LE RIGI PEINT PAR J.M.W. TURNER

J.M.W. TURNER (1775-1851)
Rigi (1 797 m - 5 897 ft)
Suisse

In "Lake Lucerne, with the Rigi" , vers 1840 - 1849, Crayon et aquarelle rehaussé de touches de blanc, 24,8 x 36,2 cm, Collection Privée

La montagne
Le Rigi (1 797 m - 5 897 ft), également connu sous le nom de Reine des montagnes) est un massif montagneux des Alpes, situé en Suisse centrale. L'ensemble du massif est presque entièrement entouré par les eaux de trois plans d'eau différents : le lac des Quatre-Cantons, le lac de Zoug et le lac Lauerz. La chaîne se trouve dans les Alpes de Schwyz et est divisée entre les cantons de Schwyz et de Lucerne, bien que le sommet principal, nommé Rigi Kulm, à 1 798 mètres d'altitude, se trouve dans le canton de Schwyz. Techniquement, le Rigi ne fait pas partie des Alpes et appartient plutôt au plateau suisse. Il est principalement composé de molasse et d'autres conglomérats, par opposition au schiste grison et au flysch des Alpes.
Le Rigi Kulm et d'autres régions, telles que la station balnéaire de Rigi Kaltbad, sont desservies par les plus anciens chemins de fer de montagne d'Europe, les Rigi Railways. Les Chemins de fer suisses proposent une excursion spéciale aller-retour, le "Rigi-Rundfahrt", couvrant plusieurs segments en train, en train à crémaillère, en gondole (en option) et en bateau à vapeur. Toute la région offre de nombreuses activités telles que le ski ou la luge en hiver et la randonnée en été.
Le nom Rigi vient du vieux haut allemand « rîga » qui signifie « rangée, rayure, sillon », d'après la stratification bien visible sur le versant nord de la montagne. Le nom est enregistré pour la première fois en 1350 sous le nom de Riginun. Le nom a été interprété comme Regina montium "reine des montagnes" par Albrecht von Bonstetten (1479), qui donne cependant Rigena comme forme alternative.
Le mont Rigi a été présenté dans de nombreuses œuvres d'art, y compris des peintures et des publications littéraires. Les peintures les plus célèbres du Rigi étaient peut-être la série de J.M.W. Turner dont plusieurs sont dans la collection de la Tate Britain à Londres.


Le peintre
Joseph Mallord William Turner, plus connu sous le nom de William Turner ou de ses initiales J. M. W. Turnera, est un peintre, aquarelliste et graveur britannique,. Initialement de la veine romantique anglaise, son œuvre est marquée par une recherche novatrice audacieuse qui le fait considérer, avec son contemporain John Constable, comme un précurseur de l'impressionnisme, voir même d'une certaine abstraction. Renommé pour ses huiles, Turner est également un des plus grands maîtres anglais de paysages à l'aquarelle. Il y gagne le surnom de « peintre de la lumière ». La plus grande partie des œuvres de Turner est conservée à la Tate Britain. Il efut influencé par des artistes tels que Willem van de Velde le Jeune, Albert Cuyp, John Robert Cozens, Richard Wilson, Claude Gellée (« Claude le Lorrain ») ou encore Nicolas Poussin. Influencé par la Recherche philosophique sur l'origine de nos idées du Sublime et du Beau d'Edmund Burke datée de 1757, Turner intégra le concept du Sublime dans certaines de ses œuvres, à commencer par Bateaux hollandais dans la tempête, mettant en scène un spectacle terrifiant et à la fois délicieux. Il travailla d'abord la gravure avant l'aquarelle puis la peinture. D'après ses propres souvenirs, il fut marquépar une suite de 16 pièces gravées en clair-obscur d'Elisha Kirkall (1722) d'après Van de Velde le Jeune À partir de 1802, l'envie de voyager le conduit sur le continent européen, principalement en France et en Suisse, d'où il rapporte, évidemment, des aquarelles mais aussi le goût pour certains artistes, comme le Lorrain et ses représentations de la mythologie. Turner peint ainsi des fresques antiques comme Didon construisant Carthage en 1815. Il s'inspire aussi du Liber Veritatis du Lorrain en ce qui concerne son ouvrage, Liber Studiorum, établissant ainsi une classification des différents types de paysages : Marine, Montagne, Pastorale, Historique, Architecturale et Pastorale épique. Il n'hésite pas à tester des combinaisons étranges d'aquarelle et d'huile ainsi que de nouveaux produits dans ses toiles.  Parfois, il utilise même des matériaux inhabituels comme le jus de tabac et la bière vieillie, avec pour conséquence la nécessité des restaurations régulières de ses œuvres. Le peintre et critique d'art George Beaumont qualifie Turner et ses suiveurs comme Callcott de « peintres blancs » car ils mettent au point dès le début du 19e siècle l'utilisation d'un fond blanc pour donner à leurs tableaux la fraîcheur des couleurs et la luminosité, permettant le passage direct des effets de l'aquarelle dans la peinture à l'huile, 3 effets tout à fait différents de ceux obtenus avec les fonds rouges ou bruns traditionnels des anciens Maîtres ".
Son passage d'une représentation plus réaliste à des œuvres plus lumineuses, à la limite de l'imaginaire (Tempête de neige en mer), se fait après un voyage en Italie en 1819 (Campo Santo de Venise). Turner montre le pouvoir suggestif de la couleur, ainsi, son attirance pour la représentation des atmosphères le place pour des critiques d'art comme Clive Bell, comme un précurseur de la modernité en peinture et de l'impressionnisme jusqu'à devenir « le peintre des incendies ». Mais il peint rarement sur le motif contrairement aux impressionnistes, qui feront de cette pratique une règle. Il préfère en effet recomposer en atelier les nuances des paysages, aidé de sa grande mémoire des couleurs. D'autres critiques préfèrent pousser plus loin encore leur analyse en voyant dans l'absence de lignes et de points de fuite ou la dissolution de la forme dans la couleur, notamment dans les paysages marins de Turner, les prémices de l'abstraction lyrique, voire de l'action painting en gestation. 


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2023 - Wandering Vertexes ....
Errant au-dessus des Sommets Silencieux...
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

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 ».

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

THE BASTEI CLIFF PAINTED BY CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH

 

CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH (1774-1840)
The Bastei Cliff (194 m - 636 ft)
Germany  / Czech Republic border

 In "Felsenschlucht", oil on canvas , 1822

 

The rock
The Bastei (194 m - 636 ft) is a rock formation rising 194 metres above the Elbe River in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains  (723 m - 2,372 ft) of Germany. Reaching a height of 305 metres above sea level, the jagged rocks of the Bastei were formed by water erosion over one million years ago. They are situated near Rathen, not far from Pirna southeast of the city of Dresden, and are the major landmark of the Saxon Switzerland National Park. They are also part of a climbing and hiking area that extends over the borders into the Bohemian Switzerland (Czech Republic). The Bastei has been a tourist attraction for over 200 years. In 1824, a wooden bridge was constructed to link several rocks for the visitors. This bridge was replaced in 1851 by the present Bastei Bridge made of sandstone. The rock formations and vistas have inspired numerous artists, among them Caspar David Friedrich in "Felsenschlucht" (above)
The spa town of Rathen is the main base for visiting the Bastei; the town can be reached from Dresden by paddle steamer on the river Elbe.
The Bastei is one of the most prominent lookout points in Saxon Switzerland. In 1819 August von Goethe extolled the views: "Here, from where you see right down to the Elbe from the most rugged rocks, where a short distance away the crags of the Lilienstein, Königstein and Pffafenstein stand scenically together and the eye takes in a sweeping view that can never be described in words." Today the Bastei still has the highest number of visitors of all the lookout points in Saxon Switzerland. In addition to the actual vista, there are also other points of interest. At the Jahrhundertturm, a rock pinnacle on the Bastei Bridge, there are tablets commemorating the first mention of the Bastei in travel literature (in 1797) as well as the memory of Wilhelm Lebrecht Götzinger and Carl Heinrich Nicolai. These last two were amongst the pioneers of tourism in Saxon Switzerland, thanks to their descriptions of their journeys and their other works. Another tablet commemorates the Saxon court photographer, Hermann Krone, who took the first landscape photographs in Germany at the Bastei Bridge in 1853. From the Ferdinandstein, part of the Wehltürme rock towers, there is a famous view of the Bastei Bridge. It is reached over a branch from the route to the bridge. Another well-known rock formation in the vicinity of the Bastei is the Wartturm, a large piece of which broke off in 2000. Neurathen Castle, the largest rock castle in Saxon Switzerland, may be reached from the Bastei by crossing the Bastei Bridge. The ruins of the castle, some timber rebates, rooms carved out of the rock, a cistern and stone shot from a medieval catapult or slingshot may be viewed on a self-conducted circular walk. A replica slingshot was put on display in the castle in 1986. The finds from excavations in the area, especially pottery, can also be seen. The climb from Rathen to the Bastei runs past an open-air museum dedicated to Slavic settlement in the region and also past the path leading to the Rathen Open Air Stage. Another famous landmark in the local area is the fortress of Königstein.

The painter
Caspar David Friedrich was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, considered as the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic ruins. His primary interest as an artist was the contemplation of nature, and his often symbolic and anti-classical work seeks to convey a subjective, emotional response to the natural world. Friedrich's paintings characteristically set a human presence in diminished perspective amid expansive landscapes, reducing the figures to a scale that, according to the art historian Christopher John Murray, directs "the viewer's gaze towards their metaphysical dimension".
Friedrich was born in Pomerania, where he began to study art. He studied in Copenhagen until 1798, before settling in Dresden. A disillusionment with materialistic society was giving rise everywhere in Europe. This shift in ideals was often expressed through a reevaluation of the natural world, as artists such as J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) and John Constable (1776–1837) sought to depict nature as a "divine creation, to be set against the artifice of human civilization"....


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2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

MOUNT SINAÏ / JABAL MUSA PAINTED BY J.M.W. TURNER

J.M.W. TURNER  (1775–1851)
Mount Sinaï / Jabal Musa (2,285 m - 7,496ft)
Egypt 

In "Mount Sinai, the valley in which the Children of Israel were encamped",
pencil, pen, ink and watercolor on paper, 12.7 x 20.2 cm.
Private collection ( Christie's London/ 06/07/2010)

About this Painting
It descibes the moment Moses have waited to receive the Ten Commandments.

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

The painter
The english painter Joseph Mallord William Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence in the history of painting. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. He is commonly known as "the painter of light" and his work is regarded as a Romantic preface to Impressionism.
In his thirties, Turner travelled widely in Europe, starting with France and Switzerland in 1802 and studying in the Louvre in Paris in the same year. He made many visits to Venice. Turner's talent was recognized early in his life. Financial independence allowed Turner to innovate freely; his mature work is characterized by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint. According to David Piper's The Illustrated History of Art, his later pictures were called "fantastic puzzles." Turner was recognized as an artistic genius: influential English art critic John Ruskin described him as the artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature."
Turner's major venture into printmaking was the Liber Studiorum (Book of Studies), seventy prints that he worked on from 1806 to 1819. The Liber Studiorum was an expression of his intentions for landscape art. The idea was loosely based on Claude Lorrain's Liber Veritatis (Book of Truth), where Lorrain had recorded his completed paintings; a series of print copies of these drawings, by then at Devonshire House, had been a huge publishing success. Turner's plates were meant to be widely disseminated, and categorized the genre into six types: Marine, Mountainous, Pastoral, Historical, Architectural, and Elevated or Epic Pastoral. His printmaking was a major part of his output, and a museum is devoted to it, the Turner Museum in Sarasota, Florida, founded in 1974 by Douglass Montrose-Graem to house his collection of Turner prints.
Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his affection for humanity on the one hand (note the frequent scenes of people drinking or working or walking in the foreground), but its vulnerability and vulgarity amid the 'sublime' nature of the world on the other. 'Sublime' here means awe-inspiring, savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by man, evidence of the power of God – a theme that romanticist artists and poets were exploring in this period. Although these late paintings appear to be 'impressionistic' and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena.
Turner used pigments like carmine in his paintings, knowing that they were not long-lasting, despite the advice of contemporary experts to use more durable pigments. As a result, many of his colours have now faded greatly.
John Ruskin says in his "Notes" on Turner in March 1878 : "His true master was Dr Monro; to the practical teaching of that first patron and the wise simplicity of method of watercolour study, in which he was disciplined by him and companioned by Girtin, the healthy and constant development of the greater power is primarily to be attributed; the greatness of the power itself, it is impossible to over-estimate. "

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2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MILESOVKA PAINTED BY CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH

 

CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH (1774-1840)
Milešovka (837m - 2, 746ft)
Czech Republic

In Mountain Landscape with Rainbow ca.1809-1810, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany

 
The mountain
Milešovka (837m - 2, 746 ft), an isolated phonolite cone, is the highest mountain of České Středohoří (Czech Central Mountains Range), a picturesque mountain range in northwest Bohemia, in Czech Republic. Situated right in the middle of the European Continent, it has a volcanic origin. The range covers an area of more than 1000 km2 with many hills typically volcano shaped. Their unique appearance were attracting numbers of naturalists, painters, poets and nature-lovers.
Mount Milešovka is located over the village of Milesov about 10km northwestward of Lovosice. The peak is ranked among the most windy mountains in Czech Republic. The very first chalet had been built up in 1825, other buildings soon followed as well as the outlook tower in 1850. The famous traveler Alexander von Humboldt is responsible for their construction, he labeled the view from Milesovka as "the third most beautiful in the world", making it really worth visiting. From there, one can see the scenery view of Ceske Stredohori, the Polabska nizina lowlands and the ridge of the Krusne hory mountains. Milesovka adjoins with a peak called Paskapole which is crossed by the road connecting Prague with Teplice.


The painter
Caspar David Friedrich was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, considered as the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic ruins. His primary interest as an artist was the contemplation of nature, and his often symbolic and anti-classical work seeks to convey a subjective, emotional response to the natural world. Friedrich's paintings characteristically set a human presence in diminished perspective amid expansive landscapes, reducing the figures to a scale that, according to the art historian Christopher John Murray, directs "the viewer's gaze towards their metaphysical dimension".
Friedrich was born in Pomerania, where he began to study art. He studied in Copenhagen until 1798, before settling in Dresden. A disillusionment with materialistic society was giving rise everywhere in Europe. This shift in ideals was often expressed through a reevaluation of the natural world, as artists such as J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) and John Constable (1776–1837) sought to depict nature as a "divine creation, to be set against the artifice of human civilization"....
- More informations about Caspar David Friedrich life and work 

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2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

THE TORRIDON HILLS SKETCHED BY WILLIAM TURNER OF OXFORD

 

WILLIAM TURNER OF OXFORD (1789-1862)
The Torridon Hills:
Beinn Alligin (986 m -3,235 ft)
Liathach (1, 055 m- 3,461 ft)
Beinn Eighe (1,010m -3,310 ft)
United Kingdom (Scotland)

In Before Sunrise, Loch Torridon, Rossshire,watercolor, 44,5 x 89 cm, 1856,
Courtesy John Mitchell Gallery, London

About this watercolor
At nearly three feet across this is one of William Turner’s largest known paintings, and belongs to the series of Scottish views which formed the major part of his output after his tour of Scotland undertaken in 1838. His expedition that year took him north from Inverness as far as Loch Inver, and then via Loch Torridon to Skye, whose hills and coast he explored thoroughly. The dramatic effect of the sun’s rays at dawn and the noble stag in the foreground combine with the grandiose scenery to conjure up all the appeal of Scotland which so captivated the popular spirit of the time; indeed, in studying this fresh and imposing watercolour, it is hard to escape the romantic overtones of Sir Walter Scott’s vision of the Highlands.
(From John Mitchell Gallery notice)

The painter
William Turner (1789-1862) was sent to London at the age of fifteen to take up an apprenticeship under John Varley, and was elected a full member of the Old Watercolour Society in 1808. It was in this period that J.M.W.Turner rose to fame, and as a result the younger artist became known as ‘Turner of Oxford’. His own reputation firmly established, he returned to his uncle’s estate at Shipton-under-Cherwell in 1812 and began to build up his practice as a drawing master in Oxford. His range of subject matter was vast, and he travelled throughout the British Isles in search of subjects – from the Wye Valley to the Lake District, from Wales and the Hebrides to the Isle of Wight, and he was a loyal exhibitor at the Society of Painters in Watercolour, submitting a total of 455 pictures, including this one. Turner of Oxford was described as follows: ‘Worthy and dignified, looking like a parson of the old school, dressed in black and wearing a white tie, he lived a hum-drum life at his house, 16 John Street, near Worcester College, where he resided from 1833 till his death on 7th August 1862’ (quoted in Martin Hardie, ‘William Turner of Oxford’, Old Watercolour Society’s Club, Vol. IX (1931-32). It is worth noting that in signing this present painting on the reverse, Turner includes his Oxford address.
(From John Mitchell Gallery notice)

The mountains
The Torridon Hills. The loch Torridon is surrounded by various mountains to the north, including Liathach, Beinn Alligin and Beinn Eighe, all of which are over 3,000 feet (910 m) in height. The Torridon Hills exhibit dramatic mountain scenery. The rocks of which they are made are known as Torridonian sandstone, some of which are crowned by white Cambrian quartzite. They are amongst the oldest rocks in Britain, and sit on yet older rocks, Lewisian gneiss.

Beinn Alligin (986 m -3,235 ft) on left , is one of the classic mountains of the Torridon region of Scotland, lying to the north of LochTorridon, in the Highlands. The name Beinn Alligin is from the Scottish Gaelic, meaning Jewelled Hill. The mountain has two peaks of Munro status: Tom na Gruagaich (922 metres -3,025 ft)) to the south, and Sgùrr Mhòr at 986 metres -3,235 ft) to the north. One of the most prominent features of Beinn Alligin is a great cleft known as Eag Dhubh na h-Eigheachd (black gash of the wailing) or Leum na Caillich, which cuts into the ridge south of the summit. It is the scar of the most spectacular rockslide or rock avalanche in Britain, which runs out into the corrie of Toll a' Mhadaidh Mor. It occurred around 3750 years ago and is around 3.5 million cubic metres in volume. According to local folklore shepherds on the mountain would hear cries from the gash; those who investigated the source of these cries would inevitably fall to their deaths. Beinn Alligin lies on the National Trust for Scotland's Torridon Estate, which has been owned by the charity since 1967, and forms part of both a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and a Special Area of Conservation (SAC). 

Liathach  (1,055 m- 3,461 ft) in the center of the waterolor is a mountain in the Torridon Hills. It lies to the north of the A896 road, in the Northwest Highlands of Scotland, and has two peaks of Munro status: Spidean a' Choire Lèith at the east of the main ridge, and Mullach an Rathain at the western end of the mountain. The name Liathach is pronounced in Scottish Gaelic, and means 'The grey one'. When seen from the roadside below, its slopes appear to rise up in a series of near vertical rocky terraces. 

Beinn Eighe (1,010m -3,310 ft)  on right is a complex mountain massif in the Torridon area of Wester Ross in the Highlands of Scotland. Lying to the south of Loch Maree, it forms a long ridge with many spurs and summits, two of which are classified as Munros. The name Beinn Eighe comes from the Scottish Gaelic meaning file mountain.[ Unlike most other hills in the area it has a cap of Cambrian basal quartzite which gives the peaks of Beinn Eighe a distinctive light colour. Its complex topography has made it popular with both hillwalkers and climbers and the national nature reserve on its northern side makes it an accessible mountain for all visitors.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE MONT BLANC & THE MER DE GLACE BY JOHN RUSKIN

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

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

The painter  

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

The mountain
Mont Blanc (in French) or Monte Bianco (in Italian), both meaning "White Mountain", is the highest mountain in the Alps and the highest in Europe after the Caucasus peaks. It rises 4,808.73 m (15,777 ft) above sea level and is ranked 11th in the world in topographic prominence. The Mont Blanc is one of the Seven Summit, which includes the highest mountains of each of the seven continents. Summiting all of them is regarded as a mountaineering challenge, first achieved on April 30, 1985 by Richard Bass. The 7 highest summit, (which are obviously 8 with 2 in Europe !) are : Mount Everest (8,848m), Aconcagua (6,961m), Mt Denali or Mc Kinley (6,194m), Kilimandjaro (5,895m), Mt Elbrus (5,642m), Mount Vinson (4,892m) and Mount Kosciuszko (2,228m) in Australia.
The Glacier
The Mer de Glace  ( Sea of Ice) is an alpine valley glacier located on the northern slope of the Mont-Blanc massif, in the French department of Haute-Savoie. It is formed by the confluence of the Tacul glacier and the Leschaux glacier and flows into the Arve valley, on the territory of the municipality of Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, giving rise to the Arveyron. The glacier is seven kilometers long, its supply basin has a maximum length of twelve kilometers and an area of ​​40 km2, while its thickness reaches 300 meters.
In the seventeenth century, the glacier, which descends into the valley and threatens homes, is feared by the population, so that only its terminal tongue is known, under the name of Glacier des Bois. Then finished by a natural cave, it is the subject of numerous paintings. Its current name was given to it in 1741 by William Windham during the exploration he carried out with his British compatriot Richard Pococke. Two decades later, Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, the future instigator of the first ascent of Mont Blanc, made several observations of the glacier and asked Marc-Théodore Bourrit to promote it. It thus contributes to the development of alpine tourism and to the visit of numerous personalities of letters as well as of the aristocracy; scientists carried out experiments there in the 19th century. To shelter them, three increasingly large and comfortable shelters were successively built in Montenvers. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Montenvers railway, leaving from Chamonix, was created. In the middle of the century, an ice cave was pierced for the first time in the Mer de Glace. Due to the attraction's success, a cable car was put into service in 1961 to access it, then replaced by a cable car in 1988. Since 1973, an underground hydroelectric power station has been using the meltwater from the glacier.
Almost a million visitors go to Montenvers every year to contemplate the Mer de Glace. During peak periods, half of them visit the ice cave. Three museums are also located on the site. Skiing is possible from the Aiguille du Midi in winter. However, the retreat of the glacier, measured since 1860-1870, causes a loss of thickness of 120 meters in a century in its terminal part. It causes difficulties at the level of the ice cave, where more and more steps are necessary to reach the gondola, and requires considering its upstream movement, like the catchment of the hydroelectric power station in 2011.
_______________________________

2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT SNOWDON PAINTED BY J.M.W. TURNER

 

 

J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851)
Mount Snowdon (1, 085 m -3,560 ft)
United Kingdom (Wales)

In Mount Snowdon, Afterglow, oil on canvas, 1800, Tate

The mountain
Mount Snowdon (1, 085 m -3,560 ft),Yr Wyddfa in welsh, is the highest mountain in Wales and the highest point in the British Isles south of the Scottish Highlands. A 1682 survey estimated that the summit of Snowdon was at a height of 1,130 m - 3,720 feet ; in 1773, Thomas Pennant quoted a later estimate of 1,088 m- 3,568 ft above sea level at Caernarfon. Recent surveys give the height of the summit as 1,085 m -3,560 ft. The name Snowdon is from the Old English for "snow hill", while the Welsh name – Yr Wyddfa – means "the tumulus" or "the barrow", which may refer to the cairn thrown over the legendary giant Rhitta Gawr after his defeat by King Arthur. As well as other figures from Arthurian legend, the mountain is linked to a legendary Afanc (water monster) and the Tylwyth Teg (fairies). Mount Snowdon is located in Snowdonia National Park (Parc Cenedlaethol Eryri) in Gwynedd. It has been described as "probably the busiest mountain in Britain", with approximately 444,000 people having walked up the mountain in 2016. It is designated as a national nature reserve for its rare flora and fauna. The rocks that form Snowdon were produced by volcanoes in the Ordovician period, and the massif has been extensively sculpted by glaciation, forming the pyramidal peak of Snowdon and the Arêtes of Crib Goch and Y Lliwedd. The cliff faces on Snowdon, including Clogwyn Du'r Arddu, are significant for rock climbing, and the mountain was used by Edmund Hillary in training for the 1953 ascent of Mount Everest.
The summit can be reached by a number of well-known paths, and by the Snowdon Mountain Railway, a rack and pinion railway opened in 1896 which carries passengers the 4.7 miles (7.6 km) from Llanberis to the summit station.

The painter
The english painter Joseph Mallord William Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence in the history of painting. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting.  He is commonly known as "the painter of light" and his work is regarded as a Romantic preface to Impressionism.
In his thirties, Turner travelled widely in Europe, starting with France and Switzerland in 1802 and studying in the Louvre in Paris in the same year. He made many visits to Venice.  Turner's talent was recognized early in his life. Financial independence allowed Turner to innovate freely; his mature work is characterized by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint. According to David Piper's The Illustrated History of Art, his later pictures were called "fantastic puzzles:" Turner was recognized as an artistic genius: influential English art critic John Ruskin described him as the artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature."
Turner's major venture into printmaking was the Liber Studiorum (Book of Studies), seventy prints that he worked on from 1806 to 1819. The Liber Studiorum was an expression of his intentions for landscape art. The idea was loosely based on Claude Lorrain's Liber Veritatis (Book of Truth), where Lorrain had recorded his completed paintings; a series of print copies of these drawings, by then at Devonshire House, had been a huge publishing success. Turner's plates were meant to be widely disseminated, and categorized the genre into six types: Marine, Mountainous, Pastoral, Historical, Architectural, and Elevated or Epic Pastoral. His printmaking was a major part of his output, and a museum is devoted to it, the Turner Museum in Sarasota, Florida, founded in 1974 by Douglass Montrose-Graem to house his collection of Turner prints.
Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his affection for humanity on the one hand (note the frequent scenes of people drinking or working or walking in the foreground), but its vulnerability and vulgarity amid the 'sublime' nature of the world on the other. 'Sublime' here means awe-inspiring, savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by man, evidence of the power of God – a theme that romanticist artists and poets were exploring in this period. Although these late paintings appear to be 'impressionistic' and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena.
Turner used pigments like carmine in his paintings, knowing that they were not long-lasting, despite the advice of contemporary experts to use more durable pigments. As a result, many of his colours have now faded greatly.
John Ruskin says in his "Notes" on Turner in March 1878 : "His true master was Dr Monro; to the practical teaching of that first patron and the wise simplicity of method of watercolour study, in which he was disciplined by him and companioned by Girtin, the healthy and constant development of the greater power is primarily to be attributed; the greatness of the power itself, it is impossible to over-estimate. "

_______________________________
2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

TETON RANGE PAINTED BY THOMAS MORAN

THOMAS MORAN (1837-1926)
Grand Teton (4,199 m - 13,775 ft)
United States of America (Wyoming)

In Teton range, Oil on cnavas, 1897, 76.2 x 114.3 cm, The MET, (on view on Gallery 765)

 About this painting in the MET note
" As Albert Bierstadt claimed the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada for his art, so Moran made the Yellowstone region and the Grand Canyon his signature subjects. His dazzling watercolors of Yellowstone led directly to its designation, in 1872, as the first national park. A native of Great Britain and an ardent admirer of the English painter J. M. W. Turner, Moran used prismatic color to capture the splendors of the American West—such as this dramatic view of the Tetons, located just south of Yellowstone. For centuries, Indigenous communities lived on and cared for this land, yet they are notably absent from Moran’s work. Instead, the artist depicted the landscape as an untouched pre-industrial paradise—thus, ripe for White settlement and colonization "

The mountain
Grand Teton (4,199 m - 13,775 ft) is the highest mountain in Grand Teton National Park in Northwest Wyoming, and a classic destination in American mountaineering. It is the highest point of the Teton Range, and the second highest peak in the U.S. state of Wyoming after Gannett Peak. The mountain is entirely within the Snake River drainage basin, which it feeds by several local creeks and glaciers.The Teton Range is a subrange of the Rocky Mountains, which extend from southern Alaska to northern New Mexico.  Grand Teton's name was first recorded as Mount Hayden by the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition of 1870. However, the name "the Grand Teton" had early currency. The Edition of April, 1901 of the USGS 1:125,000 quadrangle map of the area shows "Grand Teton" as the name of the peak. A United States National Park named "Grand Teton National Park" was established by law in 1929. By 1931, the name Grand Teton Peak was in such common usage that it was recognized by the USGS Board on Geographic Names. Another shift in usage led the Board to shorten the name on maps to Grand Teton in 1970. The origin of the name is disputed. The most common explanation is that "Grand Teton" means "large teat" in French, named by either French-Canadian or Iroquois members of an expedition led by Donald McKenzie of the North West Company. However, other historians disagree, and claim that the mountain was named after the Teton Sioux tribe of Native Americans.

The painter
Thomas Moran was an American painter and printmaker of the Hudson River School in New York whose work often featured the Rocky Mountains. Moran and his family took residence in New York where he obtained work as an artist. He was a younger brother of the noted marine artist Edward Moran, with whom he shared a studio. A talented illustrator and exquisite colorist, Thomas Moran was hired as an illustrator at Scribner's Monthly. During the late 1860s, he was appointed the chief illustrator for the magazine, a position that helped him launch his career as one of the premier painters of the American landscape, in particular, the American West.
Moran along with Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill, and William Keith are sometimes referred to as belonging to the Rocky Mountain School of landscape painters because of all of the Western landscapes made by this group.
Thomas Moran has a painting exhibited as part of the White House collection with The Three Tetons painted in 1895.

_____________________________

2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

RIESENGEBIRGE AND SZRENICA (3) PAINTED BY CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH

 

CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH (1774-1840)
Riesengebirge (1,362 m - 4,469 ft)
Poland - Czech Republic border

In New Moon above the Riesengebirge Mountains, 1810, pen and gray ink with watercolor over graphite on wove paper overall, 26.2 x 36.5 cm, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow

The mountain
Szrenica (1,362 m - 4,469 ft) is a mountain peak situated in the western part of Karkonosze on Polish and Czech border within the Karkonosze National Park. Its name originates from the Polish word szron (frost). There is a weather station situated close to the summit. The peak is deforested, both the southern and the northern parts are used intensively for skiing. The elevation gain compared to the main range is approximately 60 m. Szrenica Is part of the Giant Mountains range (Riesengebirge in german) frequently painted by the most famous romantic german painter Caspar David Friedrich.

The painter
Caspar David Friedrich was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, considered as the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic ruins. His primary interest as an artist was the contemplation of nature, and his often symbolic and anti-classical work seeks to convey a subjective, emotional response to the natural world. Friedrich's paintings characteristically set a human presence in diminished perspective amid expansive landscapes, reducing the figures to a scale that, according to the art historian Christopher John Murray, directs "the viewer's gaze towards their metaphysical dimension".
Friedrich was born in Pomerania, where he began to study art. He studied in Copenhagen until 1798, before settling in Dresden. A disillusionment with materialistic society was giving rise everywhere in Europe. This shift in ideals was often expressed through a reevaluation of the natural world, as artists such as Friedrich, J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) and John Constable (1776–1837) sought to depict nature as a "divine creation, to be set against the artifice of human civilization".
Friedrich was a prolific artist who produced more than 500 attributed works. In line with the Romantic ideals of his time, he intended his paintings to function as pure aesthetic statements, so he was cautious that the titles given to his work were not overly descriptive or evocative. It is likely that some of today's more literal titles, such as The Stages of Life, were not given by the artist himself, but were instead adopted during one of the revivals of interest in Friedrich. Complications arise when dating Friedrich's work, in part because he often did not directly name or date his canvases. He kept a carefully detailed notebook on his output, however, which has been used by scholars to tie paintings to their completion dates.


_______________________________
2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE RIGI PAINTED BY TURNER

J.M.W. TURNER (1775-1851)

The Rigi or Rigi Kulm or Mount Rigi (1, 797m - 5,897ft)

Switzerland

In Lucerne by Moonlight - Sample Study, ca.1842/43, Watercolour on paper, 23.5 x 32.5 cm,

Tate London

The mountain
The Rigi (1, 797m - 5,897ft) is a mountain massif of the Alps, located in Central Switzerland.
The whole massif is almost entirely surrounded by the water of three different water bodies: Lake Lucerne, Lake Zug and Lake Lauerz. The range is in the Schwyzer Alps, and is split between the cantons of Schwyz and Lucerne, although the main summit, named Rigi Kulm, at 1,798 meters above sea level, lies within the canton of Schwyz. Technically, the Rigi is not a part of the Alps, and belongs instead to the Swiss plateau. It is mostly composed of molasse and other conglomerate, as opposed to the Bündner schist and flysch of the Alps.
The Rigi Kulm and other areas, such as the resort of Rigi Kaltbad, are served by Europe's oldest mountain railways, the Rigi Railways. Swiss Railways offer a special round-trip excursion, the “Rigi-Rundfahrt”, covering multiple segments by train, cog-railway, gondola (optional) and lake steamer. The whole area offers many activities such as skiing or sledging in the winter, and hiking in the summer.
The name Rigi is from Old High German "rîga" which means "row, stripe, furrow", after the stratification that is clearly visible on the north-side of the mountain. The name is first recorded in 1350 as Riginun. The name was interpreted as Regina montium "queen of mountains" by Albrecht von Bonstetten (1479), who however gives Rigena as alternative form.
Mt. Rigi has been featured in many works of art, including both paintings and literary publications. Perhaps the most famous paintings of the Rigi were the series by J.M.W. Turner , several of which are in the collection of the Tate Britain in London.
Mark Twain also visited Rigi during his tour of Central Europe in the late 1870s, and wrote about his travels in chapter 28 of his "A Tramp Abroad."

The painter
The english painter Joseph Mallord William Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence in the history of painting. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. He is commonly known as "the painter of light" and his work is regarded as a Romantic preface to Impressionism.
More about Turner

_______________________________
2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE MONT BLANC BY J.M.W. TURNER

 

J.M.W. TURNER (1775-1851)

Mont Blanc (4,808.13 m - 15,776.7 ft)

  France - Italy  border

 In  Bonneville, Savoy, with Mont Blanc, 1803, Oil on Canvas,  92 x 123.2 cm, 

The Dallas Museum of Art (Gift of Nancy Hamon) 

The mountain 

Mont Blanc (in French) or Monte Bianco (in Italian), both meaning "White Mountain", is the highest mountain in the Alps and the highest in Europe after the Caucasus peaks. It rises 4,808.73 m (15,777 ft) above sea level and is ranked 11th in the world in topographic prominence.  The Mont Blanc is one of the Seven Summit, which includes the highest mountains of each of the seven continents. Summiting all of them is regarded as a mountaineering challenge, first achieved on April 30, 1985 by Richard Bass.  The 7 highest summit, (which are obviously 8 with 2 in Europe !) are :  

Mount Everest (8,848m), Aconcagua (6,961m), Mt Denali or Mc Kinley (6,194m),  Kilimandjaro (5,895m), Mt Elbrus (5,642m), Mount Vinson (4,892m) and Mount Kosciuszko  (2,228m) in Australia.

The mountain lies in a range called the Graian Alps, between the regions of Aosta Valley, Italy, and Savoie and Haute-Savoie, France. The location of the summit is on the watershed line between the valleys of Ferret and Veny in Italy and the valleys of Montjoie, and Arve in France. The Mont Blanc massif is popular for mountaineering, hiking, skiing, and snowboarding.

Moreabout Mont Blanc

The painter 

The english painter Joseph Mallord William Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence in the history of painting. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. He is commonly known as "the painter of light" and his work is regarded as a Romantic preface to Impressionism.

More about Turner 

___________________________________

2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE RIGI PAINTED BY J;M;W TURNER

 

JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER (1775-1851)

The Rigi or Rigi Kulm or Mount Rigi (1, 797m - 5,897ft)

Switzerland

In A Storm over the Rigi, c.1844, Watercolour on paper, 25 x 37,1cm,  Tate Britain

The mountain
The Rigi (1, 797m - 5,897ft) is a mountain massif of the Alps, located in Central Switzerland.
The whole massif is almost entirely surrounded by the water of three different water bodies: Lake Lucerne, Lake Zug and Lake Lauerz. The range is in the Schwyzer Alps, and is split between the cantons of Schwyz and Lucerne, although the main summit, named Rigi Kulm, at 1,798 meters above sea level, lies within the canton of Schwyz. Technically, the Rigi is not a part of the Alps, and belongs instead to the Swiss plateau. It is mostly composed of molasse and other conglomerate, as opposed to the Bündner schist and flysch of the Alps.
The Rigi Kulm and other areas, such as the resort of Rigi Kaltbad, are served by Europe's oldest mountain railways, the Rigi Railways. Swiss Railways offer a special round-trip excursion, the “Rigi-Rundfahrt”, covering multiple segments by train, cog-railway, gondola (optional) and lake steamer. The whole area offers many activities such as skiing or sledging in the winter, and hiking in the summer.
The name Rigi is from Old High German "rîga" which means "row, stripe, furrow", after the stratification that is clearly visible on the north-side of the mountain. The name is first recorded in 1350 as Riginun. The name was interpreted as Regina montium "queen of mountains" by Albrecht von Bonstetten (1479), who however gives Rigena as alternative form.
Mt. Rigi has been featured in many works of art, including both paintings and literary publications. Perhaps the most famous paintings of the Rigi were the series by J.M.W. Turner , several of which are in the collection of the Tate Britain in London.
Mark Twain also visited Rigi during his tour of Central Europe in the late 1870s, and wrote about his travels in chapter 28 of his "A Tramp Abroad."

The painter
The english painter Joseph Mallord William Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence in the history of painting. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. He is commonly known as "the painter of light" and his work is regarded as a Romantic preface to Impressionism.
More about Turner 

_______________________________
2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS BY DAVID ROBERTS

 

DAVID ROBERTS  (1796-1864)

The Acropolis of Athens (156m -512ft)

Greece

In The Acroplis, from the lower end of the Valley, litograph prints,  Private collection

The hill
The Acropolis of Athens  (156m ) is located on a rocky limestone plateau, the flat top of which measures around 270 meters from east to west and, in its natural state 85 meters from north to south, widened up to almost 150 meters by the works of the fifth century BC. AD, approximately 23,000 m22.
The term "acropolis" (ἀκρόπολις / akrópolis) comes from the adjective ἄκρος (ákros "high, high") and the noun πόλις (pólis, "city, town"), thus meaning "upper town".
It is accessible by a steep slope on the west side which leads to the Propylaea. However, the plateau can be reached on its north face by two faults dug by erosion. The east and south faces themselves are not inaccessible. It was even from the east side, deemed too steep and therefore unsupervised, that the Persian forces entered the fortress in 480 BC. J.-C.
The sanctuary of the Acropolis of Athens is organized around the statue of the tutelary deity of the city. This statue of Athena Polias is only known by a few texts.  It must have been a xoanon, a kind of olive wood beam, almost aniconic.  Athena is most often represented standing.
Every year, the statue was washed, its peplos changed and its adornment (jewelry and accessories) cleaned. Her jewels were earrings, a border on the neck and five necklaces. His accessories, all in gold, were an owl, an aegis, a Gorgonion and a phiale. She had no weapons: she was therefore not the warrior goddess of the most famous statues afterwards (Athena Parthenos and Athena Promachos of Phidias). These jewels and accessories could date from the "restructuring" of the primitive statue by Endoios. He would have made the beam a korea by fixing an arm to it (and a hand holding the phiale)

The artist
David Roberts  was a Scottish painter. He is especially known for The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia, a prolific series of detailed lithograph prints of Egypt and the Near East that he produced from sketches he made during long tours of the region (1838–1840). These and his large oil paintings of similar subjects made him a prominent Orientalist painter. He was elected as a Royal Academician in 1841.
J. M. W. Turner persuaded Roberts to abandon scene painting and devote himself to becoming a full-time artist. Roberts set sail for Egypt on 31 August 1838, a few years after Owen Jones. His intent was to produce drawings that he could later use as the basis for the paintings and lithographs to sell to the public. Egypt was much in vogue at this time, and travellers, collectors and lovers of antiquities were keen to buy works inspired by the East or depicting the great monuments of ancient Egypt.
Roberts made a long tour in Egypt, Nubia, the Sinai, the Holy Land, Jordan and Lebanon. Throughout, he produced a vast collection of drawings and watercolour sketches.
Muhammad Ali Pasha received Roberts in Alexandria on 16 May 1839, shortly before his return to the UK. He later reproduced this scene, apparently from memory, in Volume 3 of Egypt & Nubia.

_______________________________

2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

TUCUPIT POINT BY THOMAS MORAN

THOMAS MORAN (1837-1926)

Tucupit Point (2,346 m - 7,698 ft)

United States of America  (Utah)

In Colburn's Butte, South Utah, watercolor, 1873, 35,2 x 24cm,  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 About the painting
The journey that resulted in the first painting of the Grand Canyon also yielded this watercolor by the same artist, Thomas Moran. In late July 1873, Moran was en route from Salt Lake City to the north rim of the Grand Canyon to join the expedition of John Wesley Powell. Near Kanarraville, Utah, he recorded in his sketchbook two Navajo sandstone pinnacles that offered a preview of the magnificent Zion Canyon to the south, which he visited days later. With Moran was Justin Colburn, a correspondent for the New York Times, to whom he eventually gave the watercolor he made from the sketch and whose name he gave to its principal feature.
Colburn's Butte, today called Tucupit Point, is in the Kolob Canyon section of Zion National Park. In Moran's watercolor, it is distinguished by the white cloud swirling down to silhouette its peak. The spontaneous-looking passage sets off a zigzag pattern of hill and grass that continues to the bottom of the sheet. Such celestial-terrestrial dynamics were a hallmark of the work of the English-born Moran, an admirer of the turbulent landscapes of J. M. W. Turner. From the watercolor Moran designed an engraving that was published in the art magazine The Aldine in 1874.  

From the MET museum  notice

 The mountain

Tucupit Point (2,346 m - 7,698 ft ) is a prominent sandstone pinnacle in the Kolob Canyons of Zion National Park. The formation lays off of Taylor Creek Trail. The pinnacle - visible from U.S. Route 40 to the west - has been the subject of numerous photographs. ans paintings. The pinnacle was then named "Colburn's Butte" after Justin Colburn, a correspondent for the New York Times travelling with Thomas Moran; it would later be renamed Tucupit Point, "Tucupit" being the Paiute word for wildcat.

The painter
Thomas Moran was an American painter and printmaker of the Hudson River School in New York whose work often featured the Rocky Mountains. Moran and his family took residence in New York where he obtained work as an artist. He was a younger brother of the noted marine artist Edward Moran, with whom he shared a studio. A talented illustrator and exquisite colorist, Thomas Moran was hired as an illustrator at Scribner's Monthly. During the late 1860s, he was appointed the chief illustrator for the magazine, a position that helped him launch his career as one of the premier painters of the American landscape, in particular, the American West.
Moran along with Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill, and William Keith are sometimes referred to as belonging to the Rocky Mountain School of landscape painters because of all of the Western landscapes made by this group.
Thomas Moran has a painting exhibited as part of the White House collection with The Three Tetons painted in 1895.
_____________________________

2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

RIESENGEBIRGE AND SZRENICA PAINTED BY CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH

CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH (1774-1840)

Szrenica (1,362 m - 4,469 ft)

Poland - Czech Republic border

In Riesengebirge - View of the Small Sturmhaube from Warmbrunn, 1810, Oil on canvas, 45 x 58 cm Puškin State Museum of Fine Arts., Moscow

The mountain
Szrenica (1,362 m - 4,469 ft) is a mountain peak situated in the western part of Karkonosze on Polish and Czech border within the Karkonosze National Park. Its name originates from the Polish word szron (frost). There is a weather station situated close to the summit. The peak is deforested, both the southern and the northern parts are used intensively for skiing. The elevation gain compared to the main range is approximately 60 m. Szrenica Is part of the Giant Mountains range (Riesengebirge in german) frequently painted by the  most famous romantic german painter Caspar David Friedrich.

The painter
Caspar David Friedrich was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, considered as the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic ruins. His primary interest as an artist was the contemplation of nature, and his often symbolic and anti-classical work seeks to convey a subjective, emotional response to the natural world. Friedrich's paintings characteristically set a human presence in diminished perspective amid expansive landscapes, reducing the figures to a scale that, according to the art historian Christopher John Murray, directs "the viewer's gaze towards their metaphysical dimension".
Friedrich was born in Pomerania, where he began to study art. He studied in Copenhagen until 1798, before settling in Dresden. A disillusionment with materialistic society was giving rise everywhere in Europe. This shift in ideals was often expressed through a reevaluation of the natural world, as artists such as Friedrich, J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) and John Constable (1776–1837) sought to depict nature as a "divine creation, to be set against the artifice of human civilization".
Friedrich's work brought him renown early in his career, and contemporaries such as the French sculptor David d'Angers (1788–1856) spoke of him as a man who had discovered "the tragedy of landscape". Nevertheless, his work fell from favour during his later years, and he died in obscurity, and in the words of the art historian Philip B. Miller, "half mad". As Germany moved towards modernisation in the late 19th century, a new sense of urgency characterized its art, and Friedrich's contemplative depictions of stillness came to be seen as the products of a bygone age. The early 20th century brought a renewed appreciation of his work, beginning in 1906 with an exhibition of thirty-two of his paintings and sculptures in Berlin. By the 1920s his paintings had been discovered by the Expressionists, and in the 1930s and early 1940s Surrealists and Existentialists frequently drew ideas from his work. The rise of Nazism in the early 1930s again saw a resurgence in Friedrich's popularity, but this was followed by a sharp decline as his paintings were, by association with the Nazi movement, interpreted as having a nationalistic aspect. It was not until the late 1970s that Friedrich regained his reputation as an icon of the German Romantic movement and a painter of international importance.
Friedrich was a prolific artist who produced more than 500 attributed works. In line with the Romantic ideals of his time, he intended his paintings to function as pure aesthetic statements, so he was cautious that the titles given to his work were not overly descriptive or evocative. It is likely that some of today's more literal titles, such as The Stages of Life, were not given by the artist himself, but were instead adopted during one of the revivals of interest in Friedrich. Complications arise when dating Friedrich's work, in part because he often did not directly name or date his canvases. He kept a carefully detailed notebook on his output, however, which has been used by scholars to tie paintings to their completion dates.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

LES PLEÏADES BY JONH RUSKIN

JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900)

 Les Pleïades (1,306 m - 4,285 ft) 

 Switzerland 

 In Morning in Spring, with North-East Wind, at Vevey,  

watercolour and bodycolour over graphite, c. 1849-1869, Ashmolean Museum Oxford

The mountain 
Les Pleïades (1,306 m - 4,285 ft)  is the name of a Swiss mountain and a tourist resort in the canton of Vaud, located near Lake Geneva and Vevey. Its former name is the Pleiaux, probably referring to either the word Pleyau (gift in kind to the local lord) or to a deformation of the term Laplayau, which indicated the place where horses are spliced ​​after the wood felled.
The current name was given by Philippe Bridel in reference to the Pleïade of Greek mythology.
The Pleïades are the beginning of the chain of pre-Alps from the west. From the summit (where there is a relay for radioamateur transmissions), one can see Lake Geneva, the rocks of Naye, the plain of the Rhone and the Dents du Midi.
Access by car to the top of the Pleiades is not possible. The narrow road from Blonay stops at the hamlet of Lally, about 20 minutes walk from the resort. The Vevey-Blonay-Les Pléiades cogwheel train, belonging to the MOB group, joins the summit directly from the Vevey station.
The Pleiades are home to a nearby ski area, whose lifts belong to the towns of Blonay and Saint-Légier-La Chiésaz.

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

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau