EL COTOPAXI (3) BY FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH

FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH (1826-1900) 

Cotopaxi (5, 897 m - 19, 347 ft)

Ecuador

In Cotopaxi volcano, oil on canvas, c.1855, Museum of Fines Arts Boston

About this painting 

Church has painted such a lot of times the Cotopaxi than you must have a second look to  determine  it the one you are looking at is the good one or a new view. 

Painted after Frederic Edwin Church’s first trip to Ecuador in 1853, The Andes of Ecuador combines the scientific and religious concerns of Church’s time in one grand panorama. The infinite botanical detail, the terrifying depths of the abyss, and the overwhelming sense of unlimited space combine to communicate a powerful sense of the sublime.” The painting encourages both distanced and close viewing through a dramatic sweeping vista that contains several small vignettes and seemingly endless details. 

Church depicted various plant and animal species with exactness while imbuing the painting with an explicit Christian iconography, mirroring contemporary thinking about science and religion. Through his overt allusions to Christianity within the Ecuadorian landscape, “Church was intimating that Americans inhabited a new Eden, a new promised land, and in standing before this sublime grandeur one enjoyed the metaphoric presence of Genesis.” The multiple ecosystems correspond to Alexander Von Humboldt’s belief in the harmony of nature in which biology, botany, and geology coalesce to determine vegetation. His theories were popular with artists of the nineteenth century, who saw in them a way to reconcile God’s divinity with scientific advancements. In the Cotopaxi region of Ecuador both Humboldt and Church found in one locale perennial summers—the tropics—juxtaposed with ice-covered volcanic mountains.

The mountain 

Cotopaxi  (5,897 m - 19,347 ft)  is an active stratovolcano in the Andes Mountains, located in the Latacunga canton of Cotopaxi Province, about 50 km (31 mi) south of Quito, and 33 km (21 mi) northeast of the city of Latacunga, Ecuador, in South America.  It is the second highest summit in Ecuador, reaching a height of 5,897 m (19,347 ft). It is one of the world's highest volcanoes. Many sources claim that Cotopaxi means "Neck of the Moon" in an indigenous language, but this is unproven. The mountain was honored as a "Sacred Mountain" by local Andean people, even prior to the Inca invasion in the 15th century.
Most of the time, Cotopaxi is clearly visible on the skyline from Quito and is part of the chain of volcanoes around the Pacific plate known as the Pacific Ring of Fire. It has an almost symmetrical cone that rises from a highland plain of about 3,800 metres (12,500 ft), with a width at its base of about 23 kilometres (14 mi). It has one of the few equatorial glaciers in the world, which starts at the height of 5,000 metres (16,400 ft). At its summit, Cotopaxi has an 800 X 550 m wide crater which is 250 m deep. The crater consists of two concentric crater rims, the outer one being partly free of snow and irregular in shape. The crater interior is covered with ice cornices and rather flat. The highest point is on the outer rim of the crater on the north side.
The first recorded eruption of Cotopaxi was in 1534.  With 87 known eruptions since then, Cotopaxi is one of Ecuador's most active volcanoes.

The Painter 

The second generation of the Hudson River School took landscape painting to a new level. Foremost among them was Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), who expanded the size and grandeur of his canvases and broadened their scope by traveling far afield. His adventurous spirit led him from the high peaks of the Andes to the icebergs of Newfoundland. His skills as an artist and showman complemented his dramatic compositions and spectacular use of light and color. The resulting paintings appealed to the expansionist, scientific, and religious sensibilities at mid-century and remain nationalistic icons of America and her art.

More about Frederic Edwin Church 

___________________________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

EL TUNGURAHUA & EL COTOPAXI PAINTED BY FREDERIC-EDWIN CHURCH

FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH  (1826-1900) 

Cotopaxi  (5, 897 m - 19, 347 ft)

Tungurahua (5, 023 m - 16, 460 ft)  

Ecuador

In The Andes of Ecuador, oil on canvas, c.1855, Reynolda House, Winston Salem (North Carolina)

About this painting 

“Painted after Frederic Edwin Church’s first trip to Ecuador in 1853, The Andes of Ecuador combines the scientific and religious concerns of Church’s time in one grand panorama. The infinite botanical detail, the terrifying depths of the abyss, and the overwhelming sense of unlimited space combine to communicate a powerful sense of the sublime.”  The painting encourages both distanced and close viewing through a dramatic sweeping vista that contains several small vignettes and seemingly endless details. Two figures in the left foreground pray in front of an archaic stone cross, colorful birds flocking in a palm tree above them. This scene is balanced on the right by cascades of water and a small lake. Snow-capped peaks in the background—Tungurahua on the  right and the cone of Cotopaxi in the mist on the left—frame the distant view. The white-hot light of a centrally placed sun permeates a warm palette of sienna browns and lush greens.

Church depicted various plant and animal species with exactness while imbuing the painting with an explicit Christian iconography, mirroring contemporary thinking about science and religion. Through his overt allusions to Christianity within the Ecuadorian landscape, “Church was intimating that Americans inhabited a new Eden, a new promised land, and in standing before this sublime grandeur one enjoyed the metaphoric presence of Genesis.”  From the llamas grazing in the center foreground to the distant snowy peaks, the multiple ecosystems correspond to Alexander Von Humboldt’s belief in the harmony of nature in which biology, botany, and geology coalesce to determine vegetation. His theories were popular with artists of the nineteenth century, who saw in them a way to reconcile God’s divinity with scientific advancements. In the Cotopaxi region of Ecuador both Humboldt and Church found in one locale perennial summers—the tropics—juxtaposed with ice-covered volcanic mountains.

A critic writing for The Crayon in 1855 acclaimed the canvas Church’s “most important work yet,” and a student recalled how he painted “with a rapidity and precision which were simply inconceivable by one who had not seen him at work.”  In addition, The Andes of Ecuador is an early masterpiece of Luminism, a style prevalent in the late nineteenth century that consisted of radiant, light-filled quiet vistas.

 *Description note  from the  Reynolda House, Museum of American Art 

The mountains 

Cotopaxi  (5, 897 m - 19, 347 ft) (on left in the mist in this painting) is an active stratovolcano in the Andes Mountains. It  is located in the Latacunga canton of Cotopaxi Province, about 50 km (31 mi) south of Quito, and 33 km (21 mi) northeast of the city of Latacunga, Ecuador, in South America.  It is the second highest summit in Ecuador. It is one of the world's highest volcanoes. Many sources claim that Cotopaxi means "Neck of the Moon" in an indigenous language, but this is unproven. The mountain was honored as a "Sacred Mountain" by local Andean people, even prior to the Inca invasion in the 15th century. Most of the time, Cotopaxi is clearly visible on the skyline from Quito and is part of the chain of volcanoes around the Pacific plate known as the Pacific Ring of Fire. 

Tungurahua (5, 023 m - 16, 460 ft)   meaning "Throat of Fire" from Panzaleo, is an active stratovolcano located in the Cordillera Oriental of Ecuador. The volcano gives its name to the province of Tungurahua. Volcanic activity restarted on August 19, 1999, and is ongoing as of 2013, with several major eruptions since then, the last starting on 1 February 2014. It is located 140 kilometres (87 mi) south of the capital Quito. Nearby notable mountains are Chimborazo (6,310 m - 20,700 ft) and El Altar (5,319 m -17,451 ft). It rises above the small thermal springs town of Baños de Agua Santa (1,800 m -5,900 ft) which is located at its foot 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) to the north. Tungurahua is part of the Sangay National Park. Tungurahua's top is snow-covered and did feature a small summit glacier which melted away after the increase of volcanic activity in 1999.

During their seven-year-long South America expedition (1868 to 1876), the German volcanologists Alphons Stübel and Wilhelm Reiss climbed Cotopaxi (Reiss with Angel Escobar; 28 November 1872) and Tungurahua (Stübel with Eusebio Rodríguez; 9 February 1873).

The Painter 

The second generation of the Hudson River School took landscape painting to a new level. Foremost among them was Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), who expanded the size and grandeur of his canvases and broadened their scope by traveling far afield. His adventurous spirit led him from the high peaks of the Andes to the icebergs of Newfoundland. His skills as an artist and showman complemented his dramatic compositions and spectacular use of light and color. The resulting paintings appealed to the expansionist, scientific, and religious sensibilities at mid-century and remain nationalistic icons of America and her art.

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, to a well-off family, Church’s artistic prowess was nurtured at an early age. From 1844–1846 he was a student of Thomas Cole, the premier painter of American landscape, in Catskill, New York. During his time with Cole, Church honed his painting skills through close observation of nature, sketching the quintessential American landscape, the Hudson River Valley.

 In his Book of the Artists, Henry Tuckerman said of Church: “His great attribute is skill; he goes to nature, not so much with the tenderness of a lover or the awe of a worshipper, as with the determination, the intelligence, the patient intrepidity of a student; he is keenly on the watch for facts, and resolute in their transfer to art.” 

After Cole’s sudden death in 1848, Church assumed his mentor’s place as a leading figure of the Hudson River School. That same year he was elected the youngest associate of the National Academy of Design, and the following year he earned the rank of academician.

As important as Cole was to Church’s technical development, the work of scientist-explorer Alexander Von Humboldt (1769–1859) was equally influential in Church’s evolution as a painter. Humboldt published the two-volume text Cosmos in the 1840s, in which he identified unifying principles within the incredible complexity of the world’s environments. His theories lent themselves to romantic interpretation and became popular with artists of the mid-nineteenth century as they grappled with the confluence of divinity and science.

Church answered Humboldt’s call to artists to depict the grand and diverse beauty of nature; he traced the explorer’s steps through Ecuador on two separate trips in 1853 and 1857. The artist sketched the complex ecosystems he encountered and his final canvases merged scientific precisionism with Judeo-Christian themes. Church painted his South American canvases on a large scale in his studio and then exploited the spectacular subject matter through elaborate displays.  His Heart of the Andes, 1859, Metropolitan Museum of Art, was hung behind a red velvet curtain and capped by portraits of great American presidents. For twenty-five cents each, the public was admitted entry to Church’s premises in the Tenth Street Studio Building to view the exhibit. The painting created a sensation and that same year sold for the record-breaking price of $10,000. During his career Church painted sixteen major works derived from his travels in South America.

While Church found success with these subjects, still the majority of his works explored the majesty of American terrain. Niagara Falls, 1857, Corcoran Gallery of Art, and Twilight in the Wilderness, 1860, Cleveland Museum of Art, celebrate the glories of America at a time of growing sectional strife. His dramatic The Icebergs, 1861, Dallas Museum of Art, was inspired by an unsuccessful expedition to find the Northwest Passage. When it was unveiled it failed to find a buyer, an early indication, perhaps, of a shift of taste away from grandiose conceptions.

Church and his work influenced subsequent painters of American landscape; he taught Louis Rémy Mignot who traveled with him to Ecuador, and his radiant treatment of light inspired the luminist painters of the later nineteenth century.  Following an extended trip abroad, Church commissioned the architect Calvert Vaux to build Olana, a Persian-inspired villa located on a high bluff overlooking the Hudson River. Church designed stencils, selected wall colors, and furnished Olana with an eclectic array of objets d’art and furniture. Toward the end of his life, Church retired to Olana, just as enthusiasm for his kind of grand statement was fading.

 * Bio note  from the  Reynolda House, Museum of American Art 

EL COTOPAXI (2) BY FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH

FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH (1826-1900)

Cotopaxi (5,897 m - 19,347 ft) 

Ecuador  

In El Copotopaxi, oil on canvas, 1853, Coleccion Patricia Phelp de Cisneros

The mountain 

Cotopaxi  is an active stratovolcano in the Andes Mountains,  which rises at 5,897 m - 19,347 ft and is located in the Latacunga canton of Cotopaxi Province, about 50 km (31 mi) south of Quito, and 33 km (21 mi) northeast of the city of Latacunga, Ecuador, in South America.  It is the second highest summit in Ecuador, reaching a height of 5,897 m (19,347 ft). It is one of the world's highest volcanoes. Many sources claim that Cotopaxi means "Neck of the Moon" in an indigenous language, but this is unproven. The mountain was honored as a "Sacred Mountain" by local Andean people, even prior to the Inca invasion in the 15th century.

Most of the time, Cotopaxi is clearly visible on the skyline from Quito and is part of the chain of volcanoes around the Pacific plate known as the Pacific Ring of Fire. It has an almost symmetrical cone that rises from a highland plain of about 3,800 metres (12,500 ft), with a width at its base of about 23 kilometres (14 mi). It has one of the few equatorial glaciers in the world, which starts at the height of 5,000 metres (16,400 ft). At its summit, Cotopaxi has an 800 X 550 m wide crater which is 250 m deep. The crater consists of two concentric crater rims, the outer one being partly free of snow and irregular in shape. The crater interior is covered with ice cornices and rather flat. The highest point is on the outer rim of the crater on the north side.

The first recorded eruption of Cotopaxi was in 1534.  With 87 known eruptions since then, Cotopaxi is one of Ecuador's most active volcanoes.

The Painter 

The second generation of the Hudson River School took landscape painting to a new level. Foremost among them was Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), who expanded the size and grandeur of his canvases and broadened their scope by traveling far afield. His adventurous spirit led him from the high peaks of the Andes to the icebergs of Newfoundland. His skills as an artist and showman complemented his dramatic compositions and spectacular use of light and color. The resulting paintings appealed to the expansionist, scientific, and religious sensibilities at mid-century and remain nationalistic icons of America and her art.

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, to a well-off family, Church’s artistic prowess was nurtured at an early age. From 1844–1846 he was a student of Thomas Cole, the premier painter of American landscape, in Catskill, New York. During his time with Cole, Church honed his painting skills through close observation of nature, sketching the quintessential American landscape, the Hudson River Valley.

 In his Book of the Artists, Henry Tuckerman said of Church: “His great attribute is skill; he goes to nature, not so much with the tenderness of a lover or the awe of a worshipper, as with the determination, the intelligence, the patient intrepidity of a student; he is keenly on the watch for facts, and resolute in their transfer to art.” 

After Cole’s sudden death in 1848, Church assumed his mentor’s place as a leading figure of the Hudson River School. That same year he was elected the youngest associate of the National Academy of Design, and the following year he earned the rank of academician.

As important as Cole was to Church’s technical development, the work of scientist-explorer Alexander Von Humboldt (1769–1859) was equally influential in Church’s evolution as a painter. Humboldt published the two-volume text Cosmos in the 1840s, in which he identified unifying principles within the incredible complexity of the world’s environments. His theories lent themselves to romantic interpretation and became popular with artists of the mid-nineteenth century as they grappled with the confluence of divinity and science.

Church answered Humboldt’s call to artists to depict the grand and diverse beauty of nature; he traced the explorer’s steps through Ecuador on two separate trips in 1853 and 1857. The artist sketched the complex ecosystems he encountered and his final canvases merged scientific precisionism with Judeo-Christian themes. Church painted his South American canvases on a large scale in his studio and then exploited the spectacular subject matter through elaborate displays.  His Heart of the Andes, 1859, Metropolitan Museum of Art, was hung behind a red velvet curtain and capped by portraits of great American presidents. For twenty-five cents each, the public was admitted entry to Church’s premises in the Tenth Street Studio Building to view the exhibit. The painting created a sensation and that same year sold for the record-breaking price of $10,000. During his career Church painted sixteen major works derived from his travels in South America.

While Church found success with these subjects, still the majority of his works explored the majesty of American terrain. Niagara Falls, 1857, Corcoran Gallery of Art, and Twilight in the Wilderness, 1860, Cleveland Museum of Art, celebrate the glories of America at a time of growing sectional strife. His dramatic The Icebergs, 1861, Dallas Museum of Art, was inspired by an unsuccessful expedition to find the Northwest Passage. When it was unveiled it failed to find a buyer, an early indication, perhaps, of a shift of taste away from grandiose conceptions.

Church and his work influenced subsequent painters of American landscape; he taught Louis Rémy Mignot who traveled with him to Ecuador, and his radiant treatment of light inspired the luminist painters of the later nineteenth century.  Following an extended trip abroad, Church commissioned the architect Calvert Vaux to build Olana, a Persian-inspired villa located on a high bluff overlooking the Hudson River. Church designed stencils, selected wall colors, and furnished Olana with an eclectic array of objets d’art and furniture. Toward the end of his life, Church retired to Olana, just as enthusiasm for his kind of grand statement was fading.

_______________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT KATAHDIN (2) BY FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH

FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH  (1826-1900)

Mount Katahdin (1,605 m - 5,267 ft)

United States of America (Maine)

In  Mount Katahdin  from Millinocket Camp, oil on canvas,  1895, Portland Museum of Art,  Maine 

The mountain  
Mount Katahdin (1,605 m - 5,267 feet)  is the highest mountain in the U.S. state of Maine and the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. The mountain, being a mile above sea level, towers above the comparatively low Maine lakes and forests. Named Katahdin by the Penobscot Indians, which means "The Greatest Mountain", Katahdin is the centerpiece of Baxter State Park.  The official name is "Mount Katahdin" as decided by the US Board on Geographic Names in 1893.
Among some Native Americans, Katahdin was believed to be the home of the storm god Pamola, and thus an area to be avoidedIt is a steep, tall mountain formed from a granite intrusion weathered to the surface.
Katahdin was known to the Native Americans in the region, and was known to Europeans at least since 1689. It has inspired hikes, climbs, journal narratives, paintings, and a piano sonata. The area around the peak was protected by Governor Percival Baxter starting in the 1930s. Katahdin  is located near a stretch known as the Hundred-Mile Wilderness.
Katahdin is referred to 60 years after Field’s climb of Agiokochuk (Mount Washington) in the writings of John Gyles, a teenage colonist who was captured near Portland, Maine in 1689 by the Abenaki. While in the company of Abenaki hunting parties, he traveled up and down several Maine rivers including both branches of the Penobscot, passing close to “Teddon”. He remarked that it was higher than the White Hills above the Saco River.
The first recorded climb of "Catahrdin" was by Massachusetts surveyors Zackery Adley and Charles Turner, Jr. in August 1804.  In the 1840s Henry David Thoreau climbed Katahdin, which he spelled "Ktaadn"; his ascent is recorded in a well-known chapter of The Maine Woods. A few years later Theodore Winthrop wrote about his visit in Life in the Open Air. Painters Frederic Edwin Church and Marsden Hartley are well-known artists who created landscapes of Katahdin.
In the 1930s Governor Percival Baxter began to acquire land and finally deeded more than 200,000 acres (809 km2) to the State of Maine for a park, named Baxter State Park after him. The summit was officially recognized by the US Board on Geographic Names as "Baxter Peak" in 1931.

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.

L 'ACROPOLE D'ATHÊNES PEINT PAR FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH

 

 

FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH (1826-1900)

L'Acropole d'Athènes (156m -512ft)

Grèce

In Acropolis od Athens,  oil on canvas, The MET

La colline
L'Acropole d'Athènes (156m -512ft) (Ακρόπολη Αθηνών) est situé sur un plateau rocheux calcaire dont le sommet plat mesure environ 270 mètres d'est en ouest et 85 mètres du nord au sud, s'élargissant jusqu'à près de 150 mètres grâce au travaux faits au  Ve siècle avant l'ère chrétienne. Le terme d"acropole" (ἀκρόπολις / akrópolis) vient de l'adjectif ἄκρος (ákros "haut") et du nom πόλις (pólis, "ville, ville"), signifiant ainsi  la "ville haute".
Il est accessible du côté ouest par une pente raide menant aux Propylées. Le plateau peut être aussi atteint par deux failles creusées par l'érosion sur la  face nord . Les faces est et sud  sont aussi inaccessibles. C'est même par le côté est, jugé trop escarpé et donc non surveillé, que les Perses pénétrèrent dans la forteresse en 480 avant l'ère chrétienne.
Le sanctuaire de l'Acropole d'Athènes s'organise autour de la statue de la divinité tutélaire de la ville. Cette statue d'Athéna Polias n'est connue que par quelques textes. Ce devait être un Xoanon, une sorte de poutre en bois d'olivier, presque aniconique.   Elle devait être plutôt debout : une poutre est difficile à asseoir et ressemble plus à un personnage debout qu'assis ; il n'y a pas non plus de mention de trône dans les textes ; enfin, Athéna est le plus souvent représentée debout.
Chaque année, la statue était lavée, ses péplos changés et sa parure (bijoux et accessoires) nettoyée. Ses bijoux étaient des boucles d'oreilles, une bordure sur le cou et cinq colliers. Ses accessoires, tout en or, étaient une chouette, une égide, une gorgone et une phiale. Elle n'avait pas d'armes : elle n'était donc pas la déesse guerrière des statues les plus célèbres par la suite (Athéna Parthénos et Athéna Promachos de Phidias). Ces bijoux et accessoires pourraient dater de la "restructuration" de la statue primitive par Endoios. Il aurait fait de la poutre une corée en y fixant un bras (et une main tenant la phiale)

Le peintre
Frederic Edwin Church  est un peintre américain dont l'œuvre constitue l'expression la plus originale et la plus complète du romantisme dans la peinture américaine. Church a le paysage pour domaine. Élève de Thomas Cole entre 1844 et 1846, il commence par recueillir les formules ambiguës de son maître et sa vision d'un immense paysage dramatisé. Mais, tandis que chez la plupart des peintres de l'école de l'Hudson l'exemple de Cole aboutit à un type de paysage composé, tout de poncifs, Church le renouvelle par une étude passionnément objective de la nature. À partir de 1890 environ, il entreprend de grands voyages à travers le continent américain, accumulant des études sur le motif, où l'action de la lumière est notée avec une précision quasi photographique. Ces études s'apparentent à celles d'Asher B. Durand, par exemple, et, comme lui, Church les utilise pour de grands paysages composés. Mais au lieu d'« idéaliser » l'observation initiale suivant les vieux procédés du paysage classique, il rejoint plutôt la jeune tradition « luministe » américaine, son hyperréalisme de la lumière qui donne la même intensité à tous les détails. Les motifs de prédilection de Church, inspirés par les terribles magnificences de la nature — montagnes, forêts vierges, glaciers, chutes d'eau (Le Niagara, 1857, Cocoran Gallery of Art, Washington ; Le Cœur des Andes, 1859, Metropolitan Museum, New York ; Le Cotopaxi, collection Aston, New York) —, rejoignent le répertoire du grand romantisme européen (Caspar David Friedrich, J.M.W. Turner...) et contiennent le même pouvoir de suggestion, le même symbolisme élémentaire et puissant. À un moment où le romantisme ne s'exprime plus guère dans la peinture européenne que sous une forme dérisoire, l'œuvre de Church constitue une réalisation saisissante du rêve exprimé par Baudelaire, qui, dans le Salon de 1859, regrettait que l'imagination doive fuir le paysage et évoquait avec nostalgie « le paysage romantique et même le paysage romanesque ».

 __________________________________________

2022 - Wandering Vertexes ....
            Errant au-dessus des Sommets Silencieux...
            Un blog de Francis Rousseau

THE WATZMANN AND KÖNIGSEE PAINTED BY FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH

 

FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH (1826-1900)
The Watzmann  (2,713 m -8,901 ft)
Germany

In Konigsee, Bavaria, 1868, oil and pencil on thin board, Cooper Hewitt Museum, NYC

The mountain and lake
The Königssee is a natural lake in the extreme southeast Berchtesgadener Land district of the German state of Bavaria, near the Austrian border. Most of the lake is within the Berchtesgaden National Park.
The Watzmann (2,713 m - 8,901 ft) is a mountain in the Bavarian Alps south of the village of Berchtesgaden. It is the third highest in Germany, and the highest located entirely on German territory. Three main peaks array on a N-S axis along a ridge on the mountain's taller western half: Hocheck (2,651 m), Mittelspitze (Middle Peak, 2,713 m) and Südspitze (South Peak, 2,712 m).
The Watzmann massif also includes the 2,307 m Watzmannfrau (Watzmann Wife, also known as Kleiner Watzmann or Small Watzmann), and the Watzmannkinder (Watzmann Children), five lower peaks in the recess between the main peaks and the Watzmannfrau.
The entire massif lies inside Berchtesgaden National Park.

The Painter
The second generation of the Hudson River School took landscape painting to a new level. Foremost among them was Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), who expanded the size and grandeur of his canvases and broadened their scope by traveling far afield. His adventurous spirit led him from the high peaks of the Andes to the icebergs of Newfoundland. His skills as an artist and showman complemented his dramatic compositions and spectacular use of light and color. The resulting paintings appealed to the expansionist, scientific, and religious sensibilities at mid-century and remain nationalistic icons of America and her art.
More about Frederic Edwin Church 

___________________________________________

2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

LANDER'S PEAK PAINTED BY GEORGE-CALEB BINGHAM

GEORGE-CALEB BINGHAM (1811-1879)

Lander's Peak (3,187 m - 10,456 feet)

United States of America (Wyoming)

In Rocky Mountains , c. 1872. Oil on canvas, 14 x 18 inches. Private collection

About the painting
Fewer than half the recorded landscapes in E. Maurice Bloch’s catalogue raisonné of the paintings of George Caleb Bingham have been located, making the discovery of the unrecorded painting in Figure 1 especially noteworthy. The painting is in excellent condition, evidently having never been removed from its original frame while in the possession of descendants of a sibling of Bingham’s second wife, Eliza K. Thomas, until about 1992.
The composition reflects Bingham’s long established approach to landscape painting, derived from European sources and practices that were commonly employed by nineteenth-century American landscape painters. “Even in his mountainous landscapes, the cliffs and peaks emerge from the plane of the specta­tor and grow up structurally before his eyes. Bingham does not look down on his mountains or valleys, nor does he have them tower above the spectator in awesome grandeur.”
Rocky Mountains also employs techniques adopted by Bingham as a result of his stays in Düsseldorf in the late 1850s-clearer light, sharper edges, and more attention to detail than seen in his earlier landscapes with their vaporous passages.
The work dates to about 1872, when Bingham returned to landscape painting after abandoning the genre for most of the previous decade. His revived interest may have accompanied treatment for his chronic respiratory problems in Colorado from August through October of 1872, where the Rocky Mountains provided an opportunity to paint pan­oramic landscapes in the manner of such artists as Frederic Church and Albert Bierstadt. The timing was especially attractive given the public’s fascination with the American West fueled by the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869.
The relatively small painting, previously untitled, has been named Rocky Mountains to reflect its evocative connection to Bierstadt’s monumental Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak in the Metro­politan Museum of Art. Bierstadt’s painting was well known through widely distributed steel engravings , and it is reasonable to assume that Bingham himself owned a copy, since he used prints for study and the development of compo­sitional techniques throughout his career.

The mountain
Lander's Peak, is a mountain with a summit of (3,187 m - 10,456 feet) in the Wyoming Range in modern-day Wyoming. The peak was named after Frederick W. Lander on Bierstadt's initiative, after Lander's death in the Civil War. In one description of the painting, it is described as : "Sharply pointed granite peaks and fantastically illuminated clouds float above a tranquil, wooded genre scene." There are not a lot of informations about this peak, which is only the second highest peak of the Wyoming range, but was made quite famous buy Bierstadt painting.
The Wyoming Range is a mountain range located in west-central Wyoming. It is a range of the Rocky Mountains that runs north-south near the western edge of the state. Its highest peak is Wyoming Peak, which stands at (3,470 m - 11,383 feet) above sea-level. The range is sometimes referred to as The Wyomings.
The vast majority of the range is public land administered by the U.S. Forest Service as part of the Bridger-Teton National Forest and is a popular destination for hiking, camping, fishing, horseback riding, snowmobiling, hunting, and other activities. The range contains numerous lakes and developed campgrounds, in addition to many wild and primitive areas. The closest towns to the range include Big Piney, Marbleton, La Barge, and Kemmerer.
A branch of the Oregon Trail known as the Lander Road traverses the mountain range. The cutoff offered emigrants a shorter travel option. Numerous grave sites and historical markers can be found relating to the trail.
The range is not to be confused with the Salt River Range, which runs closely parallel to the Wyoming Range on its western side. The two ranges are separated by Grey's River.
The United States House of Representatives voted March 25, 2009, to grant wilderness status to two million acres (8,000 km²) of public land in nine states. The Omnibus Public Land Management Act, which had already been passed by the Senate, was approved in the House by a 285-to-140 vote. It was signed into law March 30 by President Barack Obama. The legislation included the Wyoming Range Legacy Act, which shields 1,200,000 acres (4,900 km2) of the Wyoming Range from future oil and gas leasing. Leases that were issued in the 1,200,000 acres (4,900 km2) withdrawal area prior to passage of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act were not affected by the legislation.

The artist

George Caleb Bingham was an American artist whose paintings of American life in the frontier lands along the Missouri River exemplify the Luminist style. Left to languish in obscurity, Bingham's work was rediscovered in the 1930s. By the time of his bicentennial in 2011, he was considered one of the greatest American painters of the 19th century. That year the George Caleb Bingham Catalogue Raisonné Supplement Of Paintings & Drawings—directed and edited by Bingham scholar Fred R. Kline—announced the authentication of ten recently discovered paintings by Bingham. As of June 2015, a total of twenty-three  newly discovered paintings by Bingham have been authenticated and are listed with the GCBCRS. George Caleb Bingham is not famous for his mountain paintings  but mainly for a series of three paintings called The Election Series Louis and for his Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, painted circa 1845  and owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT MARCY PAINTED BY REGIS-FRANÇOIS GIGNOUX

RÉGIS-FRANÇOIS GIGNOUX (1816-1882)
Mount Marcy (1,629m - 5,343ft)
United States of America (Essex County) 

 In Winter in the Adirondacks,  Oil on canvas, 1853, Driscoll Babcock Galleries, New York

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.[6] 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 

Régis François Gignoux  was a French painter who was active in the United States from 1840 to 1870, also known under aliases Marie-François-Régis Gignoux or Régis Gignoux. He was born in Lyon, France and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts under the French historical painter Hippolyte Delaroche, who inspired Gignoux to turn his talents toward landscape painting.  Gignoux arrived in the United States from France in 1840 and eventually opened a studio in Brooklyn, New York. He was a member of the National Academy of Design, and was the first president of the Brooklyn Art Academy. George Inness, John LaFarge (1835–1910), and Charles Dormon Robinson were his students.  By 1844, Gignoux had opened a studio in New York City and became one of the first artists to join the famous Tenth Street Studio, where other members included Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Church, Jasper Francis Cropsey, and John Frederick Kensett. He returned to France in 1870 and died in Paris in 1882. 

Gignoux is best known for his meticulous renderings of Northeast American landscapes, and was the only member of the Hudson River School to specialize in snow scenes. The fame of Gignoux is still quite considerable nowadays in the US and at least a dozen of the most important american museums are among the public collections holding work by Régis François Gignoux, which is often considered a precursor of the Luminist movement.

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
Un blog de 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 KATAHDIN (2) BY MARSDEN HARTLEY

MARSDEN HARTLEY (1877-1943)

Mount Katahdin (1,605 m - 5,267ft)

United States of America (Maine)  

In Mount Katahdin, First Snow, oil on canvas

The mountain  

Mount Katahdin (1,605 m - 5,267 feet)  is the highest mountain in the U.S. state of Maine and the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. The mountain, being a mile above sea level, towers above the comparatively low Maine lakes and forests. Named Katahdin by the Penobscot Indians, which means "The Greatest Mountain", Katahdin is the centerpiece of Baxter State Park.  The official name is "Mount Katahdin" as decided by the US Board on Geographic Names in 1893. Among some Native Americans, Katahdin was believed to be the home of the storm god Pamola, and thus an area to be avoidedIt is a steep, tall mountain formed from a granite intrusion weathered to the surface. 

Katahdin was known to the Native Americans in the region, and was known to Europeans at least since 1689. It has inspired hikes, climbs, journal narratives, paintings, and a piano sonata. The area around the peak was protected by Governor Percival Baxter starting in the 1930s. Katahdin  is located near a stretch known as the Hundred-Mile Wilderness.

Katahdin is referred to 60 years after Field’s climb of Agiokochuk (Mount Washington) in the writings of John Gyles, a teenage colonist who was captured near Portland, Maine in 1689 by the Abenaki. While in the company of Abenaki hunting parties, he traveled up and down several Maine rivers including both branches of the Penobscot, passing close to “Teddon”. He remarked that it was higher than the White Hills above the Saco River.

The first recorded climb of "Catahrdin" was by Massachusetts surveyors Zackery Adley and Charles Turner, Jr. in August 1804.[14] In the 1840s Henry David Thoreau climbed Katahdin, which he spelled "Ktaadn"; his ascent is recorded in a well-known chapter of The Maine Woods. A few years later Theodore Winthrop wrote about his visit in Life in the Open Air. Painters Frederic Edwin Church and Marsden Hartley are well-known artists who created landscapes of Katahdin. 

In the 1930s Governor Percival Baxter began to acquire land and finally deeded more than 200,000 acres (809 km2) to the State of Maine for a park, named Baxter State Park after him. The summit was officially recognized by the US Board on Geographic Names as "Baxter Peak" in 1931.

The painter 
Marsden Hartley  was an American Modernist painter, poet, and essayist.
Hartley began his art training at the Cleveland Institute of Art after his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1892.  He won a scholarship to the Cleveland School of Art.
In 1898, at age 22, he moved to New York City to study painting at the New York School of Art under William Merritt Chase, and then attended the National Academy of Design. Hartley was a great admirer of Albert Pinkham Ryder and visited his studio in Greenwich Village as often as possible. His friendship with Ryder, in addition to the writings of Walt Whitman and American transcendentalists Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, inspired Hartley to view art as a spiritual quest.
Hartley first traveled to Europe in April 1912, and he became acquainted with Gertrude Stein's circle of Avant-garde writers and artists in Paris.  Stein, along with Hart Crane and Sherwood Anderson, encouraged Hartley to write as well as paint.
In 1913, Hartley moved to Berlin, where he continued to paint and befriended the painters Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. He also collected Bavarian folk art.  His work during this period was a combination of abstraction and German Expressionism, fueled by his personal brand of mysticism.
In Berlin, Hartley developed a close relationship with a Prussian lieutenant, Karl von Freyburg. References to Freyburg were a recurring motif in Hartley's work, most notably in Portrait of a German Officer (1914). Freyburg's subsequent death during the war hit Hartley hard, and he afterward idealized their relationship. Many scholars believe Hartley to have been gay, and have interpreted his work regarding Freyburg as embodying his homosexual feelings for him.
Hartley finally returned to the U.S. in early 1916. He lived in Europe again from 1921 to 1930, when he moved back to the U.S. for good.  He painted throughout the country, in Massachusetts, New Mexico, California, and New York. He returned to Maine in 1937, after declaring that he wanted to become "the painter of Maine" and depict American life at a local level.  This aligned Hartley with the Regionalism movement, a group of artists active from the early- to-mid 20th century that attempted to represent a distinctly "American art." He continued to paint in Maine, primarily scenes around Lovell and the Corea coast, until his death in Ellsworth in 1943. His ashes were scattered on the Androscoggin River. Most of his mountains paintings of Maine are nowadays in the MET collections.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

ETNA or MONGIBELLO PAINTED BY THOMAS COLE

THOMAS COLE (1801-1848)

 Mount Etna or Mongibello (3,329 m - 10,922ft) 

 Italy (Sicily) 

 In Etna from Taormina, 1843, oil on canvas,  Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford

The mountain 

Mount Etna (3,329 m - 10,922ft) or Mongibello, Mungibeddu in Sicilian, Aetna in Latin is an active stratovolcano on the east coast of Sicily, in the Province of Catania, between Messina and Catania. It lies above the convergent plate margin between the African Plate and the Eurasian Plate. It is the tallest active volcano in Europe. It is the highest mountain in Italy south of the Alps. Etna covers an area of 1,190 km2 (459 sq mi) with a basal circumference of 140 km. This makes it by far the largest of the three active volcanoes in Italy, being about two and a half times the height of the next largest, Mount Vesuvius. Only Mount Teide in Tenerife surpasses it in the whole of the European–North-African region.

In Greek Mythology, the deadly monster Typhon was trapped under this mountain by Zeus, the god of the sky and thunder and king of gods, and the forges of Hephaestus were said to also be located underneath it.

Mount Etna is one of the most active volcanoes in the world and is in an almost constant state of activity. The fertile volcanic soils support extensive agriculture, with vineyards and orchards spread across the lower slopes of the mountain and the broad Plain of Catania to the south. 

Due to its history of recent activity and nearby population, Mount Etna has been designated a Decade Volcano by the United Nations.

 In June 2013, it was added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Volcanic activity first took place at Etna about 500,000 years ago, with eruptions occurring beneath the sea off the ancient coastline of Sicily.[ About 300,000 years ago, volcanism began occurring to the southwest of the summit (center top of volcano) then, before activity moved towards the present centre 170,000 years ago. Eruptions at this time built up the first major volcanic edifice, forming a stratovolcano in alternating explosive and effusive eruptions. The growth of the mountain was occasionally interrupted by major eruptions, leading to the collapse of the summit to form calderas.

From about 35,000 to 15,000 years ago, Etna experienced some highly explosive eruptions, generating large pyroclastic flows, which left extensive ignimbrite deposits. Ash from these eruptions has been found as far away as south of Rome's border, 800 km (497 mi) to the north.

Thousands of years ago, the eastern flank of the mountain experienced a catastrophic collapse, generating an enormous landslide in an event similar to that seen in the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. The landslide left a large depression in the side of the volcano, known as 'Valle del Bove' (Valley of the Ox). Research published in 2006 suggested this occurred around 8000 years ago, and caused a huge tsunami, which left its mark in several places in the eastern Mediterranean. It may have been the reason the settlement of Atlit Yam (Israel), now below sea level, was suddenly abandoned around that time.

The steep walls of the valley have suffered subsequent collapses on numerous occasions. The strata exposed in the valley walls provide an important and easily accessible record of Etna's eruptive history.

The most recent collapse event at the summit of Etna is thought to have occurred about 2,000 years ago, forming what is known as the Piano Caldera. This caldera has been almost entirely filled by subsequent lava eruptions, but is still visible as a distinct break in the slope of the mountain near the base of the present-day summit cone.

Etna is one of Sicily's main tourist attractions, with thousands of visitors every year. 

- The most common route is through the road leading to Sapienza Refuge ski area, lying at the south of the crater at elevation of 1910 m. From the Refuge, a cableway runs uphill to an elevation of 2500 m, from where the crater area at 2920 m is accessible.

- Stage 9 of the 2011 Giro d'Italia finished at the Sapienza Refuge. Alberto Contador initially took the win, but he was later disqualified and the stage win passed onto Jose Rujano.

- Ferrovia Circumetnea – Round-Etna railway – is a narrow-gauge railway constructed between 1889 and 1895. It runs around the volcano in a 110-km long semi-circle starting in Catania and ending in Riposto 28 km north of Catania.

- There are two ski resorts on Etna: one at the Sapienza Refuge, with a chairlift and three ski lifts, and a smaller one on the north, at Piano Provenzana, with three lifts and a chairlift.

The painter 

Thomas Cole (1801– 848) was an American artist known for his landscape and history paintings. He is regarded as the founder of the Hudson River School, an American art movement that flourished in the mid-19th century. Cole's work is known for its romantic portrayal of the American wilderness.

In New York, Cole sold five paintings to George W. Bruen, who financed a summer trip to the Hudson Valley where the artist produced two Views of Coldspring, the Catskill Mountain House and painted famous Kaaterskill Falls and the ruins of Fort Putnam. Returning to New York, he displayed five landscapes in the window of William Colman's bookstore; according to the New York Evening Post Two Views of Coldspring were purchased by Mr. A. Seton, who lent them to the American Academy of the Fine Arts annual exhibition in 1826. This garnered Cole the attention of John Trumbull, Asher B. Durand, and William Dunlap. Among the paintings was a landscape called "View of Fort Ticonderoga from Gelyna". Trumbull was especially impressed with the work of the young artist and sought him out, bought one of his paintings, and put him into contact with a number of his wealthy friends including Robert Gilmor of Baltimore and Daniel Wadsworth of Hartford, who became important patrons of the artist.

Cole was primarily a painter of landscapes, but he also painted allegorical works. Cole influenced his artistic peers, especially Asher B. Durand and Frederic Edwin Church, who studied with Cole from 1844 to 1846. Cole spent the years 1829 to 1832 and 1841 to 1842 abroad, mainly in England and Italy.

Thomas Cole died at Catskill on February 11, 1848. The fourth highest peak in the Catskills is named Thomas Cole Mountain in his honor. 

DEDO DE DEUS (2) PAINTED BY ELISEU VISCONTI

 

ELISEU VISCONTI (1866-1944)
Dedo de Deus (1,682m - 5,551ft)
Brazil

About this mainting
Eliseu Visconti painted a lot of times,the Dedo De Deus mountain in the Serra de Orgaos, in any season and in all possible light, at any time of day. It is THE  repetitive motif in his work, a bit like the Montagne Sainte-Victoire for Paul Cézanne or  the volcano Chimborazo for Frederic Edwin Church or Mount Everest for Nicholas Roerich.

The mountain
Dedo de Deus (The Finger of God) (1,682m - 5,551ft) is a peck whose outline resembles a hand pointing the index finger to the sky. It is one of the several geological monuments of Serra dos Órgãos which is located in Serra do Mar, between the cities of Petrópolis, Guapimirim and Teresópolis, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil. The mountaineering in Brazil is closely linked to the achievement of the Dedo de deus. The peak is a state symbol Rio de Janeiro, appearing on its flag and coat of arms. As for the coat of arms of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the first section, occupying the upper half, is blue, representing the sky and symbolizing justice, truth and loyalty, with the silhouette of the Serra dos Órgãos, highlighting the Dedo de Deus. The symbol was created by the 1892 State Constitution and made official under the government of José Tomás da Porciúncula, with small differences over time. In 1912, José Guimarães Teixeira, Raul Carneiro and the brothers Américo, Alexandre and Acácio de Oliveira, all from Teresópolis, were the first to step on top of the rock formation.


The artist
Eliseu Visconti, born Eliseo d'Angelo Visconti was an Italian-born Brazilian painter, cartoonist, and teacher. He is considered one of the very few impressionist painters of Brazil. He is considered the initiator of the art nouveau in Brazil.
Thanks to a prize received in 1892, Visconti travelled to Paris, where he attended the École des Beaux Arts the following year. He also took classes at the Académie Julian and the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs, where he was a pupil of art nouveau master Eugène Grasset. He was accepted at the Salon de la Nationale des Beaux Arts and at the Salon of the Société of des Artistes Français. As one of the Brazilian representatives to the Exposition Universelle 1900 he exhibited the paintings Gioventú and Oréadas, for which he received a silver medal. Back in Brazil, Visconti exhibited in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, and obtained the first place in a contest for the drawing of postal stamps for the Brazilian Casa da Moeda. He traveled again to Europe, where he exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1905 the portrait of the artist Nicolina Vaz de Assis now at the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes. In this same year, he was invited to paint the stage curtain for the Teatro Municipal of Rio de Janeiro which he completed in his studio in Paris.
Decorative schemes executed for the National Library or Biblioteca Nacional in (Rio de Janeiro) date from this period as does another gold medal he received at the International Exhibition of Saint-Louis (Louisiana Purchase Exposition), in 1904, for the painting Recompensa de São Sebastião (see external links). The museum of Santiago of the Chile acquired his Sonho Místico (Mystical Dream) in 1912. In 1913, Visconti returned to Europe in order to paint large scale panels for the "foyer" of the Theatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro. His plans to return were interrupted by the First World War so he stayed in France until 1920. The resulting paintings for the "foyer" were sent to Brazil during the war, in 1915. In 1922 his triptych "Lar" gained him the Medal of Honor in a large exhibition created in Rio de Janeiro to commemorate the first centennial of Brazilian Independence, the Exposição do Centenário. The following year Visconti painted the mural decoration of Rio de Janeiro's municipal council hall. In 1924, he painted the panel depicting the signature of the first Republican Constitution, for the old federal court, also in Rio de Janeiro.
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2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MONT KATAHDIN PEINT PAR MARSDEN HARTLEY

 

 

 

 

 

MARSDEN HARTLEY (1877-1943)
Mount Katahdin (1,605 m - 5,267ft)
United States of America (Maine)

In Mt. Katahdin Oil on fiberboard, 55.9 x 71.1 cm. (1941) Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC

La montagne
Le Mont Katahdin (1,605 m) est la plus haute montagne de l'État du Maine et le terminus nord du sentier des Appalaches. La montagne, située à un mile au-dessus du niveau de la mer, domine les lacs et les forêts du Maine. Nommé Katahdin par les Indiens Penobscot, ce qui signifie « la plus grande montagne », Katahdin est la pièce maîtresse du parc d'État de Baxter. Le nom officiel est "Mont Katahdin", comme l'a décidé le Conseil américain des noms géographiques en 1893. Parmi certains Amérindiens, Katahdin était considéré comme la demeure du dieu de la tempête Pamola, et donc une zone à éviter.
Il était connu des Amérindiens de la région et des Européens au moins depuis 1689. Il a inspiré des randonnées, des escalades, des récits, des peintures et même une sonate pour piano. La zone autour du sommet fut protégée par le gouverneur Percival Baxter à partir des années 1930. Katahdin est situé à proximité de la Hundred-Mile Wilderness.
La première ascension enregistrée du « Catahdin » a été réalisée par les géomètres du Massachusetts Zackery Adley et Charles Turner, Jr. en août 1804. Dans les années 1840, Henry David Thoreau gravit Katahdin, qu'il écrivait « Ktaadn » ; son ascension est enregistrée dans un chapitre bien connu de The Maine Woods. Quelques années plus tard, Theodore Winthrop a écrit sur l'ascension qu'il fit dans Life in the Open Air. Les peintres Frederic Edwin Church et Marsden Hartley ont souvent peint des paysages de Katahdin.

Le peintre
Marsden Hartley était un peintre, poète et essayiste moderniste américain.
Hartley a commencé sa formation artistique au Cleveland Institute of Art après que sa famille ait déménagé à Cleveland, Ohio, en 1892. En 1898, à 22 ans, il s'installe à New York pour étudier la peinture à la New York School of Art sous la direction de William Merritt Chase, puis fréquente la National Academy of Design. Hartley était un grand admirateur d'Albert Pinkham Ryder et visitait son studio de Greenwich Village aussi souvent que possible. Son amitié avec Ryder, ainsi que les écrits de Walt Whitman et des transcendantalistes américains Henry David Thoreau et Ralph Waldo Emerson, ont largement inscliné Hartley à considérer l'art comme une quête spirituelle. Hartley voyage pour la première fois en Europe en avril 1912 et fait la connaissance du cercle d'écrivains et d'artistes d'avant-garde de Gertrude Stein à Paris. Stein, avec Hart Crane et Sherwood Anderson, encouragéèrent Hartley à écrire ainsi qu'à peindre. En 1913, Hartley s'installe à Berlin, où il continue à peindre et se lie d'amitié avec les peintres Vassily Kandinsky et Franz Marc. Il collectionnait également l'art populaire bavarois. Son travail durant cette période était une combinaison d’abstraction et d’expressionnisme allemand, alimenté par sa marque personnelle de mysticisme. À Berlin, Hartley développa une relation étroite avec un lieutenant prussien, Karl von Freyburg. Les références à Freyburg sont un motif récurrent dans l'œuvre de Hartley, notamment dans Portrait d'un officier allemand (1914). La mort de Freyburg pendant la guerre a durement frappé Hartley. Hartley retourna aux États-Unis au début de 1916 mais Il vécut de nouveau en Europe entre 1921 et 1930, avant de retourner définitivement aux États-Unis. Il peignit alors dans tout le pays, au Massachusetts, au Nouveau-Mexique, en Californie et à New York. Il retourna dans le Maine en 1937, après avoir déclaré vouloir devenir « le peintre du Maine » et dépeindre la vie américaine locale. Il s'alignait ainsi sur le mouvement régionaliste, un groupe d'artistes actifs du début au milieu du 20e siècle qui tentaient de représenter un « art américain » distinct. Il continua à peindre dans le Maine, principalement des scènes autour de Lovell, jusqu'à sa mort à Ellsworth en 1943. La plupart de ses peintures de montagnes du Maine font aujourd'hui partie des collections du MET. 

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2011-2024 - Gravir les montagnes en peinture
Un blog de Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT ELBRUS BY THOMAS COLE

 THOMAS COLE (1801-1848),

Mount Elbrus (5,642 m - 18,510 ft)
Russia

in Prometheus Bound, 1847, oil on canvas

The mountain

Mount Elbrus (Эльбру́с) also called  Karachay-Balkar (Минги таy) is the highest mountain in Europe, and the seven highest summit in the world.  The seven 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), Vinson  Massif (4,892m), Mt Blanc (4,807m) and Mount Kosciuszko  (2,228m) in Australia.

Mount Elbrus should not be confused with the Alborz (also called Elburz) mountains in Iran, which also derive their name from the legendary mountain Harā Bərəzaitī in Persian mythology.

A dormant volcano, Elbrus forms part of the Caucasus Mountains in Southern Russia, near the border with Georgia. Elbrus has two summits, both of which are dormant volcanic domes. With its slightly taller west summit, the mountain stands at 5,642 metres (18,510 ft); the east summit is 5,621 metres (18,442 ft). The lower east summit was first ascended on 10 July 1829 by Khillar Khachirov, a Karachayguide for an Imperial Russian army scientific expedition led by General Emmanuel, and the higher in 1874 by an British expedition led by F. Crauford Grove and including Frederick Gardner, Horace Walker, and the Swiss guide Peter Knubel of St. Niklaus in the canton Valais.

While there are differing authorities on how the Caucasus are distributed between Europe and Asia, most relevant modern authorities define the continental boundary as the Caucasus watershed, placing Elbrus in Europe due to its position on the north side in Russia.

Mount Elbrus was formed more than 2.5 million years ago. The volcano is currently considered inactive. Elbrus was active in the Holocene, and according to the Global Volcanism Program, the last eruption took place about AD 50. Evidence of recent volcanism includes several lava flows on the mountain, which look fresh, and roughly 260 square kilometres (100 sq mi) of volcanic debris. The longest flow extends 24 kilometres (15 mi) down the northeast summit, indicative of a large eruption. There are other signs of activity on the volcano, including solfataric activity and hot springs. The western summit has a well-preserved volcanic crater about 250 metres (820 ft) in diameter.

The ancients knew the mountain as Strobilus, Latin for 'pine cone', a direct loan from the ancient Greek strobilos, meaning 'a twisted object' – a long established botanical term that describes the shape of the volcano's summit.
Myth held that here Zeus had chained Prometheus, the Titan who had stolen fire from the gods and given it to ancient man – likely a reference to historic volcanic activity. The painting above depicts precisely the Prometheus legend, beloved by the romantics artists. 

The painter 

Thomas Cole (1801– 848) was an American artist known for his landscape and history paintings. He is regarded as the founder of the Hudson River School, an American art movement that flourished in the mid-19th century. Cole's work is known for its romantic portrayal of the American wilderness.

In New York, Cole sold five paintings to George W. Bruen, who financed a summer trip to the Hudson Valley where the artist produced two Views of Coldspring, the Catskill Mountain House and painted famous Kaaterskill Falls and the ruins of Fort Putnam. Returning to New York, he displayed five landscapes in the window of William Colman's bookstore; according to the New York Evening Post Two Views of Coldspring were purchased by Mr. A. Seton, who lent them to the American Academy of the Fine Arts annual exhibition in 1826. This garnered Cole the attention of John Trumbull, Asher B. Durand, and William Dunlap. Among the paintings was a landscape called "View of Fort Ticonderoga from Gelyna". Trumbull was especially impressed with the work of the young artist and sought him out, bought one of his paintings, and put him into contact with a number of his wealthy friends including Robert Gilmor of Baltimore and Daniel Wadsworth of Hartford, who became important patrons of the artist.

Cole was primarily a painter of landscapes, but he also painted allegorical works. Cole influenced his artistic peers, especially Asher B. Durand and Frederic Edwin Church, who studied with Cole from 1844 to 1846. Cole spent the years 1829 to 1832 and 1841 to 1842 abroad, mainly in England and Italy.

Thomas Cole died at Catskill on February 11, 1848. The fourth highest peak in the Catskills is named Thomas Cole Mountain in his honor. 

LANDER'S PEAK PAINTED BY ALBERT BIERSTADT

ALBERT BIERSTADT  (1830-1902) 

Lander's Peak (3,187 m - 10,456 feet)
United States of America (Wyoming)

In The rocky Mountain in 1863 - MET - New York 
and Fogg Museum Cambridge

The painting 
The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak is a landscape painted in 1863  by the German-American painter Albert Bierstadt. It is based on sketches made during Bierstadt's travels with Frederick W. Lander's Honey Road Survey Party in 1859. The painting shows Lander's Peak in the Wyoming Range of the Rocky Mountains, with an encampment of Native Americans in the foreground.
The landscape in the painting is not the actual landscape as it appears at Lander's Peak, but rather an ideal landscape based on nature, altered by Bierstadt for dramatic effect.
Bierstadt's painting hit a nerve with contemporary Americans, by portraying the grandeur and pristine beauty of the nation's western wilderness. It was a reference to the idea of Manifest Destiny, where the Rocky Mountains represented both natural beauty, and an obstacle to westward expansion.  In the words of historian Anne F. Hyde: "Bierstadt painted the West as Americans hoped it would be, which made his paintings vastly popular and reinforced the perception of the West as either Europe or sublime Eden."  At the same time, the Native Americans in the foreground gave the scene authenticity, and presented it as a timeless place, untouched by European hands.
Bierstadt was a shrewd self-promoter as well as a gifted artist, and this was the first of his paintings to be widely promoted with a single-picture exhibition, accompanied by a pamphlet, engravings and a tour.  Twelve hundred people were invited for the first exhibition of Landers Peak, and almost a thousand showed up.  The painting, with its ten-foot width, was intended both for exhibition halls and the homes of America's emergent millionaire class.  In 1865 it was purchased by British railway entrepreneur James McHenry for the (at the time) high price of $25,000.   Bierstadt later bought it back, and gave or sold it to his brother Edward, before it was eventually acquired for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1907.
Comparisons were made between Lander's Peak and The Heart of the Andes, a contemporary painting by one of Bierstadt's main rivals in the landscape genre, Frederic Edwin Church.  The two works represented the two great mountain ranges spanning North and South America. At the New York Metropolitan Fair in 1864, held by the United States Sanitary Commission to raise money for the Union war effort, the two paintings were exhibited opposite each other.  Lander's Peak and The Heart of the Andes are still exhibited on opposite walls at their current location at the Metropolitan.
Most reviews of the painting were positive; one review called it "beyond question one of the finest landscapes ever painted in this country", adding, "Its artistic merits are in some respects unrivalled: and added to these it has the advantage of being a representative painting of a portion of the most sublime and beautiful scenery on the American Continent."  
The painting won a prize at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867.
At the same time, there were also critical voices; in particular, some American Pre-Raphaelites found his brushwork wanting. One such critic complained that it would have been better "if the marks of the brush had, by dexterous handling, been made to stand for scrap and fissure, crag and cranny, but as it is, we have only too little geology and too much bristle."

The mountain 

Lander's Peak,  is a mountain with a summit of (3,187 m - 10,456 feet) in the Wyoming Range in modern-day Wyoming. The peak was named after Frederick W. Lander on Bierstadt's initiative, after Lander's death in the Civil War.  In one description of the painting, it is described as : "Sharply pointed granite peaks and fantastically illuminated clouds float above a tranquil, wooded genre scene."  There are not a lot of informations about this peak, which is only the second highest peak of the Wyoming range, but was made quite famous buy Bierstadt painting.
The Wyoming Range is a mountain range located in west-central Wyoming. It is a range of the Rocky Mountains that runs north-south near the western edge of the state. Its highest peak is Wyoming Peak, which stands at (3,470 m - 11,383 feet) above sea-level.  The range is sometimes referred to as The Wyomings.
The vast majority of the range is public land administered by the U.S. Forest Service as part of the Bridger-Teton National Forest and is a popular destination for hiking, camping, fishing, horseback riding, snowmobiling, hunting, and other activities.  The range contains numerous lakes and developed campgrounds, in addition to many wild and primitive areas.  The closest towns to the range include Big Piney, Marbleton, La Barge, and Kemmerer.
A branch of the Oregon Trail known as the Lander Road traverses the mountain range. The cutoff offered emigrants a shorter travel option. Numerous grave sites and historical markers can be found relating to the trail.
The range is not to be confused with the Salt River Range, which runs closely parallel to the Wyoming Range on its western side. The two ranges are separated by Grey's River.
The United States House of Representatives voted March 25, 2009, to grant wilderness status to two million acres (8,000 km²) of public land in nine states. The Omnibus Public Land Management Act, which had already been passed by the Senate, was approved in the House by a 285-to-140 vote. It was signed into law March 30 by President Barack Obama. The legislation included the Wyoming Range Legacy Act, which shields 1,200,000 acres (4,900 km2) of the Wyoming Range from future oil and gas leasing. Leases that were issued in the 1,200,000 acres (4,900 km2) withdrawal area prior to passage of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act were not affected by the legislation.

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.

In 1858 he exhibited a large painting of a Swiss landscape at the National Academy of Design, which gained him positive critical reception and honorary membership in the Academy.  At this time Bierstadt began painting scenes in New England and upstate New York, including in the Hudson River valley. A group of artists known as the Hudson River School portrayed its majestic landscapes and craggy areas, as well as the light affected by the changing waters.

In 1859, Bierstadt traveled westward in the company of Frederick W. Lander, a land surveyor for the U.S. government, to see those landscapes.  He continued to visit the American West throughout his career.

During the American Civil War, Bierstadt paid for a substitute to serve in his place when he was drafted in 1863. He completed one Civil War painting Guerrilla Warfare, Civil War in 1862, based on his brief experiences with soldiers stationed at Camp Cameron in 1861.

Bierstadt's painting was based on a stereoscopic photograph taken by his brother Edward Bierstadt, who operated a photography studio at Langley's Tavern in Virginia. Bierstadt's painting received a positive review when it was exhibited at the Brooklyn Art Association at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in December 1861. Curator Eleanor Jones Harvey observes that Bierstadt's painting, created from photographs, "is quintessentially that of a voyeur, privy to the stories and unblemished by the violence and brutality of first-hand combat experience."

In 1860, he was elected a member of the National Academy; he received medals in Austria, Bavaria, Belgium, and Germany.[ In 1867 he traveled to London, where he exhibited two landscape paintings in a private reception with Queen Victoria. He traveled through Europe for two years, cultivating social and business contacts to sustain the market for his work overseas.

As a result of the publicity generated by his Yosemite paintings, Bierstadt's presence was requested by every explorer considering a westward expedition, and he was commissioned by the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad to visit the Grand Canyon for further subject matter.

Bierstadt's technical proficiency, earned through his study of European landscape, was crucial to his success as a painter of the American West. It accounted for his popularity in disseminating views of the Rockies to those who had not seen them. The immense canvases he produced after his trips with Lander and Ludlow established him as the preeminent painter of the western American landscape. 

Despite his popular success, Bierstadt was criticized by some contemporaries for the romanticism evident in his choices of subject and his use of light was felt to be excessive. 

In 1882 Bierstadt's studio at Irvington, New York, was destroyed by fire, resulting in the loss of many of his paintings. By the time of his death on February 18, 1902, the taste for epic landscape painting had long since subsided. Bierstadt was then largely forgotten. He was buried at the Rural Cemetery in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Interest in his work was renewed in the 1960s, with the exhibition of his small oil studies. The subsequent reassessment of Bierstadt's work has placed it in a favorable context.

Bierstadt's theatrical art, fervent sociability, international outlook, and unquenchable personal energy reflected the epic expansion in every facet of western civilization during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Bierstadt was a prolific artist, having completed over 500 paintings during his lifetime. Many of these are held by museums across the United States.