of bones against the stark desert sky are iconic and original contributions to American Modernism.
Born on November 15, 1887, the second of seven children, Georgia Totto O’Keeffe grew up on a farm near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1905-1906 and the Art Students League in New York in 1907-1908. Under the direction of William Merritt Chase, F. Luis Mora, and Kenyon Cox she learned the techniques of traditional realist painting. The direction of her artistic practice shifted dramatically in 1912 when she studied the revolutionary ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow. Dow’s emphasis on composition and design offered O’Keeffe an alternative to realism. She experimented for two years, while she taught art in South Carolina and west Texas. Seeking to find a personal visual language through which she could express her feelings and ideas, she began a series of abstract charcoal drawings in 1915 that represented a radical break with tradition and made O’Keeffe one of the very first American artists to practice pure abstraction.
O’Keeffe mailed some of these highly abstract drawings to a friend in New York City, who showed them to Alfred Stieglitz. An art dealer and internationally known photographer, he was the first to exhibit her work in 1916. He would eventually become O’Keeffe’s husband.
In the summer of 1929, O’Keeffe made the first of many trips to northern New Mexico. The stark landscape, distinct indigenous art, and unique regional style of adobe architecture inspired a new direction in O’Keeffe’s artwork. For the next two decades she spent part of most years living and working in New Mexico . She made the state her permanent home in 1949, three years after Stieglitz’s death. O’Keeffe’s New Mexico paintings coincided with a growing interest in regional scenes by American Modernists seeking a distinctive view of America. Her simplified and refined representations of this region express a deep personal response to the high desert terrain.
In the 1950s, O’Keeffe began to travel internationally. She created paintings that evoked a sense of the spectacular places she visited, including the mountain peaks of Peru and Japan’s Mount Fuji. At the age of seventy-three she embarked on a new series focused on the clouds in the sky and the rivers below.
Suffering from macular degeneration and discouraged by her failing eyesight, O’Keeffe painted her last unassisted oil painting in 1972. But O’Keeffe’s will to create did not diminish with her eyesight. In 1977, at age ninety, she observed, “I can see what I want to paint. The thing that makes you want to create is still there.”
Late in life, and almost blind, she enlisted the help of several assistants to enable her to again create art. In these works she returned to favorite visual motifs from her memory and vivid imagination.
Georgia O’Keeffe died in Santa Fe, on March 6, 1986, at the age of 98.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

VOLCÀN ORSONO PHOTOGRAPHED BY ROBERT GERSTMANN

 

ROBERT GERSTMANN (1896-1960)
Volcàn Orsono (2,652 m - 8700 ft)
Chile

in Lago Villarrica e Volcan Orsono, photo, 1932

The volcano
The Osorno is a stratovolcano located between the province of Osorno and that of Llanquihue, in the Lakes region of Chile. At an altitude of 2,652 meters, it is the most active volcano in the southern Chilean Andes.  It rises to the east of Lake Llanquihue, known worldwide as a symbol of the local landscape. The volcano also dominates Lake Todos los Santos. Its last eruption dates from 1869. Charles Darwin saw the Osorno from afar on his second voyage on HMS Beagle and witnessed its eruption1 in January 18352. Its first ascent was made in 1848 by Jean Renous.

The photographer
Robert Gerstmann was a photographer very famous in South America. Gerstmann was a Vienna born electrical engineer who, as a young man, developed an interest in photography. In 1924, he immigrated to Chile and from there traveled to Bolivia, where he made some 5000 photographs, a selection of which appear as photogravures in his Bolivia, 150 Grabados en Cobre (1928), which was reissued in 1996 by the Fundación Quipus in La Paz. Gerstmann ranged far, photographing the altiplano from La Paz south to the Argentine border, west to the Chilean border, and east to the Yungas, Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, and the lowlands along the Ríos Beni and Mamoré. Only Tarija and the Chaco escaped his lens. Five of his photographs illustrate Stewart E. McMillan's "The Heart of Aymara Land" National Geographic Magazine (February 1927), and several appear in Gustavo-Adolfo Otero's Bolivia (Guía Sinóptica) 1929. Gerstmann settled in Santiago in 1929. He published other photo albums, including Chile: 280 grabados en cobre (1932), Colombia: 200 grabados en cobre (1951), and Chile en 110 cuadros (1960?), and dabbled in film-making in Bolivia. He is thought to have died in Santiago ca. 1960. Several thousand of his glass plates are said to be at a university in Antofagasta. 

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MONTE BURNEY BY ROBERT OLIVER CUNNINGHAM

ROBERT OLIVER CUNNINGHAM (1841-1918)
Monte Burney (1,758m - 5,768 ft)
Chile

In Monte Burney, engraving, 1871

The volcano
Monte Burney (1,758m - 5,768 ft) is a volcano in southern Chile, part of its Austral Volcanic Zone which consists of six volcanoes with activity during the Quaternary.  This volcanism is linked to the subduction of the Antarctic Plate beneath the South America Plate and the Scotia Plate. The volcano is named after James Burney, a companion of James Cook.  It is one of the many English language placenames in the region, which are the product of the numerous English research expeditions such as these by Robert FitzRoy and Phillip Parker King in 1825-1830.Monte Burney is formed by a caldera with a glaciated stratovolcano on its rim. This stratovolcano in turn has a smaller caldera. An eruption is reported for 1910, with less certain eruptions in 1970 and 1920.  Tephra analysis has yielded evidence for many eruptions during the Pleistocene and Holocene, including two large explosive eruptions during the early and mid-Holocene. These eruptions deposited significant tephra layers over Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego.

The naturalist
Robert Oliver Cunningham  was a Scottish naturalist. In January 1866 he was appointed Professor of Natural History in the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, but resigned in June in consequence of being appointed by the Admiralty to collect plants as naturalist on board HMS Nassau, ] then commissioned for the survey of the Straits of Magellan and the west coast of Patagonia.  This voyage started on 24 August 1866 from the Thames, and on 18 February 1967 she arrived in Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands to coal, departing again on 2 March, much to Cunningham's regret. They returned to the Falklands in 1868 enabling Cunningham to explore and study the plants and seaweeds on East Falkland returning a third time early in 1869.  The Nassau returned to England on 31 July 1869 but Cunningham remained employed by the Navy so that he could write up his natural history notes and his narrative of the voyage, this was published in 1871 as The Natural History of the Straits of Magellan.  In all, Cunningham published 18 scientific papers before 1872 his first which was about gannets was his theses but the others were mainly on his observations from voyage of the Nassau.  He presented some of these papers to the Zoological Society of London and to the Linnean Society, becoming a fellow of the latter in 1870.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

 

THE STROMBOLI VOLCANO PAINTED BY ROBINET TESTARD (1480)

ROBINET TESTARD (fl. 1471-1531)
The Stromboli volcano (924 m -3,031 ft)
Italy (Island of Stromboli)

In "Les Iles Eoloiennes"  from  "Secrets de l'Histoire naturelle,  ca.1480-1485, BnF Paris

The mountain
Stromboli  is a small island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, off the north coast of Sicily, containing one of the three active volcanoes (924 m -3,031 ft) in Italy. It is one of the eight Aeolian Islands, a volcanic arc north of Sicily. This name is derived from the Ancient Greek name Strongulē which was given to it because of its round swelling form. The island's population is about 500. The volcano has erupted many times and is constantly active with minor eruptions, often visible from many points on the island and from the surrounding sea, giving rise to the island's nickname "Lighthouse of the Mediterranean". The most recent major eruption was on 13 April 2009. Stromboli stands 926 m (3,034 ft) above sea level, and over 2,700 m (8,860 ft) on average above the sea floor. There are three active craters at the peak. A significant geological feature of the volcano is the Sciara del Fuoco ("Stream of fire"), a big horseshoe-shaped depression generated in the last 13,000 years by several collapses on the northwestern side of the cone. Two kilometers to the northeast lies Strombolicchio, the volcanic plug remnant of the original volcano.
Mt. Stromboli has been in almost continuous eruption for the past 2,000 years. A pattern of eruption is maintained in which explosions occur at the summit craters, with mild to moderate eruptions of incandescent volcanic bombs, at intervals ranging from minutes to hours. This Strombolian eruption, as it is known, is also observed at other volcanoes worldwide. Eruptions from the summit craters typically result in a few short, mild, but energetic bursts, ranging up to a few hundred meters in height, containing ash, incandescent lava fragments and stone blocks. Stromboli's activity is almost exclusively explosive, but lava flows do occur at times when volcanic activity is high: an effusive eruption occurred in 2002, the first in 17 years, and again in 2003, 2007, and 2013–14. Volcanic gas emissions from this volcano are measured by a Multi-Component Gas Analyzer System, which detects pre-eruptive degassing of rising magma, improving prediction of volcanic activity.

The artist
Robinet Testard (fl. 1470–1531) was a French medieval enluminist and painter, whose works are difficult to attribute since none of them was signed or dated. He is known to have worked for the family of Charles, Count of Angoulême (1459–96) in Cognac, and made Valet de Chambre to the family in 1484. When the Count of Angoulême died in 1496, Testard accepted service with the Count's widow, Louise of Savoy, and is mentioned at the time of her death in 1531. Testard started his career in Poitiers.  His works include a page in Le  Missel de Poitiers, the Les Heures de La Rochefoucauld , and two other Books of Hours. His middle period, characterised by tight compositions and sharply defined colouring, is typified by his Roman de la Rose, the Nouailher Missal and the Book of Hours, probably painted for Charles, Count of Angoulême about 1480.  Surprisingly, 17 engravings by Israhel van Meckenem were included in the tome and coloured by Testard. He produced another Book of Hours, a copy of Dioskurides and mythological illustrations after Solinus and Pliny titled Les Secrets de l'histoire naturelle contenant les merveilles et choses memorables du monde (cf. above) . He also illustrated Matthaeus Platearius' "The Book of Simple Medicines".

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MONTE EPOMEO PAINTED BY SIMON DENIS

 

SIMON DENIS (1755-1813)
Monte Epomeo (789 m - 2,589 ft)
Italy (Ischia Island)

 In Le sommet du mont Epomeo dans l'île d'Ischia, Oil on paper, Musée du Louvre, Paris

The mountain  

Monte Epomeo (789 m - 2,589 ft) is the highest mountain on the volcanic island of Ischia, in the Gulf of Naples, Italy. Epomeo is believed to be a volcanic horst which towers above the rest of Ischia. Much of Epomeo is covered in lush greenery, with a few vineyards also occupying its slopes. Approximately 75 m (246 ft) from the peak the mountain is covered in white lava which may be confused with snow. A path leads to the summit of the mountain from Fontana, one of its quiet traditional villages.

The painter
Simon-Joseph-Alexandre-Clément Denis was a Belgian painter active primarily in Italy. Denis first studied in his native city of Antwerp, with the landscape and animal painter H.-J. Antonissen.
He moved to Paris in the 1780s, and soon gained the patronage of genre painter and art dealer Jean-Baptiste Lebrun, whose support allowed him to move to Rome in 1786. His paintings there attracted favorable attention, and in 1787 he married a local woman. He remained close to the Flemish community in Rome, and in 1789 was elected to head the Foundation St.-Julien-des-Flamands. He also developed ties within the French artistic community; Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun stayed with him for some days in 1789 and that same year he and she traveled with François-Guillaume Ménageot to visit Tivoli. François Marius Granet sought his advice when he arrived in Rome in 1802.
In 1803, he was elected to the Accademia di San Luca; in 1806 he settled for good in Naples, becoming court painter to Joseph Bonaparte. His wonderful Landscape near Rome during a Storm (1786–1806) an oil on paper probably representating Monte Cavo as well, is now visible at The MET in New York city.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE DACHSTEIN PAINTED BY KONRAD PETRIDES

KONRAD PETRIDES (1864-1944)
Hoher Dachstein (2, 995m - 9, 826ft)
Austria  

In Dachstein mit Gosausee, 1899,  Private collection

The mountain  

The Dachstein (2, 995m - 9, 826ft) is a strongly karstic Austrian mountain, and the second highest mountain in the Northern Limestone Alps. It is situated at the border of Upper Austria and Styria in central Austria, and is the highest point in each of those states. Parts of the massif also lie in the state of Salzburg, leading to the mountain being referred to as the Drei-Lander-Berg ("three-state mountain"). The Dachstein massif covers an area of around 20x30 km with dozens of peaks above 2,500 m, the highest of which are in the southern and south-western areas. Seen from the north, the Dachstein massif is dominated by the glaciers with the rocky summits rising beyond them. By contrast, to the south, the mountain drops almost vertically to the valley floor.
The summit was first reached in 1832 by Peter Gappmayr, via the Gosau glacier, after an earlier attempt by Erzherzog Karl via the Hallstätter glacier had failed. Within two years of Gappmayr's success a wooden cross had been erected at the summit. The first person to reach the summit in winter was Friedrich Simony, on 14 January 1847. The sheer southern face was first climbed on 22 September 1909 by the brothers Irg and Franz Steiner.
Being the highest point of two different Bundesländer, the summit is a popular goal in both summer and winter. In fine weather as many as 100 climbers may be attempting the ascent, leading to congestion at key sections of the climb.

The artist
Konrad Petrides was a Viennese landscape and stage painter in the studio Hermann Burghart, where the painters Anton Brioschi, Josef Kautsky, Georg Jany and Leopold Rothaug also worked. He also painted many veduras, especially from Lower Austria and East Tyrol. Petrides was a member of the Dürer League, in whose exhibitions he participated and whose silver medal he received in 1919. In 1904 he also received the gold medal at the World's Fair in St. Louis, USA.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau