ODORAY MOUNTAIN PAINTED BY J.E.H. MACDONALD

J.E.H. MACDONALD (1873-1932)
Odoray mountain (3,137 m- 10,292 ft)
Canada (British Columbia)

In Mont Odoray, 1930, Huile sur carton, 21,6 x 26,7cm, Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa

The mountain
Odaray Mountain (3,137-m - 10,292 ft) is a summit located west of Lake O'Hara in the Bow Range of Yoho National Park, in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia, Canada. Its nearest higher peak is Mount Huber, 3.86 km (2.40 mi) to the east. The standard climbing route follows the southeast glacier and ridge starting from Elizabeth Parker hut. Pronunciation sounds like the two words "ode array". Odaray Mountain is composed of sedimentary rock laid down during the Precambrian to Jurassic periods. Formed in shallow seas, this sedimentary rock was pushed east and over the top of younger rock during the Laramide orogeny. The first ascent of the mountain was made in 1887 by James J. McArthur, and he named it Odaray which is the expression for "many waterfalls" in the Stoney language. Other reports have it being named in 1894 by Samuel Evans Stokes Allen for the Stoney Indianword for "cone". However, it is possible that McArthur only ascended the lesser secondary summit cone (2965 m) now known as Little Odaray which is southeast of the true summit. The mountain's current name became official in 1952 when the Geographical Names Board of Canada rescinded the name Mount Odaray.

The artist
James Edward Hervey MacDonald RCA was an English-Canadian artist who initiated the first major Canadian national art movement. He was the father of the illustrator Thoreau MacDonald. n 1895, MacDonald took a position as a commercial designer at Grip Ltd, an important commercial art firm, where he further developed his design skills. In the coming years, he encouraged his colleagues—including future artist Tom Thomson—to develop their skills as painters. In 1920, MacDonald co-founded the Group of Seven, which dedicated itself to promoting a distinct Canadian art developed through direct contact with the Canadian landscape. The other founding members were Frederick Varley, A. Y. Jackson, Lawren Harris, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, and Franklin Carmichael. MacDonald had worked with Lismer, Varley, Johnston, and Carmichael at the design firm Grip Ltd. in Toronto. Together they initiated the first major Canadian national art movement, producing paintings directly inspired by the Canadian landscape. Every summer beginning in 1924, MacDonald travelled to the Canadian Rockies to paint the mountainous landscapes that dominated his later work. By this time he had become somewhat alienated from the rest of the Group of Seven, as many of the younger members were beginning to paint in a more abstract manner.  Today, MacDonald is viewed with general admiration for his art, with one writer commenting, "no Canadian landscape painter possessed a richer command of colour and pigment than J. E. H. MacDonald ... His brushwork is at once disciplined and vigorous. His best on-the-spot sketches possess an intensity and freshness of execution not dissimilar from Van Gogh."

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT HUBER PAINTED BY ROBERT GENN

ROBERT GENN (1936-2014)
Mount Huber (3,348 m - 10,984 ft)
Canada (British Columbia)

 In  Chinook over O' Hara, oil on canvas, 1970, Private collection  

The mountain
Mount Huber (3,348 m - 10,984 ft) summit located two kilometers east of Lake O'Hara in the Bow Range of Yoho National Park, in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia, Canada. Its nearest higher peak is Mount Victoria, 1.0 km (0.62 mi) to the north-northeast. Mount Huber is a secondary summit of Mount Victoria which is on the Continental Divide. Named in 1903 by Samuel Allen for Emil Huber, a Swiss climber, who, with Carl Sulzer, were first to climb Mount Sir Donald in the Selkirk Mountains. The first ascent of the Mount Huber was made in 1903 by George Collier, E. Tewes, Christian Bohren, and Christian Kaufmann. The mountain's name became official in 1924 when approved by the Geographical Names Board of Canada. Mount Huber is composed of sedimentary rock laid down during the Precambrian to Jurassic periods. Formed in shallow seas, this sedimentary rock was pushed east and over the top of younger rock during the Laramide orogeny. Based on the Köppen climate classification, Mount Huber is located in a subarctic climate with cold, snowy winters, and mild summers ] Temperatures can drop below −20 °C with wind chill factors below −30 °C. Precipitation runoff from Mount Huber drains into tributaries of the Kicking Horse River which is a tributary of the Columbia River.

The painter
Robert Douglas Genn was a Canadian artist, who has gained recognition for his style, which is in the tradition of Canadian landscape painting. His work is in corporate and public collections, including Air Canada, Bank Of Montreal, Canadian General Insurance, Canadian Airlines, Canadian Utilities, The Churchill Corporation, Expo '86, Esso Resources, First City - California II, Highfield Oil & Gas, Molson Brewery Ltd., Montreal Trust, Shell Resources, University of Alberta, Westgate Chevrolet, Glenbow Museum and Government of Belgium.
Born in Victoria, British Columbia, Genn has often been compared with members of the 1920s Canadian Group of Seven. In 1961, he met Lawren Harris who was a neighbour in Point Grey, Vancouver. Genn had problems with painting skies, and Harris's advice was to turn the picture upside-down: "Paint down from the trees to the clouds at the bottom of the picture to get the perspective right." Genn said this was "valuable advice", which enabled him "to control the gradation, and work up into the trees in a more abstract manner."
He ran the Painter's Keys web site, a worldwide artists' community, with his staff and volunteers. The web site sends out an erudite free twice-weekly newsletter, which is sent to 135,000 artists in over 100 countries, and claims the largest collection of art quotes online with over 5,382 authors quoted.
In 2005, Genn campaigned against the Chinese website, arch-world.com, which was selling thousands of high-resolution images of around 2,800 artists' work illegally, without permission. After failing to gain support from the Canadian government or the African embassy in Ottawa, Genn used his web site to enlist subscribers' support to email objections to the arch-world, resulting within days in over 1,000 online complaints from artists, dealers and politicians to the company and governments. This stimulated a diplomatic protest letter to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, Trading and Law Department from the Canadian Embassy in Beijing. Genn credited the campaign with the subsequent removal of images by 800 Canadian artists from arch-world, although many works were reinstated on arch-world soon after.
Genn has been a member of the Board of Directors at Emily Carr College of Art & Design.
Genn announced in his Twice-Weekly Letter of 25 October 2013 that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He died at his Surrey, British Columbia home on 27 May 2014.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

 

MOUNT BURKE & BAY OF ISLANDS PAINTED BY FRANKLIN CARMICHAEL

FRANKLIN CARMICHAEL (1890–1945)
Mount Burke (1,270 m  - 4,167 ft)
Canada (British Columbia)

In Bay of Islands from Mt. Burke, 1931, oil on canvas, 101.6 x 122.0 cm, 

McMichael Canadian Art Collection

The mountain
Mount Burke (1,270 m (4,167 ft), is a mountain located in northeast Coquitlam, British Columbia, north of Port Coquitlam on the ridge system leading to Coquitlam Mountain. Most of the mountain is part of Pinecone Burke Provincial Park.   Mount Burke was named for Edmund Burke by Captain George Henry Richards of HMS Plumper while surveying Burrard Inlet in 1859.
The mountain was placed in Pinecone Burke Provincial Park on the park's creation in 1995.
Many people confuse Mount Burke, with the much higher and larger Burke Ridge, which is more commonly known as Burke Mountain, and in the 1920s Burke Ridge was more commonly known as Dollar Mountain, after the Canadian Robert Dollar Company, who logged the lower portions of the mountain.

The artist
Franklin Carmichael was a Canadian artist and member of the Group of Seven. Though he was primarily famous for his use of watercolours, he also used oil paints, charcoal and other media to capture the Ontario landscapes of which he was fond. Besides his work as a painter, he worked as a designer and illustrator, creating promotional brochures, advertisements in newspapers and magazines, and stylizing books. Near the end of his life, Carmichael taught in the Graphic Design and Commercial Art Department at the Ontario College of Art (today the Ontario College of Art and Design). The youngest original member of the Group of Seven, Carmichael often found himself socially on the outside of the group. Despite this, the art he produced was of equal measure in terms of style and approach to the other members' contributions, vividly expressing his spiritual views through his art.  Carmichael was a passionate landscape painter. Many of his paintings depict the trees, rocks, hills, and mountains of Ontario. His earlier works had flat juxtapositions of colour, but as he matured through the 1920s he emphasized depth and three dimensional space. Beyond simple representation of picturesque views, Carmichael attempted to capture contrast.  Contemporary Emily Carr wrote that Carmichael's work was, "A little pretty and too soft, but pleasant."Carmichael was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.  In 1952, Dr. Ann Curtin and Carmichael's widow founded the Franklin Carmichael Art Group, now located at 34 Riverdale Drive in Toronto.


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2021 - Wandering Vertexes / Mountain paintings
By F rancis Rousseau

MOUNT BAKER / KULSHAN PAINTED BY ALBERT BIERSTADT

 

ALBERT BIERSTADT (1830-1902)

Mount Baker / Kulshan ((3,286 m - 10,781 ft

United States of America

In Mount Baker from the Frazier River, c. 1890, oil on canvas, Brooklyn Museum

The mountain
Mount Baker ((3,286 m - 10,781 ft), also known as Koma Kulshan or simply Kulshan, is a active glaciated andesitic stratovolcano in the Cascade Volcanic Arc and the North Cascades of Washington in the United States. Mount Baker has the second-most thermally active crater in the Cascade Range after Mount Saint Helens. About 30 miles (48 km)[due east of the city of Bellingham, Whatcom County, Mount Baker is the youngest volcano in the Mount Baker volcanic field. While volcanism has persisted here for some 1.5 million years, the current glaciated cone is likely no more than 140,000 years old, and possibly no older than 80–90,000 years. Older volcanic edifices have mostly eroded away due to glaciation.
After Mount Rainier, Mount Baker is the most heavily glaciated of the Cascade Range volcanoes; the volume of snow and ice on Mount Baker, 0.43 cu mi (1.79 km3) is greater than that of all the other Cascades volcanoes (except Rainier) combined. It is also one of the snowiest places in the world; in 1999, Mount Baker Ski Area, located 9 mi (14.5 km) to the northeast, set the world record for recorded snowfall in a single season—1,140 in (29 m; 95 ft).
Mt. Baker is the third-highest mountain in Washington and the fifth-highest in the Cascade Range, if Little Tahoma Peak, a subpeak of Mount Rainier, and Shastina, a subpeak of Mount Shasta, are not counted.[Located in the Mount Baker Wilderness, it is visible from much of Greater Victoria, Nanaimo, and Greater Vancouver in British Columbia, and to the south, from Seattle (and on clear days Tacoma) in Washington.
Indigenous peoples have known the mountain for thousands of years, but the first written record of the mountain is from Spanish explorer Gonzalo Lopez de Haro, who mapped it in 1790 as Gran Montaña del Carmelo, "Great Mount Carmel". The explorer George Vancouver renamed the mountain for 3rd Lieutenant Joseph Baker of HMS Discovery, who saw it on April 30, 1792.

The painter
Albert Bierstadt was a German-born American painter. He was brought to the United States at the age of one by his parents. He later returned to study painting for several years in Düsseldorf. At an early age Bierstadt developed a taste for art and made clever crayon sketches in his youth.
In 1851, he began to paint in oils. He became part of the Hudson River School in New York, an informal group of like-minded painters who started painting along this scenic river. Their style was based on carefully detailed paintings with romantic, almost glowing lighting, sometimes called luminism. An important interpreter of the western landscape, Bierstadt, along with Thomas Moran, is also grouped with the Rocky Mountain School....
Full Wandering Vertextes entry =>


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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE TEN PEAKS PAINTED BY CHARLES PARTRIDGE ADAMS

CHARLES PARTRIDGE ADAMS (1858 -1942)
The Ten peaks ( (3,424m- 11,234ft)
Canada (Alberta)

In Moraine Lake and Peaks, oil on canvas

The mountains
Valley of the Ten Peaks (Vallée des Dix Pics) is a valley in Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada, which is crowned by ten notable peaks and also includes Moraine Lake. The valley can be reached by following the Moraine Lake road near Lake Louise. The ten peaks were originally named by Samuel Allen, an early explorer of the region, who simply referred to them by using the numerals from one to ten in the Stoney First Nations Language. He may have learned the terms from his Native American guides, who helped him with the horses. The Nakoda–also known as the Stoney Indians–is a tribe whose culture and dialect are closely related to that of the Assiniboine First Nation, from whom they are believed to have separated in the mid-1700s, and who roamed large parts of the prairies and mountains of western Alberta well into British Columbia. The secluded Valley of the Ten Peaks was part of their original homeland. Gradually, though, all but three of the mountains were renamed in honour of noteworthy individuals, including Allen himself.
Mount Hungabee was not included in the original peak list by Allen, even though it is higher than Wenkchemna Peak, the latter of which is really an extension of Hungabee.
The ten peaks, in order of how they are numbered from east to west, are:
Mount Fay /Heejee (3,235m-10,613ft); Mount Little /Num (3,088m- 10,131ft); Mount Bowlen / Yamnee (3,072m- 10,079ft); Tonsa (3,057m/ 10,030ft); Mount Perren / Sapta (3,051m- 10,010ft); Mount Allen / Shappee 3,310m- 10,860ft); Mount Tuzo / Shagowa (3,246m- 10,650ft); Deltaform Mountain/ Shakhnowa (3,424m- 11,234ft); Neptuak Mountain (3,233m- 10,607ft); Wenkchemna Peak (3,170m-10,401 ft)

The painter
Charles Partridge Adams was a largely self-taught American landscape artist who painted primarily in Colorado, and secondarily in California. Some paintings were also made in other Rocky Mountain states, the Pacific Northwest and Canada, and a few in Louisiana, the East Coast and Europe.
Adams is widely considered to have been Colorado’s finest landscape artist. He is best known for his stunning views of snowy mountain peaks in early morning or sunset light, or wreathed in storm clouds, and for his luminous sunset and twilight paintings of the river bottoms near Denver. His works show an intensely personal and poetic response to the Colorado mountains and plains, with unusual sensitivity to the changing effects of light, atmosphere and season.
More about the painter =>

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2020 - Wandering Vertexes..
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT TACOMA / MOUNT RAINIER BY CHARLES HAMILTON SMITH

CHARLES HAMILTON SMITH (1776-1859)

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

United States of America (Washington)

In Mount Rainier from the South Part of Admiralty Inlet, Watercolor and graphite from Views of Polar region, Yale Center for British arts, Connectitcut USA.

The mountain
Mount Rainier, Mount Tacoma, or Mount Tahoma (4,392 m-14,411 ft) is the highest mountain of the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest, and the highest mountain in the U.S. state of Washington. It is a large active stratovolcano located 54 miles (87 km) south-southeast of Seattle. It is the most topographically prominent mountain in the contiguous United States and the Cascade Volcanic Arc.
Mount Rainier was first known by the Native Americans as Talol, or Tacoma or Tahoma.
The current name was given by George Vancouver, who named it in honor of his friend, Rear Admiral Peter Rainier. The map of the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-1806 refers to it as "Mt. Regniere". Mount Rainier is ranked third of the 128 ultra-prominent mountain peaks of the United States.
With 26 major glaciers and 36 sq mi (93 km2) of permanent snowfields and glaciers, Mount Rainier is the most heavily glaciated peak in the lower 48 states. The summit is topped by two volcanic craters, each more than 1,000 ft (300 m) in diameter, with the larger east crater overlapping the west crater. Geothermal heat from the volcano keeps areas of both crater rims free of snow and ice, and has formed the world's largest volcanic glacier cave network within the ice-filled craters, with nearly 2 mi (3.2 km) of passages. The Carbon, Puyallup, Mowich, Nisqually, and Cowlitz Rivers begin at eponymous glaciers of Mount Rainier. The sources of the White River are Winthrop, Emmons, and Fryingpan Glaciers. The White, Carbon, and Mowich join the Puyallup River, which discharges into Commencement Bay at Tacoma; the Nisqually empties into Puget Sound east of Lacey; and the Cowlitz joins the Columbia River between Kelso and Longview.

The artist
Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Hamilton Smith, was an English artist, naturalist, antiquary, illustrator, soldier, and... spy as well !. His military career began in 1787, when he studied at the Austrian academy for artillery and engineers at Mechelen and Leuven in Belgium (his native country). Although his military service, which ended in 1820 and included the Napoleonic Wars, saw him travel extensively (including the West Indies, Canada, United States, Southern and Northern Europe and ...Antarctica).
As a prolific self-taught illustrator (over 38,000 drawings!) He left quite an important number of books of beautifully watercolored landscapes taken all around the world. those nooks of watercolors are nowadays in the collections of the Yale Center From British Art. Among them :
- Views of France, Volume I (81 watercolors), Views of France, Volume II (93 watercolors),
- Views of England and Wales, Volume I (82 watercolors), Views of England and Wales, Volume II (74 watercolors),
- Views of Northern Europe, Volume I (68watercolors) , Views of Northern Europe, Volume II (78) watercolors),
- Views of Polar Regions (75 watercolors) (see above)
- Views of Spain, Volume I (69 watercolors), Views of Spain, Volume II (72 watercolors), But one of his noteworthy achievements was an 1800 experiment to determine which color should be used for military uniforms. He is also known in military history circles for Costume of the Army of the British Empire, produced towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars and an accurate depiction of contemporary British uniform.
As an antiquarian, he also produced, in collaboration with Samuel Rush Meyrick, Costume of the Original Inhabitants of the British Islands, 1815, and The Ancient Costume of England, with historical illustrations of medieval knights, ladies, shipsm and battles.
He also wrote on the history of the Seven Years' War and TheNatural history of dogs.
Quite a productive fellow !

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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT BAKER / KULSHAN PAINTED BY JONAS LIE

 

JONAS LIE  (1880-1940)

Mount Baker / Kulshan ((3,286 m - 10,781 ft

United States of America

In Mount Baker, 1925, oil on canvas, Courtesy Saranac Lake Free Library

The mountain
Mount Baker ((3,286 m - 10,781 ft), also known as Koma Kulshan or simply Kulshan, is a active glaciated andesitic stratovolcano in the Cascade Volcanic Arc and the North Cascades of Washington in the United States. Mount Baker has the second-most thermally active crater in the Cascade Range after Mount Saint Helens. About 30 miles (48 km)[due east of the city of Bellingham, Whatcom County, Mount Baker is the youngest volcano in the Mount Baker volcanic field. While volcanism has persisted here for some 1.5 million years, the current glaciated cone is likely no more than 140,000 years old, and possibly no older than 80–90,000 years. Older volcanic edifices have mostly eroded away due to glaciation.
After Mount Rainier, Mount Baker is the most heavily glaciated of the Cascade Range volcanoes; the volume of snow and ice on Mount Baker, 0.43 cu mi (1.79 km3) is greater than that of all the other Cascades volcanoes (except Rainier) combined. It is also one of the snowiest places in the world; in 1999, Mount Baker Ski Area, located 9 mi (14.5 km) to the northeast, set the world record for recorded snowfall in a single season—1,140 in (29 m; 95 ft).
Mt. Baker is the third-highest mountain in Washington and the fifth-highest in the Cascade Range, if Little Tahoma Peak, a subpeak of Mount Rainier, and Shastina, a subpeak of Mount Shasta, are not counted.[Located in the Mount Baker Wilderness, it is visible from much of Greater Victoria, Nanaimo, and Greater Vancouver in British Columbia, and to the south, from Seattle (and on clear days Tacoma) in Washington.
Indigenous peoples have known the mountain for thousands of years, but the first written record of the mountain is from Spanish explorer Gonzalo Lopez de Haro, who mapped it in 1790 as Gran Montaña del Carmelo, "Great Mount Carmel". The explorer George Vancouver renamed the mountain for 3rd Lieutenant Joseph Baker of HMS Discovery, who saw it on April 30, 1792.

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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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT ROBSON BY ARTHUR P. COLEMAN

ARTHUR P. COLEMAN (1852-1939)
Mount Robson (3,954 m - 12, 972 ft) 

Canada (British Columbia)

  In Mount Robson glacier -cutting steps, oil on canvas

The mountain 

Mount Robson (3,954 m - 12, 972 ft) is the most prominent mountain in North America's Rocky Mountain range; it is also the highest point in the Canadian Rockies. The mountain is located entirely within Mount Robson Provincial Park of British Columbia, and is part of the Rainbow Range. Mount Robson is the second highest peak entirely in British Columbia, behind Mount Waddington in the Coast Range. The south face of Mount Robson is clearly visible from the Yellowhead Highway (Highway 16), and is commonly photographed along this route.

Mount Robson was likely named after Colin Robertson, who worked for both the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company at various times in the early 19th century, though there was confusion over the name as many assumed it to have been named for John Robson, an early premier of British Columbia. The Texqakallt, a Secwepemc people and the earliest inhabitants of the area, call it Yuh-hai-has-kun (The Mountain of the Spiral Road). Other unofficial names include Cloud Cap Mountain.

In 1893, five years after the expedition of A.P. Coleman to Athabasca Pass and the final settling of the mistaken elevations of Mt. Hooker and Mt. Brown, Mt. Robson was first surveyed by James McEvoy and determined to be the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies. The first documented ascent of Mount Robson, led by the young guide Conrad Kain, at its time the hardest ice face to be climbed on the continent, was achieved during the 1913 annual expedition organized by a large party of Alpine Club of Canada members who made use of the newly completed Grand Trunk Pacific railway to access the area. Prior to 1913, it had been necessary to approach the mountain by pack train from Edmonton or Laggan via Jasper and Lucerne, so only few intrepid explorers had made previous attempts at exploring the mountain. The most famous early ascensionist was the Reverend George Kinney, a founding member of the Alpine Club, who on his twelfth attempt in August 1909 claimed to have reached the summit with local outfitter Donald "Curly" Phillips. A major controversy over this claim and over the implausible nature of his unlikely and dangerous route dominated the discourse within the Alpine Club elite, and he is now generally presumed to have reached the high summit ridge before being turned back at the final ice dome of the peak. Kinney Lake, below the south face, is named in his honour.

The north face of Mount Robson is heavily glaciated and 800 m (2,600 ft) of ice extends from the summit to Berg Glacier. The Berg glacier calves directly into the lake. The Robson Glacier, which fills the cirque and valley between Mount Robson and Mount Resplendent, in the early 1900s fed directly into both Berg lake and Adolphus lake, straddling the Continental Divide and draining thus to both the Arctic and Pacific oceans via the Smoky and Robson Rivers, respectively. It since has receded more than 2 kilometres and is the source of the Robson River only.

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.
 "Mount Coleman" and "Coleman Glacier" in Banff National Park are named in his honor.
He was awarded the Penrose Medal in 1936.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

CHEOPS MOUNTAIN PAINTED BY WILLIAM BRYMMER

WILLIAM BRYMMER (1855-1925) 

Cheops Mountain (2,581m - 8,468ft) 

Canada (Bristish Columbia) 

In Mount Cheops, oil on canvas, 1886,  The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa

The mountain
Cheops Mountain (2,581m - 8,468ft)  also known as Mount Kheops is a  summit located in Glacier National Park in the Selkirk Mountains of British Columbia, Canada. Cheops Mountain is situated in the Hermit Range, and the summit provides a good view of the Hermit and Sir Donald Ranges. Its nearest higher peak is Ursus Major Mountain, 4.0 km (2.5 mi) to the northwest.
The mountain's current name was officially adopted in 1951 when approved by the Geographical Names Board of Canada.  Prior to that it was known as Mount Cheops. The peak was named by Otto Julius Klotz for its resemblance to the Pyramid of Cheops.
Based on the Köppen climate classification, Cheops Mountain has a subarctic climate with cold, snowy winters, and mild summers. Temperatures can drop below −20 °C with wind chill factors below −30 °C.
The first ascent of the mountain was made in 1893 by Samuel E. S. Allen and Walter D. Wilcox.
The 1910 Rogers Pass avalanche was the deadliest avalanche in Canadian history, resulting in the deaths of 62 Canadian Pacific Railway workers.  In the late afternoon of March 4, 1910, an avalanche swept down the slopes of Cheops, burying the railroad tracks in snow. The men were working to clear the tracks when shortly before midnight the deadly slide hit, coming from the opposite side of the valley down Avalanche Mountain.

The painter
William Brymner was a Canadian art teacher and a figure and landscape painter. Born in Greenock (Scotland), he moved with his family to Melbourne (Canada East) in 1857. In 1864, his family moved to Montreal. They later lived in the area of Ottawa, where William attended the Ottawa Grammar School. Following architectural studies in enrolled at the Académie Julian in Paris (France) in 1878 where his instructors were William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury.  Both of his teachers, in Paris, were famous exponents of 'Grand manner' naturalism. During this period at the Salon he became interested in the work of Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier who was already popular in his country. Brymner specialized in domestic figure scenes and avoided large historical subjects.

In 1886, he settled in Montreal after staying in Paris "on and off for almost seven years".
Many members of the Beaver Hall Group studied under Brymner, who encouraged them to explore new modernistic approaches to painting.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT HOOD / WY' EAST PAINTED BY ALBERT BIERSTADT

ALBERT BIERSTADT (1830-1902)

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

United States of America (Oregon) 

In Indians crossing the Columbia river with Mt Hood in the distance, 1867

oil on canvas, 60.3 x 90.8 cm. Private collection (Sotheby's London)

Catalogue note about this painting 

Albert Bierstadt’s dramatic views of the majestic American West earned him broad popularity as one of the country's most distinguished artists of the mid-nineteenth century. He was among the greatest American painters to fully capture the splendor of the landscape and to record the many moods of its climate and terrain. Bierstadt was one of the very few artists to have traveled in the western territories and his views were eagerly anticipated and met with curiosity and wonder. His idealized interpretations of the western landscape brought to life the image of the fabled frontier for many who would never travel there.
It was on his second journey west in 1863 with the writer Fitz Hugh Ludlow that Bierstadt first beheld Mount Hood. The party traveled up from California into the Pacific Northwest on horseback and then by steamer and rail up the Columbia River from near Mount Hood. According to Patricia Junker, “Mount Hood was an almost continual presence as the two men made their way up the Columbia, and we know from Ludlow that Bierstadt studied it intently, seeing it from different perspectives, from the northeast and the northwest, and in the changing light of different times of day. At Dalles City Bierstadt paid an ‘old Indian interpreter and trapper’ to guide him to a high point southwest of town that offered the most imposing view of the mountain in the rising sun, and there he spent most of a morning making oil studies of the opaline peak. ‘His work upon this mountain was in some respects the best he ever accomplished,’ Ludlow offered, ‘being done with a loving faithfulness hardly called out by Hood’s only rival, the Peak of Shasta’” 

Albert Bierstadt: Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast, Seattle, Washington, 2011, p. 38).
As is typical of his distinctive aesthetic, Bierstadt presents a heroic vision of the Oregon landscape in Indians on the Columbia River. Suffused with a rosy golden light, the snowcapped, rocky peak of Mount Hood rises proudly above the Columbia River where a group of Indians row their boat across its crystalline waters towards the shore. Emanating tranquility and serenity, this Edenic vision of wilderness demonstrates Bierstadt’s response to the national desire for renewal and a return to peace in the aftermath of the Civil War. However, works such as Indians on the Columbia River additionally attest to Bierstadt’s desire to adapt the European ideal of the sublime – the ability of the natural world to elicit awe and wonder – to an explicitly American landscape. The dramatic geological features he found throughout the West lent themselves well to this endeavor, but this preoccupation deepened during his travels in the Pacific Northwest; for the first time Bierstadt found volcanoes that rivaled those of South America such as Cotopaxi, which had already been famously portrayed on several occassions by Bierstadt’s contemporary, Frederic Edwin Church

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

The painter
Albert Bierstadt was a German-born American painter. He was brought to the United States at the age of one by his parents. He later returned to study painting for several years in Düsseldorf. At an early age Bierstadt developed a taste for art and made clever crayon sketches in his youth.
In 1851, he began to paint in oils. He became part of the Hudson River School in New York, an informal group of like-minded painters who started painting along this scenic river. Their style was based on carefully detailed paintings with romantic, almost glowing lighting, sometimes called luminism. An important interpreter of the western landscape, Bierstadt, along with Thomas Moran, is also grouped with the Rocky Mountain School. 

Full Wandering Vertextes entry  =>

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT MINTO & MOUNT ADAM BY CHARLES HAMILTON SMITH

CHARLES HAMILTON SMITH (1776-1859)

Mount Minto  (4,165m - 13,665 ft)

Mount Adam (4, 010m -  13,516 ft)

 Antarctica (Victoria Land) 

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

Yale Center for British Art, Connecticut USA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quite a productive fellow ! 

___________________________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT TACOMA / MOUNT RAINIER BY ELIZA BARCHUS

ELIZA BARCHUS (1857-1959)

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

United States of America (Washington)

The mountain
Mount Rainier, Mount Tacoma, or Mount Tahoma (4,392 m-14,411 ft) is the highest mountain of the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest, and the highest mountain in the U.S. state of Washington. It is a large active stratovolcano located 54 miles (87 km) south-southeast of Seattle. It is the most topographically prominent mountain in the contiguous United States and the Cascade Volcanic Arc.
Mount Rainier was first known by the Native Americans as Talol, or Tacoma or Tahoma.
The current name was given by George Vancouver, who named it in honor of his friend, Rear Admiral Peter Rainier. The map of the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-1806 refers to it as "Mt. Regniere".
Mount Rainier is ranked third of the 128 ultra-prominent mountain peaks of the United States. Mount Rainier has a topographic prominence of 13,210 ft (4,026 m), which is greater than that of K2, the world's second-tallest mountain, at 13,189 ft (4,020 m). On days of exceptional clarity, it can also be seen from as far away as Corvallis, Oregon (at Marys Peak) and Victoria, British Columbia.
With 26 major glaciers and 36 sq mi (93 km2) of permanent snowfields and glaciers, Mount Rainier is the most heavily glaciated peak in the lower 48 states. The summit is topped by two volcanic craters, each more than 1,000 ft (300 m) in diameter, with the larger east crater overlapping the west crater. Geothermal heat from the volcano keeps areas of both crater rims free of snow and ice, and has formed the world's largest volcanic glacier cave network within the ice-filled craters, with nearly 2 mi (3.2 km) of passages. 

The Carbon, Puyallup, Mowich, Nisqually, and Cowlitz Rivers begin at eponymous glaciers of Mount Rainier. 

The sources of the White River are Winthrop, Emmons, and Fryingpan Glaciers. The White, Carbon, and Mowich join the Puyallup River, which discharges into Commencement Bay at Tacoma; the Nisqually empties into Puget Sound east of Lacey; and the Cowlitz joins the Columbia River between Kelso and Longview.

The painter
Eliza Barchus was an American landscape painter who lived in Portland for most of her life.
After taking art lessons from another landscape painter, Will S. Parrott, Barchus sold her first painting in 1885. Between then and 1935, she produced thousands of oil paintings and reproductions of subjects such as Mount Hood, Yellowstone Falls, Muir Glacier, and San Francisco Bay.
Barchus, who had won medals at Mechanics Fairs in Portland in the late 1880s, drew national attention in 1890, when one of her large canvases of Mount Hood was displayed at the National Academy of Design exhibition in New York City. In 1901, several of her works were shown at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, and in 1905 she won a gold medal at the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland for oil paintings of Pacific coast scenery.
Widowed in 1899, Barchus supported herself and her family for decades largely by selling or trading her art. Several years after her death at age 102, the Oregon Legislative Assembly named her "The Oregon Artist". Many art collections in Portland and elsewhere include examples of her work.

___________________________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

HOWSER SPIRE PAINTED BY ROBERT GENN

ROBERT GENN (1936-2014)

Howser Spire (3,412 m - 11,194 ft) 

Canada (British Columbia) 

In Alpenglow in the Bugaboos, private collection 

The mountain 

Howser Spire (3,412 m-11,194 ft) or Howser Spire Massif, is a group of three distinct granite peaks, and the highest mountain of the Canadian Bugaboo Spires. The mountain is located at the southwest corner of the Vowell Glacier, within the Bugaboo mountain range in the Purcell Mountains, a subrange of British Columbia's Columbia Mountains, The highest of the three spires is the North Tower at (3,412 m -11,194 ft), the Central Tower the lowest, and the South Tower being slightly lower than the North at 3,292 m (10,801 ft).
Howser Spire is named after the town of Howser on Duncan Lake and Howser Creek.
The first ascent of the North Tower was made in August, 1916 by Conrad Kain, Albert MacCarthy, E. MacCarthy, J. Vincent and Henry Frind.[
The Beckey-Chouinard / West Buttress route is recognized in the historic climbing text Fifty Classic Climbs of North America and considered a classic around the world.

The painter
Robert Douglas Genn was a Canadian artist, who has gained recognition for his style, which is in the tradition of Canadian landscape painting. Born in Victoria, British Columbia, Genn has often been compared with members of the 1920s Canadian Group of Seven. In 1961, he met Lawren Harris who was a neighbour in Point Grey, Vancouver. Genn had problems with painting skies, and Harris's advice was to turn the picture upside-down: "Paint down from the trees to the clouds at the bottom of the picture to get the perspective right." Genn said this was "valuable advice", which enabled him "to control the gradation, and work up into the trees in a more abstract manner."
His work is in corporate and public collections, including Air Canada, Bank Of Montreal, Canadian General Insurance, Canadian Airlines, Canadian Utilities, The Churchill Corporation, Expo '86, Esso Resources, First City - California II, Highfield Oil & Gas, Molson Brewery Ltd., Montreal Trust, Shell Resources, University of Alberta, Westgate Chevrolet, Glenbow Museum and Government of Belgium.
He ran the Painter's Keys website, a worldwide artists' community, with his staff and volunteers. The web site sends out an erudite free twice-weekly newsletter, which is sent to 135,000 artists in over 100 countries, and claims the largest collection of art quotes online with over 5,382 authors quoted.
In 2005, Genn campaigned against the Chinese website, arch-world.com, which was selling thousands of high-resolution images of around 2,800 artists' work illegally, without permission. After failing to gain support from the Canadian government or the African embassy in Ottawa, Genn used his web site to enlist subscribers' support to email objections to the arch-world, resulting within days in over 1,000 online complaints from artists, dealers and politicians to the company and governments. This stimulated a diplomatic protest letter to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, Trading and Law Department from the Canadian Embassy in Beijing. Genn credited the campaign with the subsequent removal of images by 800 Canadian artists from arch-world, although many works were reinstated on arch-world soon after.
Genn has been a member of the Board of Directors at Emily Carr College of Art & Design.

_________________________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT SIR SANDFORD BY JOHN ARTHUR FRASER

JOHN ARTHUR FRASER  (1838–1898) 

Mount Sir Sandford  (3,519 m -11,545 ft)

Canada (British Columbia)

 In At the Rogers Pass, Selkirk mountains, 1885, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

The mountain 

Mount Sir Sandford   (3,519 m -11,545 ft) is the highest mountain of the Sir Sandford Range and the highest mountain in the Selkirk Mountains of southeastern British Columbia, Canada. It is the 12th highest peak in the province. The mountain was named after Sir Sandford Fleming, a railway engineer for the Canadian Pacific Railway.

The Selkirk Mountains are a mountain range spanning the northern portion of the Idaho Panhandle, eastern Washington, and southeastern British Columbia which are part of a larger grouping of mountains, the Columbia Mountains. They begin at Mica Peak near Spokane and extend approximately 320 km north (200 miles) from the border to Kinbasket Lake, at the now-inundated location of the onetime fur company post Boat Encampment. The range is bounded on its west, northeast and at its northern extremity by the Columbia River, or the reservoir lakes now filling most of that river's course.  The Selkirks were named after Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk.

The painter 

John Arthur Fraser was a British artist, photography entrepreneur and teacher. He undertook various paintings for the Canadian Pacific Railway. He is known for his highly realistic landscapes of Canada and the United States, many of them watercolors. Fraser's early work as a tinter of small head and shoulders studies for Notman is skillful and sensitive, giving the impression of miniature paintings. One his first known landscapes was the picturesque and romantic Crossing the ice at Pointe de Lévy in Quebec City (1866), which showed that he was already an accomplished artist. It has a dramatic sky and lighting, and meticulous detail in the foreground.  Two of his oils from 1873, September afternoon, Eastern Townships and A shot in the dawn, Lake Scugog resemble the work of the Pre-Raphaelite painters popular in Britain at the time. They have strong and original composition and colour, with photographic clarity and detail. His 1878 New Brunswick landscapes are larger and more original both in composition and in use of colour than his earlier landscape. Most of Fraser's paintings were watercolours. His work was praised for its photographic realism, attention to detail and mastery of colour and light.

___________________________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT TACOMA/ MOUNT RAINIER BY ABBY WILLIAMS HILL

ABBY WILLIAMS HILL (1861-1943) 

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

United States of America  (Washington State)

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

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

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

___________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT SIR DONALD IN VINTAGE POSTCARD 1902

VINTAGE POSTCARDS 

Mount Sir Donald  (3, 284 m - 10,774  ft)

Canada

 In Mount Sir Donald,  © Detroit Photographic Co..., 1902

The mountain 

Mount Sir Donald  (3, 284 m - 10,774  ft) is a peak in the Selkirk Mountains range near the Rogers Pass area of British Columbia, Canada. It was originally named Syndicate Peak in honor of the group who arranged the finances for the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway, but was later renamed after Donald Smith, 1st Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal, head of the syndicate.

The  good rock quality of Mount Sir Donald and  its classic Matterhorn shape make it popular for alpine rock climbers, and the Northwest Arete route is included in the popular book 50 Classic Climbs of North America. There are no truly easy routes to its summit although some of the routes are not technically difficult. Even before its inclusion as one of the 50 classic climbs of North America the peak was a very popular objective indeed, especially the Northwest Ridge. It is worth noting that the peak seems to create its own weather at times as it towers above the surrounding peaks, and the lichen on the rock is very slippery when wet. The recorded routes on all sides range in rating from class 4 to 5.8+.

The first ascent was made in 1890 by two Swiss alpinist, Emil Huber and Carl Sulzer and porter Harry Cooper. As of the 1910s, an average of three or four ascents per year were being made.

Vintage postcards
Postcards became popular at the turn of the 20th century, especially for sending short messages to friends and relatives. They were collected right from the start, and are still sought after today by collectors of pop culture, photography, advertising, wartime memorabilia, local history, and many other categories. Postcards were an international craze, published all over the world. The Detroit Publishing Co. and Teich & Co. were two of the major publishers in the U.S, and sometimes individuals printed their own postcards as well. Yvon were the most famous in France. Many individual or anonymous publishers did exist around the world and especially in Africa and  Asia (Japan, Thailand, Nepal, China, Java) between 1920 and 1955. These photographer were mostly local notables, soldiers, official guides belonging to the colonial armies (british french, belgium...) who sometimes had rather sophisticated equipment and readily produced colored photograms or explorers, navigators, climbers (Vittorio Sella and the Archiduke of Abruzzi future king of Italy remains the most famous of them).
There are many types of collectible vintage postcards.
Hold-to-light postcards were made with tissue paper surrounded by two pieces of regular paper, so light would shine through. Fold-out postcards, popular in the 1950s, had multiple postcards attached in a long strip. Real photograph postcards (RPPCs) are photographs with a postcard backing.
Novelty postcards were made using wood, aluminum, copper, and cork. Silk postcards–often embroidered over a printed image–were wrapped around cardboard and sent in see-through glassine paper envelopes; they were especially popular during World War I.
In the 1930s and 1940s, postcards were printed on brightly colored paper designed to look like linen.

Most vintage postcard collectors focus on themes, like Christmas, Halloween, portraits of movie stars, European royalty and U.S. presidents, wartime imagery, and photos of natural disasters or natural wonders. Not to mention cards featuring colorful pictures by famous artists like Alphonse Mucha, Harrison Fisher, Ellen Clapsaddle, and Frances Brundage.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT LEFROY PAINTED BY J.E.H. MC DONALD

J.E.H. MC DONALD (1873-1932)

Mount Lefroy (3,423 m -11,230 ft) 

 Canada (Alberta)

 1. In Mount Lefroy oil on canvas, 1932,  National Gallery of Canada 

The mountain 
Mont Lefroy (3,423 m -11,230 ft)  is a mountain on the Continental Divide, at the border of Alberta and British Columbia in western Canada. The mountain is located on the eastern side of Abbot Pass which separates Lake Louise in Banff National Park from Lake O'Hara in Yoho National Park. Mount Victoria lies immediately on the western side of the pass.
The mountain was named by George M. Dawson in 1894 for Sir John Henry Lefroy (1817-1890), an astronomer who had traveled over 8,800 kilometres (5,470 mi) in Canada's north between 1842-44 making meteorological and magnetic observations.
The mountain is the site of the first fatal climbing accident in Canada. In 1896 during a failed summit bid, Philip Stanley Abbot slipped on rocks after just coming off an icy section and plummeted down the rock face to his death.

The painter 
The painter J.E.H. (James Edward Hervey) MacDonald, a founding member of the Group of Seven, responded to the Canadian landscape with a sensitivity honed by his interest in the American writers Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman. One of Canada's leading graphic designers and a popular art teacher, MacDonald was also a poet and calligrapher. His design work was strongly influenced by Arts and Crafts designers in England and Canada, especially William Morris.
The son of a cabinetmaker, MacDonald immigrated with his family to Hamilton, Ontario, in 1887. After apprenticing with a Toronto lithography company at the age of sixteen, he worked in commercial design for Grip Printing and Publishing Co. from around 1895 to 1903, at Carlton Studio in London from 1903 to 1907, and again at Grip Ltd. from 1907. MacDonald resigned in 1912 to paint full-time, but worked as a freelance designer until 1921. While an apprentice, MacDonald studied art under John Ireland and Arthur Heming at the Hamilton School of Art, and with G.A. Reid and William Cruikshank at the Central Ontario School of Art and Design (now the Ontario College of Art and Design). He was active in the Arts and Letters Club, Toronto, and was a member of the Ontario Society of Artists and the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
MacDonald painted decorations for Dr. James MacCallum's cottage in Georgian Bay (1915) and St. Anne's Church, Toronto (1923). He worked up his paintings from sketches made on trips to Georgian Bay, northern Ontario, Algoma (1919 to 1922), and in the Rockies (1924 to 1930). From 1921 he taught at the Ontario College of Art, becoming Principal in 1929. MacDonald visited Barbados with his wife early in 1932 to recover from a stroke he had suffered the previous November.
_______________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT SAMPSON PAINTED BY LAWREN S. HARRIS

LAWREN S. HARRIS (1885-1970) 

Mount Sampson  or Samson (2,811 m, 9,222 ft) 

Canada (British Columbia)  

In Mount Sampson, from Maligne Lake, oil on board, 1924, (27,3cm x 35,6cm)  Private owner

The mountain 
 Mount Sampson also named Mount Samson (2,811 m, 9,222 ft)  - not to be confused with Mount Samson in Australia - is a rocky summit, highest of the summits south of the head of the Hurley River and East of North Creek, British Columbia, Canada.
The provincial government names website gives "Sampson" as the gazetted spelling, and notes that "Samson" was formerly official but has been rescinded in favour of the new spelling. The name of the closest neighbouring peak is Delilah, the wife of the biblical Samson. However, Delilah was not named at the same time as Samson was, but later.  Fairley's guide spells it Samson, as that was the official spelling at the time - as do Alpine Select and the Culbert guides.
The Sampson family of Nequatque (near D'Arcy) may be the source of the family name. Ironically, it is probable that if you go back in history far enough, the family name "Sampson" was itself based on the biblical character. As in Samson Narrows at Maligne lake.

The mountain has seen at least two ski descents. The west face, although not a direct line from the summit, was skied solo from the top of the ridgeline. It was approached from Boomerang Glacier and is the closest line from that direction. Since then, at least one BCMC party has skied the south side, approaching from Glacier Pass. The west face is a steep, rewarding descent linking snow patches through rock outcrops.

The painter 
Lawren Stewart Harris  was a leading landscape canadian painter, imbuing his paintings with a spiritual dimension. An inspirer of other artists, he was a key figure in the Group of Seven and gave new vision to representations of the northern Canadian landscape. During the 1920s, Harris's works became more abstract and simplified, especially his stark landscapes of the Canadian north and Arctic.  He also stopped signing and dating his works so that people would judge his works on their own merit and not by the artist or when they were painted.
In 1924, a sketching trip with A.Y. Jackson to Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies marked the beginning of Harris' mountain subjects, which he continued to explore with annual sketching trips until 1929, exploring areas around Banff National Park, Yoho National Park and Mount Robson Provincial Park. In 1930, Harris went on his last extended sketching trip, travelling to the Arctic aboard the supply ship SS. Beothic for two months, during which time he completed over 50 sketches.  "We are on the fringe of the great North and its living whiteness, its loneliness and replenishment, its resignations and release, tis call and answer, its cleansing rhythms. It seems that the top of the continent is a source of spiritual flow that will ever shed clarity into the growing race of America."(Lawren S. Harris, 1926)
In 1969, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.
Harris died in Vancouver in 1970, at the age of 84, as a well-known artist.

_______________________________

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT LEFROY BY LAWREN S. HARRIS

LAWREN S. HARRIS (1885-1970),

Mount Lefroy (3,423 m -11,230 ft) 

 Canada (Alberta)

 1. In Snow Rocky Mountain Paintings VII, oil on canvas,1929, Thomson Col.

2.  In Mount Lefroy oil on canvas, 1929,  National Gallery of Canada 

The mountain 

Mont Lefroy (3,423 m -11,230 ft)  is a mountain on the Continental Divide, at the border of Alberta and British Columbia in western Canada. The mountain is located on the eastern side of Abbot Pass which separates Lake Louise in Banff National Park from Lake O'Hara in Yoho National Park. Mount Victoria lies immediately on the western side of the pass.

The mountain was named by George M. Dawson in 1894 for Sir John Henry Lefroy (1817-1890), an astronomer who had traveled over 8,800 kilometres (5,470 mi) in Canada's north between 1842-44 making meteorological and magnetic observations.

The mountain is the site of the first fatal climbing accident in Canada. In 1896 during a failed summit bid, Philip Stanley Abbot slipped on rocks after just coming off an icy section and plummeted down the rock face to his death.

A prominent painting by Canadian Group of 7 artist Lawren Harris, was painted at this site. It is the second one in this page. 

The painter 
Lawren Stewart Harris  was a leading landscape canadian painter, imbuing his paintings with a spiritual dimension. An inspirer of other artists, he was a key figure in the Group of Seven and gave new vision to representations of the northern Canadian landscape. During the 1920s, Harris's works became more abstract and simplified, especially his stark landscapes of the Canadian north and Arctic.  He also stopped signing and dating his works so that people would judge his works on their own merit and not by the artist or when they were painted.
In 1924, a sketching trip with A.Y. Jackson to Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies marked the beginning of Harris' mountain subjects, which he continued to explore with annual sketching trips until 1929, exploring areas around Banff National Park, Yoho National Park and Mount Robson Provincial Park. In 1930, Harris went on his last extended sketching trip, travelling to the Arctic aboard the supply ship SS. Beothic for two months, during which time he completed over 50 sketches.  "We are on the fringe of the great North and its living whiteness, its loneliness and replenishment, its resignations and release, tis call and answer, its cleansing rhythms. It seems that the top of the continent is a source of spiritual flow that will ever shed clarity into the growing race of America."(Lawren S. Harris, 1926)
In 1969, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.
Harris died in Vancouver in 1970, at the age of 84, as a well-known artist.

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2018 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau