SOUTHERN ANDES (2) PAINTED BY RHOD WULFARS

 

 

RHOD WULFARS (bn. 1979)
Southern Andes (6,991 m - 22, 838ft)
Argentina

In Somewhere in Andes, acrylic on hardboard, 2018, Private collection @rhodwulfars

About this painting
The painter wrote: “It is not a real mountain. Most of my paintings are born from the combination of the imagination and the hours spent looking, walking and smelling them. I call them "Twins" because they are similar to those reliefs of the Argentinian Andean Coridilla called "acarreos", which are long slopes of very popular loose rock that can be easily viewed. very frequently observed. This painting is therefore that of an unknown mountain, dreamt up which sums up several, and which came out of my unconscious one afternoon when the brush gave it life in a mysterious way without my being able to explain it. "
And indeed this mountain that looks a lot like the Alpamayo in Peru is not the Alpamayo (even if it could be the most famous South West face to be published very soon in this blog) !), any more than it is not the Cerro Poincenot, the Fitz Roy, the Cerro Torre or the Aconcagua, the highest peak in the Andes. These Twins imagined, encompassed, summarized and illustrated all these mountains at the same time. The most amazing being that they do it with a single stroke of the brushes as powerful and definitive as the rocky uplift itself.

The artist
Rhod Wulfars is a contemporary mountain painter using mainly acrylic technique for his paintings.
He was born in 1979 in Mendoza (Argentina). In his website he wrote: "I have spent my whole life by the mountains. On day I started to paint them". Using, in the manner of Nicolas de Staël, a style always beetween abstract and figurative, his very strong and very moving paintings described perfectly the majesty and the spectacular contents of the peaks he paints. Rhod Wulfars makes a surprising use of acrylic medium, in thick paste as one could do with oil paint. He used to named his works only bu numbers, and series letters, but sometime he writes the name of the peaks ans makes it more easy to identify. Other works by this artist on his website : rhodwulfars.wixsite.com/rhodwulfars/

The mountains
The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (Cordillera de los Andes in Spanish ) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is 7,000 km (4,350 mi) long, 200 to 700 km (124 to 435 mi) wide (widest between 18°S - 20°S latitude), and has an average height of about 4,000 m (13,123 ft). The Andes extend from north to south through seven South American countries: Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina.
The Andes Mountains are the highest mountain range outside Asia. The highest mountain outside Asia, Argentina's Mount Aconcagua, rises to an elevation of about 6,961 m (22,838 ft) above sea level. The peak of Chimborazo in the Ecuadorian Andes is farther from the Earth's center than any other location on the Earth's surface, due to the equatorial bulge resulting from the Earth's rotation. The world's highest volcanoes are in the Andes, including Ojos del Salado on the Chile-Argentina border, which rises to 6,893 m (22,615 ft).
The Andes are also part of the American Cordillera, a chain of mountain ranges (cordillera) that consists of an almost continuous sequence of mountain ranges that form the western "backbone" of North America, Central America, South America and Antarctica.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

TORRES DEL PAINE (4) PAINTED BY JAMES HART DYKE

 

JAMES HART DYKE (bn.1966)

Torres del Paine (2,500 m - 8,200 ft) 

Chile

In Torres del Paine first lights, study 2017, Courtesy John Mitchell Gallery London  

The mountains
The Torres del Paine (2,500 metres - 8,200 ft) are the distinctive three granite peaks of the Paine mountain range or Paine Massif. They are known as Torres d'Agostini, Torres Central and Torres Monzino. They are joined by the Cuernos del Paine. The area also boasts valleys, rivers such as the Paine, lakes, and glaciers. The well-known lakes include Grey, Pehoé, Nordenskiöld, and Sarmiento. The glaciers, including Grey, Pingo and Tyndall, belong to the Southern Patagonia Ice Field.
he landscape of the park is dominated by the Paine massif, which is an eastern spur of the Andes located on the east side of the Grey Glacier, rising dramatically above the Patagonian steppe. Small valleys separate the spectacular granite spires and mountains of the massif. These are: Valle del Francés (French Valley), Valle Bader, Valle Ascencio, and Valle del Silencio (Silence Valley).The Southern Patagonian Ice Field mantles a great portion of the park.


The painter
James Hart Dyke’s work is centred on landscape painting, from the domesticity of paintings of country houses to paintings generated from physically demanding expeditions over remote mountains. James has also undertaken a series of projects including accompanying HRH The Prince of Wales as the official artist on royal tours, working as ‘artist in residence’ for The British Secret Intelligence Service, working as an artist embedded with the British Forces in war zones, working for the producers of the James Bond films and working as ‘artist in residence’ for Aston Martin. These projects required him to respond in many different ways and have allowed him to experiment with more graphic forms of painting influenced by his studies as an architect at the Royal College of Art. His portraits have been shown at the National Portrait Gallery and at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters exhibitions.

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2020 - Wandering Vertexes
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

ILLINIZAS VOLCANOES SKETCHED BY FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH (1826-1900)

FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH (1826-1900),

Illiniza Sur  (5,248 m-17, 218ft)

Illiniza Norte 5,126 m-16, 818ft)
Ecuador

 In Mount Iliniza, Ecuador, July 3, 1857,  Graphite, brush and white gouache on green paper, 31.1 x 43.2 cm, Smithsonian / Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum 

The volcanoes
The Illinizas are a pair of volcanic mountains that are located to the south of Quito, Ecuador. They are located in the Illinizas Ecological Reserve (Reserva Ecológica Los Illinizas). These twin mountains are separated by a saddle that is about a kilometer long. The peaks are among the highest in Ecuador, with Illiniza Sur (5248 m-17, 218ft) standing slightly taller than Illiniza Norte 5126 m- 16, 818ft) its northern counterpart.
Most guidebooks (for example, Lonely Planet Ecuador, Ecuador: A Climbing Guide) spell the mountain with only one "l" as in Iliniza. The name Illinizas is derived from the Kunza words for "masculine hill."
Whilst Illiniza Sur (the southern peak) is a more difficult climb due to its glacial nature, Illiniza Norte requires little or no climbing expertise, and may be climbed as a trekking peak. A guide is still recommended, however, as the path becomes hard to navigate as it approaches the summit.
The Illinizas are excellent mountains for acclimatization to altitude, and are frequently used as a preparatory climb to higher peaks such as Cotopaxi, Chimborazo and Cayambe.
There is a rustic refuge located between the north and south peaks. It can be reached in one hour by car from El Chaupi, followed by a three-hour climb. The refuge has gas stoves, pots and pans and bunk beds. It is necessary to bring warm sleeping bags and food, but water is available to be boiled. The Englishman Edward Whymper tried and failed twice to make the first ascent of Iliniza Sur. It was climbed for the first time in 1880 by his two Italian guides Jean-Antoine Carrel and Louis Carrel. The first ascent of Iliniza Norte was made in 1912 by the Ecuadorians Nicolás Martínez and Alejandro Villavicencio.

The painter
Frederic Edwin Church was an American landscape painter born in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a central figure in the Hudson River School of American landscape painters, perhaps best known for painting large panoramic landscapes, often depicting mountains, waterfalls, and sunsets, but also sometimes depicting dramatic natural phenomena that he saw during his travels to the Arctic and Central and South America. Church's paintings put an emphasis on light and a romantic respect for natural detail. In his later years, Church painted classical Mediterranean and Middle Eastern scenes and cityscapes.
Church was the product of the second generation of the Hudson River School and the pupil of Thomas Cole, the school’s founder. The Hudson River School was established by the British Thomas Cole when he moved to America and started painting landscapes, mostly of mountains and other traditional American scenes. Both Cole and Church were devout Protestants and the latter's beliefs played a role in his paintings especially his early canvases. Church did differ from Cole in the topics of his paintings: he preferred natural and often majestic scenes over Cole's propensity towards allegory.
Church, like most second generation Hudson River School painters, used extraordinary detail, romanticism, and luminism in his paintings. Romanticism was prominent in Britain and France in the early 1800s as a counter-movement to the Enlightenment virtues of order and logic. Artists of the Romantic period often depicted nature in idealized scenes that depicted the richness and beauty of nature, sometimes also with emphasis on the grand scale of nature.
This tradition carries on in the works of Frederic Church, who idealizes an uninterrupted nature, highlighted by creating excruciatingly detailed art. The emphasis on nature is encouraged by the low horizontal lines, and preponderance of sky to enhance the wilderness; humanity, if it is represented, is depicted as small in comparison with the greater natural reality. The technical skill comes in the form of luminism, a Hudson River School innovation particularly present in Church's works. Luminism is also cited as encompassing several technical aspects, which can be seen in Church’s works. One example is the attempt to “hide brushstrokes,” which makes the scene seem more realistic and lessen the artist’s presence in the work. Most importantly is the emphasis on light (hence luminism) in these scenes. The several sources of light create contrast in the pictures that highlights the beauty and detailed imagery in the painting.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MONTE CIVETTA PAINTED BY ELIJAH WALTON

 

ELIJAH WALTON (1832-1880)
Monte Civetta (3,220 m - 10, 580 ft)
Italy

In Dolomites - in Spring. Civetta from Forcella Staulanza (North East), 1875 oil on canvas, 38 x 183 cm.

The mountain
Monte Civetta (3,220 m - 10, 580 ft) is a prominent and major mountain of the Dolomites, in the Province of Belluno in northern Italy. Its north-west face can be viewed from the Taibon Agordino valley, and is classed as one of the symbols of the Dolomites. The mountain is thought to have been first climbed by Simeone di Silvestro in 1855, which, if true, makes it the first major Dolomite peak to be climbed. The north-western face, with its 1,000-metre-high cliff, was first climbed in 1925 by Emil Solleder and Gustl Lettenbauer. It is historically considered the first "sixth grade" in six-tier scale of alpinistic difficulties proposed by Willo Welzenbach (corresponding to 5.9). Thirty years later UIAA used this as a basis for its grading system. The famed Svan mountain climber Mikhail Khergiani died in a climbing accident on Monte Civetta in 1969.

The artist
The British landscapist, Elijah Walton is best known for his landscapes of mountains in the Alps. Due to the poorness of his family, without the help of one or two friends he would have been unable to study art, for which his talent was soon exhibited. After passing some years at the art academy in Birmingham, he became at the age of eighteen a student at the Royal Academy Schools in London, where he had already exhibited a picture. There he worked assiduously, drawing from the antique and from life. Nearly ten years later an accidental circumstance revealed to a friend his capabilities in mountain landscape, and in 1860, immediately after his marriage, he went to Switzerland. Thence he proceeded to Egypt, where unhappily his wife died of dysentery near the second cataract. He remained in the east, spending some time in Syria and at Constantinople, till the spring of 1862, when he returned for a short time to London. But for the next five years he was much abroad, working either in the Alps or in Egypt. His sketching tours then became rarer and shorter, though he visited Greece, Norway, and the Alps. At first he resided at Staines, then removed to the neighbourhood of Bromsgrove, living most of the time at the Forelands, near that town. In 1872 his wife died, and the loss permanently affected his health. He died on 25 August 1880 at his residence Beacon Farm, Lickey near Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, leaving three sons. Walton's life was bound up in his art. He worked both in oils and in watercolours, but was more successful with the latter. Most thorough and conscientious in the study both of form and of colour, he delighted especially in mountain scenery and in atmospheric effects, such as an Alpine peak breaking through the mists, or a sunset on the Nile. Few men have equalled him in the truthful rendering of rock structure and mountain form. His pictures were much appreciated by lovers of nature; but as those of small size sold better than larger and more highly finished works, this fostered a tendency to mannerisms.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

PIZ BALZET, PUNTA DE L'ALBIGNA, SPAZZACALDEIRA BY GIOVANNI GIACOMETTI

GIOVANNI GIACOMETTI (1868-1933)
Piz Balzet (2, 869 m - 9,413 ft)
Punta de l'Albigna (2,825 m - 9,268 ft)
Spazzacaldeira (2,487 m- 8,159 ft)
Switzerland
 In  Albigna Valley, oil on canvas,  1932

The Mountains 

The Piz Balzet  (2, 869 m - 9,413 ft)  is a  tall granite mountain located in Bergell, Switzerland. Standing just on the eastern edge of the Albigna reservoir it is clearly visible when driving down from the Maloja-pass to the north and from the campsite at Vicosoprano. Seen from this (its western) side the Balzet is an imposing picture; very steep slabs fall off into the valley and several ridges make their way to the well defined summit. A different picture entirely is presented when the mountain is viewed from its southern side; from this side there are no steep drops to valley floors far below. Instead, it is 'merely' a summit in the ridge leading up to the Piz Bacun (3,244m).
The Punta da l'Albigna  (2,825 m - 9,268 ft) is an easily recognizable summit on the eastern side of the Albigna lake in the Bergell, an area in south-eastern Switzerland famous for its multitude of alpine rock climbs on excellent granite. Along with the Spazzacaldeira and the Piz Balzet, the Punta da l'Albigna ranks among the most popular climbing hotspots in the Albigna area. It hosts numerous routes from 4a to 5c and varying in length between 8 and 12 ropelengths. Most of the routes are bolted, though some rather sparingly
Spazzacaldeira (2,487 m- 8,159 ft) is the name of the ridge directly west of the Albigna reservoir, just to the north of the Al Gal. It offers a multitude of alpine-sport routes across its eastern face and the north-east ridge is a well known classic in the area. Because of the generally well bolted nature of the routes and the incredibly easy access via the nearby cable car station, Spazzacaldeira can attract a large number of climbers. Most of them will be aiming for the summit pinnacle, the famous Fiamma, a striking summit spire seen on many local postcards.

The painter
Giovanni Giacometti was a Swiss painter, the father of the famous painter and sculptor Alberto Giacometti, and of Diego Giacometti, the furniture designer as well as the father of the architect Bruno Giacometti ! In 1886, he studied painting at the School of Decorative Arts in Munich, where he met Cuno Amiet the following year. Both decide to pursue their studies in Paris, in October stood at the Académie Julian, where Giacometti remains until 1891.
In 1893, shortly after his return to Switzerland, to Bergell, he became friends with Giovanni Segantini, his eldest ten years, which has great influence on his work by opening it to the beauty of the mountain scenery and the rules of divisionism. After his sudden death in 1899, Giacometti met Ferdinand Hodler, who teaches him to create a rigorous and ornamental composition by appropriate use of shapes and colors.
He sees regularly Cuno Amiet, who after a year spent in Pont-Aven, shared his experience with him. In 1900 he exhibited in the Swiss Pavillon of the Universal Exhibition in Paris. From 1905, Giacometti works again in a great complicity with Amiet and begins to break free from the influence of Segantini. In 1906, held an exhibition of his work at Kunstlerhaus Zurich. In 1907 he went to Paris with Amiet to the Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne. They copy all the works of Van Gogh. In 1908, he exhibited with the French Fauves at the Richter Gallery in Dresden.
In 1909, the Tannhauser Gallery presents his works in Munich. He meets Alexi von Jawlensky, and in 1911 participates in the Berlin Secession. In 1912, Giacometti has a solo show at the Kunsthaus Zurich presents two works in the Sonderbund of Cologne. In 1918 after Hodler' s death, he began to be involved into the Swiss political world paying an important part as a committed artist, following int that way friend Amiet.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MONT GAUSSIER (5) AND LES ALPILLES ¨PAINTED BY VINCENT VAN GOGH

VINCENT VAN GOGH (1853-1890)
Mont Gaussier (306 m -1,004 ft)
France

In   Les Alpilles vers le plateau de la Caume, 1889, oil on canvas, 73x83cm,  Guggenheim Museum NYC, Justin K. Thannhauser Collection

About the painting
During his internment in the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Van Gogh seized the surroundings to nourish his artistic geography. He tirelessly paints and draws new Provencal motifs: cypress trees, olive groves and hills. With the Alpilles chain and the Mont Gaussier rising behind the asylum buildings, the painter has the opportunity to represent this mountain range as well as the farms (Mas in french) nearby. I this one the Mont Gaussier is in the background of the farm, probably situated on theVia Aurelia, the antique roman road going from St Rémy de Provence to Arles...


The mountain
The Mont Gaussier (306 m -1,004 ft) is a summit of the Alpilles located south of the city of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France. Today, the place of passage of many hikers who cross it by the GR6, Mount Gaussier was very early used as habitat by protohistoric populations, before having at its summit a medieval castle, nowadays disappeared. Mount Gaussier is made of crystalline limestone, white and hard. One finds in the soil the trace of many fossils. This type of summit is characteristic of the Alpilles range of mountains, especially on the north face.
The first traces of habitation on Mount Gaussier are ancient. In 1996, three sites dating from Protohistory were discovered at the summit and on the slopes. This is what emerges from the study of stones, tiles, ceramics and shards of amphora found on the premises. Moreover, the foundation of a wall was identified at the top during the same prospecting.
Most of the human activity of antiquity at Mount Gaussier nevertheless concentrated at the foot of it, since it was there that was built the Salyan city of Glanum (today Saint-Remy de Provence). Research carried out in 1996 and 1997 revealed that the well-preserved remains of a protohistoric rampart with towers have been cleared in several places, particularly on the ridges which dominate to the north-east and south-west the Saint-Clerg and at the foot of Mount Gaussier. The system of rampart which encircled the city in the 1st and 2nd centuries BC. J.-C. leaned on the cliffs of the mount Gaussier which border it on a hundred meters. It is also believed that Mount Gaussier, by its situation, could be used as an acropolis because of its plateau surrounded by cliffs and that its access from Glanum was made possible by a narrow corridor.
If, according to the archaeologist Henri Rolland, some families occupied the Alpilles range, on the slopes of Mount Gaussier, between the first Iron Age and the end of Antiquity, but also in the High Middle Ages, only the foot and the summit of the mountain were occupied in the following centuries, especially in the 5th and 6th centuries. It was here that a part of the inhabitants of Glanum took up residence after the ruin of the ancient city in the alluvial deposits of the mountain.
Mount Gaussier, like Glanum, then in ruins, and Saint-Remy-de-Provence, became property of the church of Avignon at the end of the 9th century in a county of Provence powered by Count Thibert.
It is possible to reach the Mount Gaussier from the ruins of Glanum or from La Caume by the GR6 climbing previously metal ladders.

The painter
Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade he created about 2100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterized by bold, symbolic colours, and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. He died by suicide at 37, following years of mental illness and poverty.
Born into an upper-middle-class family, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet and thoughtful. As a young man he worked as an art dealer, often travelling, but became depressed after he was transferred to London. He turned to religion, and spent time as a missionary in southern Belgium. Later he drifted in ill health and solitude. He took up painting in 1881 having moved back home with his parents. His younger brother Theo supported him financially, and the two kept up a long correspondence by letter.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE MONT BLANC & THE MER DE GLACE BY JOHN RUSKIN

JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900),
The Mont Blanc (4,808.13 m - 15,776.7 ft)
France - Italy border

In Mer de Glace Chamonix, watercolor on paper, 1849, Ruskin Foundation

The painter  

John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, as well as an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy. His writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. Ruskin also penned essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded by a preference for plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, and architectural structures and ornamentation. He was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century, and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability and craft.
Ruskin first came to widespread attention with the first volume of Modern Painters (1843), an extended essay in defence of the work of J. M. W. Turner in which he argued that the principal role of the artist is "truth to nature". From the 1850s he championed the Pre-Raphaelites who were influenced by his ideas. His work increasingly focused on social and political issues. Unto This Last (1860, 1862) marked the shift in emphasis. In 1869, Ruskin became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, where he established the Ruskin School of Drawing. In 1871, he began his monthly "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain", published under the title Fors Clavigera (1871–1884). In the course of this complex and deeply personal work, he developed the principles underlying his ideal society. As a result, he founded the Guild of St George, an organisation that endures today.

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 Glacier
The Mer de Glace  ( Sea of Ice) is an alpine valley glacier located on the northern slope of the Mont-Blanc massif, in the French department of Haute-Savoie. It is formed by the confluence of the Tacul glacier and the Leschaux glacier and flows into the Arve valley, on the territory of the municipality of Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, giving rise to the Arveyron. The glacier is seven kilometers long, its supply basin has a maximum length of twelve kilometers and an area of ​​40 km2, while its thickness reaches 300 meters.
In the seventeenth century, the glacier, which descends into the valley and threatens homes, is feared by the population, so that only its terminal tongue is known, under the name of Glacier des Bois. Then finished by a natural cave, it is the subject of numerous paintings. Its current name was given to it in 1741 by William Windham during the exploration he carried out with his British compatriot Richard Pococke. Two decades later, Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, the future instigator of the first ascent of Mont Blanc, made several observations of the glacier and asked Marc-Théodore Bourrit to promote it. It thus contributes to the development of alpine tourism and to the visit of numerous personalities of letters as well as of the aristocracy; scientists carried out experiments there in the 19th century. To shelter them, three increasingly large and comfortable shelters were successively built in Montenvers. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Montenvers railway, leaving from Chamonix, was created. In the middle of the century, an ice cave was pierced for the first time in the Mer de Glace. Due to the attraction's success, a cable car was put into service in 1961 to access it, then replaced by a cable car in 1988. Since 1973, an underground hydroelectric power station has been using the meltwater from the glacier.
Almost a million visitors go to Montenvers every year to contemplate the Mer de Glace. During peak periods, half of them visit the ice cave. Three museums are also located on the site. Skiing is possible from the Aiguille du Midi in winter. However, the retreat of the glacier, measured since 1860-1870, causes a loss of thickness of 120 meters in a century in its terminal part. It causes difficulties at the level of the ice cave, where more and more steps are necessary to reach the gondola, and requires considering its upstream movement, like the catchment of the hydroelectric power station in 2011.
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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MONT AGEL PAINTED BY CLAUDE MONET

CLAUDE MONET  (1840-1926)
Mont Agel  (1,151m - 3,776 ft)
France - Monaco border

In Cap Martin près de Menton, Huile sur toile, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 

The mountain
Mont Agel (1,151m - 3,776 ft) is a summit of the Alps located in the South of France, overlooking part of the French Riviera, Monaco, Beausoleil, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin... exactly as shwon in the Monet's painting above !
It has held a historic strategic position since Antiquity and still houses military aerial detection installations today. Mount Agel is precisely located in the French commune of Peille, ( Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region). It rises in the Prealps of Nice and constitutes the highest point of the Monegasque watershed. The highest point of the principality, of Monaco, on the slopes of this mountain, can be reached by the Chemin des Révoires. A massive summit, Mount Agel is visible from a great distance: from certain districts of Nice as well as from a large part of the French Riviera between Cannes, Antibes, Nice, Antibes, and the Principality of Monaco and likewise from the Italian Riviera to around Vintimiglia and Bordighiera.
The history of Mount Agel begins with the Celto-Ligurian tribes who occupied the site and some of whose members were involved in the boarding and looting of boats engaged in cabotage. They are submitted from 23 to 13 BC. BC by the Romans who restored the old coastal route passing through the slopes of Mount Agel to link Ventimiglia to Narbonne Gaul and forming part of the Via Aurelia.
From 1931, new elements of fortification were built within the framework of the Maginot line.
Mount Agel now houses a large work of artillery equipped with turrets, linked together by deeply buried galleries. During the fighting of June 1940, his shots participated in the defense of Menton and supported the outpost of Pont-Saint-Louis and the work of Cap-Martin.
Until 2012, the 943 Capitaine Auber air base of the French Air Force was located there.
Today, only radars remain, which continue their watch in automatic mode, the information being transmitted and used by the Detection and Control Center at 942 Lyon-Mont Verdun air base.
Mount Agel also shelters on its slopes, the Monte-Carlo Golf Club, a very selective club. A little to the east of the golf course is the transmitter center of Fontbonne. Until its recent redevelopment, there were various protohistoric constructions.
Close to Mount Agel and the golf course is also the summer residence of Princes of Monaco (Rocagel site).

The painter
The painter Oscar-Claude Monet better known as Claude Monet was a founder of French Impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. The term "Impressionism" is derived from the title of his painting « Impression, soleil levant » (Impression, Sunrise), which was exhibited in 1874 in the first of the independent exhibitions mounted by Monet and his associates as an alternative to the Salon de Paris.
Monet's ambition of documenting the French countryside led him to adopt a method of painting the same scene many times in order to capture the changing of light and the passing of the seasons exactly like the japanese artist Hokusai (1760-1849) did with his 36 views of Mount Fuji.
Monet repeated this kinf of "exercise de stylee with his series on Les Petites Dalles. and Kolsass mountain.
Monet has been described as "the driving force behind Impressionism". Crucial to the art of the Impressionist painters was the understanding of the effects of light on the local colour of objects, and the effects of the juxtaposition of colours with each other. Monet's long career as a painter was spent in the pursuit of this aim.
In 1856, his chance meeting with Eugene Boudin, a painter of small beach scenes, opened his eyes to the possibility of plein-air painting. From that time, with a short interruption for military service, he dedicated himself to searching for new and improved methods of painterly expression. To this end, as a young man, he visited the Paris Salon and familiarised himself with the works of older painters, and made friends with other young artists.[54] The five years that he spent at Argenteuil, spending much time on the River Seine in a little floating studio, were formative in his study of the effects of light and reflections. He began to think in terms of colours and shapes rather than scenes and objects. He used bright colours in dabs and dashes and squiggles of paint. Having rejected the academic teachings of Gleyre's studio, he freed himself from theory, saying "I like to paint as a bird sings."
In 1877 a series of paintings at Gare St-Lazare had Monet looking at smoke and steam and the way that they affected colour and visibility, being sometimes opaque and sometimes translucent. He was to further use this study in the painting of the effects of mist and rain on the landscape. The study of the effects of atmosphere were to evolve into a number of series of paintings in which Monet repeatedly painted the same subject in different lights, at different hours of the day, and through the changes of weather and season. This process began in the 1880s and continued until the end of his life in 1926.
His first series exhibited as such was of Haystacks, painted from different points of view and at different times of the day. Fifteen of the paintings were exhibited at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in 1891. In 1892 he produced what is probably his best-known series, Twenty-six views of Rouen Cathedral. In these paintings Monet broke with painterly traditions by cropping the subject so that only a portion of the facade is seen on the canvas. The paintings do not focus on the grand Medieval building, but on the play of light and shade across its surface, transforming the solid masonry.
Other series include Peupliers, Matins sur la Seine, and the Nenuphars that were painted on his property at Giverny. Between 1883 and 1908, Monet traveled to the Mediterranean, where he painted landmarks, landscapes, and seascapes, including a series of paintings in Antibes (above) and Venice. In London he painted four series: the Houses of Parliament, London ; Charing Cross Bridge ; Waterloo Bridge, and Views of Westminster Bridge. Helen Gardner writes: "Monet, with a scientific precision, has given us an unparalleled and unexcelled record of the passing of time as seen in the movement of light over identical forms."
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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

FUJIYAMA / 富士山 BY TSUCHIYA KOITSU /土屋光逸

TSUCHIYA KOITSU / 土屋光逸 (1870-1949)
Fujiyama / 富士山 (3, 776 m -12,389 ft)
Japan

In Fuji from Lake Motosu, woodblock print, 1934

The artist
Tsuchiya Koitsu (土屋光逸) was an important artist in the Shin-hanga movement. He trained under the ukiyo-e master Kobayashi Kiyochika for 19 years, and initially focused on works depicting scenes from the First Sino-Japanese War. In 1931, at the age of 60, he began work for Shōzaburō Watanabe and his art publishing establishment which also published the work of artists like Kawase Hasui and Yoshida Hiroshi. His later work incorporated light effects to increase the emotional impact of his art.
Born on September 23, 1870, in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Japan. His birth name was either Koichi or Sahei. He moved to Tokyo at age 15. He first had an apprenticeship for the woodblock carver Matsuzaki, but soon became a student of ukiyo-e master Kiyochika Kobayashi. He worked for Kiyochika for 19 years and lived in his house.
He initially published prints made during the First Sino-Japanese War, before developing his skill with dramatic light effects, learned from Kiyochika. Koitsu published through the Watanabe publishing house after Watanabe and Koitsu met at an exhibition commemorating the 17th anniversary of Kiyochika's death. He also produced prints for publishers Doi Sadaichi, Kawaguchi, Baba Nobuhiko, Tanaka Shobido, and Takemura.

The mountain
This is the legendary 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.
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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT MARCY PAINTED BY JONAS LIE

 

JONAS LIE (1880-1940)
Mount Marcy (1,629m - 5,343ft)
United States of America (Essex County)

In Snow - Adirondacks, Private collection (Christie's)

The mountain
Mount Marcy (1,629m - 5,343ft) in Mohawk langage Tewawe’estha is the highest point in New York State. It is located in the Town of Keene in Essex County. The mountain is in the heart of the Adirondack High Peaks Region of the High Peaks Wilderness Area. Its stature and expansive views make it a popular destination for hikers, who crowd its summit in the summer months.
Lake Tear of the Clouds, at the col between Mt. Marcy and Mt. Skylight, is often cited as the highest source of the Hudson River, via Feldspar Brook and the Opalescent River, even though the main stem of the Opalescent River has as its source a higher point two miles north of Lake of the Clouds, and that stem is a mile longer than Feldspar Brook.
The mountain is named after Gov. William L. Marcy, the 19th-century Governor of New York, who authorized the environmental survey that explored the area. Its first recorded ascent was on August 5, 1837, by a large party led by Ebenezer Emmons looking for the source of the East Fork of the Hudson River.  Today the summit may be reached by multiple trails; though long by any route, a round-trip may be made in a day.

The painter
Jonas Lie was a Norwegian-born American painter. He is best known for colorful paintings of coastlines of New England and city scenes of New York City.
Between 1901 and the memorial exhibition in 1940 his work was shown all over America. In 1905 Lie exhibited 34 pictures in the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn Museum of Art. Between 1905 and 1938 Lie had 57 one-man shows, each including from 12 to 45 paintings. He participated in important annual and biennial exhibitions at the National Academy of Design, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington as well as most of the world fairs. While living in Panama in 1913, he painted scenes of the construction of Panama Canal which were later donated to U.S. Military Academy at West Point in memory of the West Pointer who, as chief engineer, was most potent in channeling the isthmus, General George W. Goethals. In 1932, Jonas Lie was awarded the Knight of Order of St. Olav by the King of Norway.
Jonas Lie often depicted the sea, channels, and ships with dramatic perspective and powerful use of color. He became known for colorful impressionistic scenes of harbors & coves, painted during the many summers he spent on the coasts of New England & Canada. Throughout his prolific career he painted brilliantly colored images of the rocky coves and harbors that identify the region's dramatic shoreline.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

GUNUNG BROMO PAINTED BY SUDJONO ABDULLAH

 

SUDJONO ABDULLAH (1911-1993)
Gunung Bromo (2,329m - 7,641ft)
Indonesia (Java Timur)

In Gunung Bromo, 1960, oil on canvas, Private collection

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

On the fourteenth day of the Hindu festival of Yadnya Kasada, the Tenggerese people of Probolinggo, East Java, travel up the mountain in order to make offerings of fruit, rice, vegetables, flowers and sacrifices to the mountain gods by throwing it into the caldera of the volcano. The origin of the ritual lies in the 15th century legend when princess  Roro Anteng started the principality of Tengger with her husband, Joko Seger. The couple were childless and therefore beseeched the assistance of the mountain gods. The gods granted them 24 children but stipulated that the 25th child, named Kesuma, must be thrown into the volcano as a human sacrifice. The gods' request was implemented. The tradition of throwing sacrifices into the volcano to appease these ancient deities continues today and is called the Yadnya Kasada ceremony. Though fraught with danger, some locals risk climbing down into the crater in an attempt to recollect the sacrificed goods that they believe could bring them good luck.
Depending on the degree of volcanic activity, the Indonesian Centre for Volcanology and Disaster Hazard Mitigation sometimes issues warnings against visiting Mount Bromo.
 Mount Bromo recently erupted in 2004, 2010, 2011 and 2015.

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

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

BLACK MESA (3) PAINTED BY GEORGIA O' KEEFFE

 

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

In Near Abiquiu, New Mexico, 1931 Oil on canvas, 0.6 x 91.4 cm, Georgia O' Keeffe Museum

 

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.

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.
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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

CLYDE PEAK PAINTED BY ARTHUR P. COLEMAN

 

ARTHUR P. COLEMAN (1852-1939)
Clyde Peak (2,624 m - 8,610 ft)
United States of America (Montana)

In Mountain South Clide, watercolor on paper, 1895 A.P Coleman Funds.

The mountain
Clyde Peak 2,624 m- is an 8,610 ft) is  located in Glacier National Park in the U.S. state of Montana. The mountain straddles the border shared by Flathead County and Glacier County. It is situated on the Continental Divide so precipitation runoff from the west side of the mountain drains into Thompson Creek which is part of the Middle Fork Flathead Riverwatershed, and the east side drains into headwaters of Red Eagle Creek, which flows to Red Eagle Lake, thence Saint Mary Lake. It is set in the Lewis Range, and the nearest higher neighbor is Mount Logan 1.44 mile to the northwest. Topographic relief is significant as the southwest aspect rises approximately 4,000 feet (1,220 meters) in one mile.
The mountain's name commemorates Norman Clyde (1885–1972), who made the first ascent of this peak on July 23, 1923.  Clyde is credited with 130 first ascents, most of which were in the Sierra Nevada of California.[ In 1923 he spent 36 days in Glacier National Park, Montana, where he climbed 36 mountains, including 11 first ascents.

The painter
Arthur Philemon Coleman was a Canadian a geologist, professor, minerals prospector, artist, Rockies explorer, backwoods canoeist, world traveller, scientist, popular lecturer, museum administrator, memoirist and... one of Canada’s most beloved scientist.
Arthur Coleman is a fine example of that rare bird, a polished amateur artist whose drawings and paintings stand comfortably beside those of many professionals. He was active during the time when sketching and painting was ceding to photography the task of recording the visible world. Although he was also a photographer, painting was, for him, both a poetic and a descriptive pursuit, a way of wrapping an artistic expression around a phenomenon he was interested in or moved by. Thus motivated, Coleman's paintings give much joy and command a good deal of respect. The more surprising, perhaps given that he used to introduced himself more as a geologist than a painter.
Coleman travelled throughout the United States for professional conferences as well as geological field work. He visited many of the major American mountain ranges including: the American Cordillera Mountains (Washington, Oregon and California); the Sierra Nevada Mountains (California and Nevada); Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming, Montana and Idaho); and the Appalachian Mountains (eastern United States). Pleistocene glaciation had extended in Northern Europe as far south as Berlin and London and covered an area of two million square miles. Coleman also visited such countries as India, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Scandinavia, Bolivia, New Zealand, South Africa and Uruguay. In his final years he made two expeditions to the Andes in Colombia, to mountains in Southern Mexico and to two mountains in Central America. He achieved the first ascent of Castle Mountain in 1884, and in 1907, he was the first white man to attempt to climb Mount Robson. He made a total of eight exploratory trips to the Canadian Rockies, wholly four of them looking for the mythical giants of Hooker and Brown.
From 1901 to 1922, he was a Professor of Geology at the University of Toronto and was Dean of the Faculty of Arts from 1919 to 1922. From 1931 to 1934, he was a geologist with the Department of Mines of the Government of Ontario. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1900 and was its President in 1921. In 1929, he was appointed Honorary Vice-President of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.
"Mount Coleman" and "Coleman Glacier" in Banff National Park is named in his honor. He was awarded the Penrose Medal in 1936.
He planned to climb "his" mountain, "Mount Coleman"'in the Albertan Rockies, and had also prepared a trip to British Guiana, but death intervened.
He was author of:
- Reports on the Economic Geology of Ontario (1903)
- Lake Ojibway; Last of the Great Glacial Lakes (1909)
- The Canadian Rockies: New and Old Trails (1911)
- Ice Ages, Recent and Ancient (1926), and was co-author of Elementary Geology (1922).
- The Last Million Years (1941) edited by George F. Kay

 
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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MONTE ROTONDO (CORSICA) SKETCHED BY JOHN MINTON

 

 
John Minton (1917-1957)
Monte Rotondo (2,622 m -8,602 ft)

France (Corse)

In Corte, Corsica, ink on paper,  1947, 40 x 24,3cm, Tate

About this work 
Minton visited Corsica in the late summer of 1947 with Alan Ross in connexion with their book Time was away, published by John Lehmann the following year; Minton did the illustrations, Ross the text. A group of Minton's drawings of views in Corsica was exhibited at the Lefevre Gallery in February 1949.

The mountain
Monte Rotondo (2,622 m - 8, 602 ft) visible from the town of Corte , Corsica (France) is the highest point of the second highest massif in the island ahead of those of Monte Renoso and Monte Incudine. It is located in the center of the island between the pits of Talcini, Venaco, Rogna and Sorroinsù. The summit overlooks, among others, Lake Bettaniella (on the south face), Lake Oriente and Lake Galiera (on the north face). Its main peaks are Monte Rotondo, Maniccia, Monte Cardo, Monte d'Oro, Punta Artica and Punta alle Porte.
l has long been considered the highest point on the island and was assigned an altitude of 2,746 meters. It has only been dethroned on the shelves by Monte Cinto for about a century. In 1802, André François Miot, Councilor of State appointed in Corsica by Bonaparte was the first to make the “tourist” ascent to the summit. With two other Corsican peaks, Monte Cinto and Monte Stello, Monte Rotondo served at the geodesic junction between Corsica and mainland France made by Paul Helbronner in 1925. The establishment of facilities such as the shelter have allowed the summit to be occupied for 14 days.

The artist
Francis John Minton was an English painter, illustrator, stage designer and teacher. After studying in France, he became a teacher in London, and at the same time maintained a consistently large output of works. In addition to landscapes, portraits and other paintings, some of them on an unusually large scale, he built up a reputation as an illustrator of books. In the mid-1950s, Minton found himself out of sympathy with the abstract trend that was then becoming fashionable, and felt increasingly sidelined. He suffered psychological problems, self-medicated with alcohol, and in 1957 died by suicide. In the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography's entry on Minton, Michael Middleton writes:
"Minton is often seen as an illustrator rather than a painter. He certainly extended and enriched the English graphic tradition. In all his varied output, however, may be sensed an elegiac awareness of the evanescence of physical beauty that is entirely personal. His work is to be found in the Tate collection, and many public and private collections at home and abroad. A retrospective exhibition of 1994, curated by his biographer, Frances Spalding, provided a convincing reminder of the range of his gifts. For the historian he must remain a potent symbol of his period."

 
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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE CERVIN / MATTERHORN PAINTED BY GABRIEL LOPPÉ

GABRIEL LOPPÉ (1825-1913)
Le Cervin or Matterhorn (4,478m -14,691ft)
Switzerland - Italy border

In "Le Mont Cervin par temps nuageux, l'après midi", étude, huile sur toile 29x 18, 5cm, 1884.

The mountain

The Mont Cervin (4,478m -14,691ft) also known as the Matterhorn is an alpine summit located on the Swiss-Italian border between the canton of Valais and the Aosta Valley in Switzerland. It has several other names: Cervino in Italian, Grand'Bèca in Arpitan, Matterhorn in German. The Cervin / Matterhorn is the most famous mountain in Switzerland, including the pyramidal shape that it offers from the village of Zermatt, in the German-speaking part of the canton of Valais.
Its four sides are joined about 400 meters below the summit in a summit pyramid, called "roof." Its summit is a broad ridge about two meters, on which stand actually two summits: one called "Swiss summit," the farther east, and the "Italian summit" slightly lower (4,476 meters), on the west side of the ridge. The two are separated by a notch in the hollow of which a cross was laid in September 1901.
Its north face is one of the three great north faces of the Alps with the Eiger and the Grandes Jorasses.
The most famous faces of the Matterhorn are the faces east and north, seen from Zermatt. The first
1, 000 meters high, has great risk of falling rocks, which makes it dangerous climb. The north face high of 1100 meters, is one of the most dangerous sides of the Alps, particularly because of the risks of landslides and storms. The south side, overlooking the Breuil (Valtournenche above) is high, it, 1 350 meters. This is the face that offers the most channels. And finally, the west face the highest with its 1400 meters, is the one that is the subject of fewer climbs attempts. Between the west side and the north side there is also the north-northwest side, which does not stretch to the summit but stopped Zmutt Nose, on the bridge of the same name. This is the most dangerous route for climbing the Matterhorn. There is also a south-facing southeast, deemed to be the most difficult of the south face route, which leads to the Pic Muzio, on Furggen Shoulder.
Due to its pyramidal form, the Matterhorn has four main ridges, through which pass most of climbing routes. The easiest ridge, that borrows the normal route, is the Hörnli ridge (Hörnligrat in German): it is between the faces east and north, facing the Zermatt valley. Further west lies the Zmutt ridge (Zmuttgrat), between the north and west sides. Between the western and southern sides is the Lion ridge (Liongrat), also known as Italian ridge, which passes through the Tyndall peak, summit of the southern part of the west side, at which begins the upper face. Finally, the south side is separated from the face is Furggen
Swiss normal route from the cabin of the Hörnli, located at 3260 meters. Since Zermatt is accessed by gondola Schwarzsee; there are 700 vertical meters to the hut and 1200 vertical meters to the summit.
Difficulty (Hörnli ridge): AD (fairly difficult), 3 climbing passage; fixed ropes were installed near the top for easy ascension.
The Italian normal route, taking his departure in Breuil, follows almost entirely the southwest ridge, called the Lion ridge. It was inaugurated by the guide valtournain Jean-Antoine Carrel 17 July 1865.
The climb from the Italian side includes three steps:
- du Breuil (2012 meters) at the shelter Duke of Abruzzi in Oriondé (2802 meters)
- the refuge Duca degli Abruzzi refuge to Jean-Antoine Carrel (3830 meters)
- Jean-Antoine Carrel refuge at the summit (4478 meters).
The ascent by Hörnli ridge, July 14, 1865, was considered the last of the great feats of mountaineering in the Alps. But this ascent error ended at the beginning of the descent, in the death of 4 of the 7 members of the roped Victorieuse.

The painter
Toussaint Gabriel Loppé was a French painter, photographer and mountaineer. He became the first foreigner to be made a member of the Alpine Club in London. His father was a captain in the French Engineers and Loppé's childhood was spent in many different towns in south-eastern France. Aged twenty-one Loppé climbed a small mountain in the Languedoc and found a group of painters sketching on the summit. He had found his calling and subsequently went off to Geneva where he met the reputed leading Swiss landscapist, Alexandre Calame (1810 -1864). Loppé took up mountaineering in Grindelwald in the 1850s and made friends easily with the many English climbers in France and Switzerland. Although he was frequently labelled as a pupil of Calame and his rival François Diday, Loppé was almost an entirely self-taught artist. He became the first painter to work at higher altitudes during climbing expeditions earning the right to be considered the founder of the peintres-alpinistes school, which became established in the Savoie at the turn of the nineteenth century.
Notable followers of Loppé include, Charles Henri Contencin (1875-1955) and Jacques Fourcy (1906-1990). Together with the first ascent of Mt Mallet in Chamonix’s Grandes Jorasses range, Loppé made over 40 ascents of Mont Blanc during his climbing career, which lasted until the late 1890s. He frequently made oil sketches from alpine summits, including a panorama of the view from the summit of Mont Blanc.
His paintings became celebrated for their atmosphere and spontaneity and he soon found himself taking part in many exhibitions in London and in Paris.
By 1896 Loppé had spent over fifty seasons climbing and painting in Chamonix. As the valley’s unrivalled ‘Court painter’ his work was in constant demand with the majority of his pictures going to English climbers and summer tourists.
In his later years, Loppé became fascinated with photography and was quite an innovator in this field too. His long exposure photograph of the Eiffel Tower struck by lightning, now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris remains one of his iconic images.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

COBB MOUNTAIN PAINTED BY GIDEON JACQUES DENNY

GIDEON JACQUES DENNY (1830-1886)
Cobb Mountain (14,40 m - 4,723 ft)
United States of America (California) 

In City of Lake Port on Clear Lake, 1876. Oil on canvas. Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento 

The painter
Gideon Jacques Denny (1830–1886) was a landscape artist speciailized in marine artist. So the mountains painted in his works are always more or less "accidental" ! Born in Wilmington, Delaware on July 15, 1830, he worked on ships in the Chesapeake Bay. He traveled to California in 1849 with the Gold Rush. He worked as a teamster on the San Francisco docks and was a member of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance. After two years in California, he moved to Milwaukee, where he studied painting with Samuel Marsden Brookes. After six years of study in Milwaukee, Denny returned to San Francisco and established a studio on Bush Street. In 1862, Brookes moved to San Francisco and shared a studio with Denny. In 1868, Denny spent two months in Hawaii visiting several islands. He is also known to have visited Canada and South America. Denny died of malaria in Cambria. The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the Bishop Museum (Honolulu), the Crocker Art Museum (Sacramento, California), the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art, and the Oakland Museum of California are among the public collections holding works by Gideon Jacques Denny.

The mountain
The Lakeport area is located on a sediment-filled valley adjacent to Clear Lake. The majority of faults in the County are located in the Cobb Mountain area. Cobb Mountain (1,440 m- 4,720 feet ) is the tallest mountain in the Mayacamas Mountains of California. The mountain also has a sub-peak named Cobb Mountain – Southwest Peak (1367 m- 4483 ft). Southwest Peak lies on the Sonoma-Lake county line and is the highest point in Sonoma County. Nearby tall peaks like Mount Saint Helena and Snow Mountain can be seen from this summit. Cobb Mountain is one of the mountains in the Cobb Mountain Area, many of which have volcanic origin. Others are Boggs Mountain, Mount Hannah and Seigler Mountain. There are isolated small valleys and basins between the mountain peaks. The east end of Cobb Mountain drains into the headwaters of Putah Creek, then into the Sacramento River, the San Francisco Bay, and the Pacific Ocean. The south slopes of Cobb Mountain drain into Anderson Creek, and thence into Putah Creek. The southwest slopes of Cobb Mountain drain into Cobb Creek, thence into Big Sulphur Creek, the Russian River, and into the Pacific. The northwest slopes of Cobb Mountain drain into Alder Creek, thence into Kelsey Creek, Clear Lake, Cache Creek, and the Sacramento River. The northeast slopes of Cobb Mountain drain into Kelsey Creek. Much of Cobb Mountain lies within The Geysers Geothermal Field, and several geothermal plants are located on the mountain. Other areas on the mountain are owned by Cobb Mountain Spring Water (now sold as Mayacamas Mountain Spring Water) or are privately held timberlands. Because much of Cobb Mountain is privately owned, it is largely not accessible to the general public. The mountain is named after John Cobb, the first pioneer to settle in the area. In 1853 he arrived in California and homesteaded in Cobb Valley and went on to become the county assessor and the road overseer for the Clearlake District in 1855. He built a combined saw and gristmill in 1859, which was later destroyed by fire. He sold his interests and moved to Napa County around 1860. The Cobb Mountain area was devastated in 2015 by the Valley Fire, including much of the town of Cobb, as well as several geothermal facilities.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE EIGER SKETCHED BY JOHN SINGER SARGENT

JOHN SINGER SARGENT (1856-1925)
The Eiger (3,970 m -13,020 ft)
Switzerland


In Eiger from Mürren (from Splendid Mountain Watercolours Sketchbook),
Watercolor and graphite, 40.6 x 27.6 cm,
The MET (Gift of Mrs. Francis Ormond, 1950. Public Domain.

The painter
John Singer Sargent was an American artist who created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Switzerland, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida.
He was trained in Paris prior to moving to London. Sargent enjoyed international acclaim as a portrait painter, but in later life he expressed ambivalence about the restrictions of formal portrait work, and devoted much of his energy to mural painting and working en plein air. He lived most of his life in Europe. Each destination offered pictorial stimulation and treasure. Even at his leisure, in escaping the pressures of the portrait studio, he painted with restless intensity, often painting from morning until night. His hundreds of watercolors of Venice are especially notable, many done from the perspective of a gondola. His colors were sometimes extremely vivid and as one reviewer noted, "Everything is given with the intensity of a dream." In the Middle East and North Africa Sargent painted Bedouins, goatherds, and fisherman. In the last decade of his life, he produced many watercolors in Maine, Florida, and in the American West, of fauna, flora, and native peoples.
With his watercolors, Sargent was able to indulge his earliest artistic inclinations for nature, architecture, exotic peoples, and noble mountain landscapes. And it is in some of his late works where one senses Sargent painting most purely for himself. His watercolors were executed with a joyful fluidness. His first major solo exhibit of watercolor works was at the Carfax Gallery in London in 1905. In 1909, he exhibited eighty-six watercolors in New York City, eighty-three of which were bought by the Brooklyn Museum. Evan Charteris wrote in 1927: 'To live with Sargent's water-colours is to live with sunshine captured and held, with the luster of a bright and legible world, 'the refluent shade' and 'the Ambient ardours of the noon.'
Although not generally accorded the critical respect given Winslow Homer, perhaps America's greatest watercolorist, scholarship has revealed that Sargent was fluent in the entire range of opaque and transparent watercolor technique, including the methods used by Homer.


The mountain
The Eiger (3,970m- 13,020 ft) is located in the Bernese Alps, overlooking Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen in the Bernese Oberland, just north of the main watershed and border with Valais. It is the easternmost peak of a ridge crest that extends across the Mönch to the Jungfrau at (4,158 m-13,642 ft), constituting one of the most emblematic sights of the Swiss Alps. While the northern side of the mountain rises more than 3,000m -10,000 ft above the two valleys of Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen, the southern side faces the large glaciers of the Jungfrau-Aletsch area, the most glaciated region in the Alps. The most notable feature of the Eiger is its 1,800-metre-high - 5,900 ft north face of rock and ice, named Eigerwand or Nordwand, which is the biggest north face in the Alps. This huge face towers over the resort of Kleine Scheidegg at its base, on the homonymous pass connecting the two valleys.
The first ascent of the Eiger was made by Swiss guides Christian Almer and Peter Bohren and Irishman Charles Barrington, who climbed the west flank on August 11, 1858.
The north face, considered amongst the most challenging and dangerous ascents, was first climbed in 1938 by an Austrian-German expedition with Anderl Heckmair, Ludwig Vцrg, Heinrich Harrer and Fritz Kasparek. The Eiger has been highly-publicized for the many tragedies involving climbing expeditions.
In 1973 : first all female ascent of the face by Wanda Rutkiewicz, Danuta Gellner-Wach and Stefania Egierszdorff. All Polish.
In June 2006, François Bon and Antoine Montant make the first speedflying descent of the Eiger
Since 1935, at least sixty-four climbers have died attempting the north face, earning it the German nickname Mordwand, literally "murder(ous) wall"—a pun on its correct title of Nordwand (North Wall).
Although the summit of the Eiger can be reached by experienced climbers only, a railway tunnel runs inside the mountain, and two internal stations provide easy access to viewing-windows carved into the rock face. They are both part of the Jungfrau Railway line, running from Kleine Scheidegg to the Jungfraujoch, between the Mцnch and the Jungfrau, at the highest railway station in Europe. The two stations within the Eiger are Eigerwand (behind the north face) and Eismeer (behind the south face), at around 3,000 metres.
The Eiger is mentioned in records dating back to the 13th century, but there is no clear indication of how exactly the peak gained its name. The three mountains of the ridge are commonly referred to as the Virgin (German: Jungfrau – translates to "virgin" or "maiden"), the Monk (Mцnch), and the Ogre (Eiger; the standard German word for ogre is Oger). The name has been linked to the Latin term acer, meaning "sharp" or "pointed", but more commonly to the German eigen, meaning "own".

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau