EQUINOX MOUNTAIN PAINTED BY ROCKWELL KENT

ROCKWELL KENT (1882-1971) 

Equinox Mountain (1,170 m- 3,840 ft) in 1919-25 

Vermont - USA

The mountain
Equinox Mountain (1,170 m- 3,840 ft) is located in Bennington County, Vermont, United States, in the town of Manchester. The mountain is the highest peak of the Taconic Range, and the highest point of Bennington County. It is one of thirteen peaks in Vermont with a topographic prominence over 2,000 feet (610 m), ranked third behind Mansfield and Killington. Equinox is the second highest peak in southern Vermont, after Stratton Mountain.

A small, abandoned Cold War-era NORAD radar station can be seen near the summit. The site is now used for two-way communications including the Vermont State Police, and  radio stations.

An abandoned, now collapsed tunnel boring dating to the mid-1960s would have provided access to a subterranean cryonics receptacle for humans placed in low-temperature suspension. The tunnel project site is located on the northwest slope of the peak near the 2,800-foot (850 m) level. A private Vermont-based firm, Renew, Inc., had planned to preserve the bodies of several prominent high-IQ individuals for future reawakening. The project was hastily abandoned due to fraud allegations.

The Charterhouse of the Transfiguration monastery is situated on the slopes of the mountain. Equinox Mountain can be climbed by several different hiking trails.

Adjacent to the larger Equinox Mountains is Little Equinox, where two wind farms have previously operated. One wind turbine was installed in 1981 and three more in 1982, making Little Equinox Mountain the site of one of the first wind farms in the United States. These turbines, an early-generation design by WTG Systems of Buffalo, New York, were mounted on 80-foot (24 m) truss towers and had a nominal peak output of 350 kW. The turbines, however, were plagued with mechanical issues, and by the mid-1980s all four were out of service, standing idle on the mountain from 1985 through 1989.

Green Mountain Power began operating the site in 1988, erecting a wind measurement tower and removing the four old turbines. It installed two U.S. Windpower 100 kW turbines in 1990, which ran for four years making electricity. Green Mountain Power removed its turbines and measurement tower in 1994. The company now owns the Searsburg Wind Farm in Searsburg, Vermont.

Endless Energy Corporation, a wind farm development company based in Maine, has expressed interest in the site for a modern wind farm. They have conducted wind measurements as well as environmental studies of Little Equinox Mountain. To build a wind farm in Vermont, the developer needs to go through the Public Service Board's Section 248 application process.

The Taconic Range ridgeline continues to the north from Equinox Mountain as Mother Myrick Mountain and south as Red Mountain; it is flanked to the west by Bennetts Ridge and Bear Mountain, also of the Taconic Range, and to the east by the western escarpment and plateau of the Green Mountains, across the Batten Kill valley. The southeast side of Equinox Mountain drains into the Batten Kill, thence into the Hudson River, and into New York Harbor. The northwest side of Equinox drains into the Green River, a tributary of the Batten Kill.

Reference

- Peakbagger.com

- Equinox Mountain in Wikipedia 

The painter

Rockwell Kent, artist, author, and political activist, had a long  and varied career. During his lifetime, he worked as an architectural draftsman, illustrator, printmaker, painter, lobsterman, ship's carpenter, and dairy farmer. Born in Tarrytown Heights, New York, he lived in Maine, Newfoundland, Alaska, Greenland, and the Adirondacks and explored the waters around Tierra del Fuego in a small boat. Kent's paintings, lithographs, and woodcuts often portrayed the bleak and rugged aspects of nature; a reflection of his life in harsh climates.

Kent had an unusually long and thorough training as an artist. He was a student at the Horace Mann School in New York City and subsequently studied architecture at Columbia University, toward the end of which he felt a strong inclination toward painting and took up the study of art under William Merritt Chase at the Shinnecock Hills School. He studied later at the New York School, under Robert Henri and Kenneth Hayes Miller, and finally as an apprentice to Abbott Thayer at Dublin, New Hampshire. Henri encouraged him to go to Monhegan Island where Kent painted on his own. He was absorbed in the awesome power of the environment; nature's timeless energy and contrasting forces influenced his work throughout his lifetime. His early and lasting relationship with the sea was portrayed again and again in his work.

The graphic art tradition in which Rockwell Kent worked was not that of the Post-Impressionist or abstract International style, but rather an older and somewhat English style. Hogarth, Blake, Constable, the Pre-Raphaelites, and the British illustrators were his artistic antecedents. His work is most frequently identified with that of the American Social Realists and the great muralists of the 1920s and 1930s. 

His experience as a carpenter and builder and his familiarity with tools served him well when he took up the graphic process. His blocks were marvels of beautiful cutting, every line deliberate and under perfect control. The tones and lines in his lithography were solidly built up, subtle, and full of color. He usually made preliminary studies- old-mater style- for composition or detail before starting on a print. Nothing was vague or accidental about his work; his expression was clear and deliberate. Neither misty tonalities nor suggestiveness were to his taste. He was a highly objectified art - clean, athletic, sometimes almost austere and cold. He either recorded adventures concretely, or dealt in ideas. His studio was a model of the efficient workshop: neat, orderly, with everything in its place. His handwriting, the fruit of his architectural training, was beautiful and precise. 

When Kent died of a heart attack in 1971, The New York Times described him as "... a thoughtful, troublesome, profoundly independent, odd and kind man who made an imperishable contribution to the art of bookmaking in the United States."  Richer, more accurate accounts of the scope of the artist's influential career as a painter and writer have since superseded this cursory summing-up of an American life. Retrospectives of the artist's paintings and drawings have been mounted, most recently by The Rooms in St. John's, Newfoundland, where the exhibition Pointed North: Rockwell Kent in Newfoundland and Labrador was curated by Caroline Stone in the summer of 2014. Other recent exhibitions include the Richard F. Brush Art Gallery and Owen D. Young Library at St. Lawrence University (Canton, New York) in the autumn of 2012; the Farnsworth Art Museum (Rockland, Maine) during the spring through autumn of 2012; the Bennington Museum in Vermont during the summer of 2012; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the spring through summer of 2012. An exhibition marking the centennial of Kent's time in Winona, Minnesota, took place there in 2013. Among the many notes of increasing awareness of Kent's contributions to American culture is the reproduction of one of Kent's pen-and-ink drawings from Moby Dick on a U.S. postage stamp, part of the 2001 commemorative panel celebrating such American illustrators as Maxfield Parrish, Frederic Remington, and Norman Rockwell.

Noted American and Canadian writers in recent years have found much gold to mine in Kent's improbable personal and public life. The year he spent in Newfoundland, for example, is fictionally (and very loosely) recalled by Canadian writer Michael Winter in The Big Why, his 2004 Winterset Award-winning novel. And certain qualities of the protagonist of Russell Banks's 2008 novel The Reserve are inspired by aspects of Kent's complex personality. Kent's work also figures in Steve Martin's 2010 novel An Object of Beauty and is the subject of a chapter in Douglas Brinkley's 2011 history The Quiet World: Saving Alaska's Wilderness Kingdom: 1879–1960.

The Archives of American Art is the repository for Kent's voluminous correspondence.

Source: 

- Short Biography byPlattsburgh State Art Museum 

TORRES DEL PAINE (4) PAINTED BY JAMES HART DYKE

 

JAMES HART DYKE (bn.1966)

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

Chile

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

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


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

___________________________

2020 - Wandering Vertexes
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

TOIRRES DEL PAINE PAINTED BY JAMES HART DYKE

 

JAMES HART DYKE (bn.1966)

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

Chile 

In Torres del paine and single cloud, oil on vanvas 2018, courtesy John Mitchell Gallery

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

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

___________________________
2020 - Wandering Vertexes
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

TORRES DEL PAINE (2) PAINTED BY JAMES HART DYKE

 

JAMES HART DYKE (bn.1966)
Torres del Paine (2,500 m - 8,200 ft)
Chile

In Los Cuernos del Paine last light, oil on vanvas 2018, courtesy John Mitchell Gallery 

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

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

___________________________________________
2021 - Wandering Vertexes and Mountain paintings
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

MONADNOCK MOUNTAIN PAINTED BY ROCKWELL KENT

ROCKWELL KENT (1882-1971)

Monadnock  mountain  (965m - 3, 125ft) 

United States of America (New Hampshire) 

In Mount Monadnock- afternoon, oil on canvas    

The mountain 

Mount Monadnock (965m - 3, 125ft) or Grand Monadnock is a mountain in the New England state of New Hampshire. It is the most prominent mountain peak in southern New Hampshire and is the highest point in Cheshire County, New Hampshire. It has long been known as one of the most frequently climbed mountains in the world. The word "monadnock" is an Abenaki-derived word used to describe a mountain. Loosely translated it means "mountain that stands alone", although the exact meaning of the word (what kind of mountain) is uncertain. The term was adopted by early settlers of southern New Hampshire and later by American geologists as an alternative term for an Inselberg or isolated mountain. Mount Monadnock is often called Grand Monadnock, to differentiate it from other Vermont and New Hampshire peaks with "Monadnock" in their names. Its official name on federal maps is "Monadnock Mountain".
Both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau visited the mountain and wrote fondly of it. Emerson was a frequent visitor, and made the mountain the subject of "Monadnoc", one of his most famous poems. Thoreau visited the mountain four times between 1844 and 1860 and spent a great deal of time observing and cataloging natural phenomena. He is regarded as having written one of the first serious naturalist inventories of the mountain. A bog near the summit of Mount Monadnock and a rocky lookout off the Cliff Walk trail are named after him; another lookout is named after Emerson.

Mount Monadnock is nearly 1,000 feet (300 m) higher than any other mountain peak within 30 miles (48 km) and rises 2,000 feet (610 m) above the surrounding landscape. Mount Monadnock, 62 miles (100 km) northwest of Boston and 38 miles (61 km) southwest of Concord, is located within the towns of Jaffrey and Dublin, New Hampshire.

Monadnock's bare, isolated, and rocky summit provides expansive views. A number of hiking trails ascend the mountain, including the 110-mile (180 km) Metacomet-Monadnock Trail and the 50-mile (80 km) Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway.
The earliest recorded ascent of Mount Monadnock took place in 1725 by Captain Samuel Willard and fourteen rangers under his command who camped at the top and used the summit as a lookout while patrolling for Native Americans. Before the practice came to be frowned upon, many early hikers carved their names in the summit; the earliest such engraving reads "S. Dakin, 1801" and is attributed to a local town clerk. Notable "power hiking" records associated with the mountain include that of Garry Harrington, who hiked to the summit 16 times in a 24-hour period, and Larry Davis, who claimed to have hiked to the summit daily for 2,850 consecutive days (7.8 years).
Monadnock is often claimed to be the second-most frequently climbed mountain in the world, after Mount Fuji in Japan. Monadnock is climbed by 125,000 hikers yearly, while Mount Fuji sees 200,000-300,000 hikers yearly.  However, according to UNESCO, neither mountain comes close in climbing popularity to Tai Shan in China, with more than 2 million visitors a year.

The painter

Rockwell Kent, artist, author, and political activist, had a long  and varied career. During his lifetime, he worked as an architectural draftsman, illustrator, printmaker, painter, lobsterman, ship's carpenter, and dairy farmer. Born in Tarrytown Heights, New York, he lived in Maine, Newfoundland, Alaska, Greenland, and the Adirondacks and explored the waters around Tierra del Fuego in a small boat. Kent's paintings, lithographs, and woodcuts often portrayed the bleak and rugged aspects of nature; a reflection of his life in harsh climates.His experience as a carpenter and builder and his familiarity with tools served him well when he took up the graphic process. His blocks were marvels of beautiful cutting, every line deliberate and under perfect control. The tones and lines in his lithography were solidly built up, subtle, and full of color. He usually made preliminary studies- old-mater style- for composition or detail before starting on a print. Nothing was vague or accidental about his work; his expression was clear and deliberate. Neither misty tonalities nor suggestiveness were to his taste. He was a highly objectified art - clean, athletic, sometimes almost austere and cold. He either recorded adventures concretely, or dealt in ideas. His studio was a model of the efficient workshop: neat, orderly, with everything in its place. His handwriting, the fruit of his architectural training, was beautiful and precise.
When Kent died of a heart attack in 1971, The New York Times described him as "... a thoughtful, troublesome, profoundly independent, odd and kind man who made an imperishable contribution to the art of bookmaking in the United States."  Richer, more accurate accounts of the scope of the artist's influential career as a painter and writer have since superseded this cursory summing-up of an American life. Retrospectives of the artist's paintings and drawings have been mounted, most recently by The Rooms in St. John's, Newfoundland, where the exhibition Pointed North: Rockwell Kent in Newfoundland and Labrador was curated by Caroline Stone in the summer of 2014. Other recent exhibitions include the Richard F. Brush Art Gallery and Owen D. Young Library at St. Lawrence University (Canton, New York) in the autumn of 2012; the Farnsworth Art Museum (Rockland, Maine) during the spring through autumn of 2012; the Bennington Museum in Vermont during the summer of 2012; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the spring through summer of 2012. An exhibition marking the centennial of Kent's time in Winona, Minnesota, took place there in 2013. Among the many notes of increasing awareness of Kent's contributions to American culture is the reproduction of one of Kent's pen-and-ink drawings from Moby Dick on a U.S. postage stamp, part of the 2001 commemorative panel celebrating such American illustrators as Maxfield Parrish, Frederic Remington, and Norman Rockwell.
Noted American and Canadian writers in recent years have found much gold to mine in Kent's improbable personal and public life. The year he spent in Newfoundland, for example, is fictionally (and very loosely) recalled by Canadian writer Michael Winter in The Big Why, his 2004 Winterset Award-winning novel. And certain qualities of the protagonist of Russell Banks's 2008 novel The Reserve are inspired by aspects of Kent's complex personality. Kent's work also figures in Steve Martin's 2010 novel An Object of Beauty and is the subject of a chapter in Douglas Brinkley's 2011 history The Quiet World: Saving Alaska's Wilderness Kingdom: 1879–1960.
The Archives of American Art is the repository for Kent's voluminous correspondence.

AMA DABLAM PEINT PAR JAMES HART DYKE

JAMES HART DYKE (bn.1966),
Ama Dablam (6,812 m)
Népal

In Ama Dablam, Himalaya, watercolour and pencil on paper, John Mitchell Gallery courtesy

La montagne
L'Ama Dablam (6,812 m) est un sommet népalais de l'Himalaya dans la région du Khumbu. Il fait face au Taweshe. Il est situé dans le parc national de Sagarmatha, dans le massif du Khumbu Himal, au pied de deux 8 000 : l'Everest et le Lhotse.
Son camp de base - situé quasiment en fond de vallée de l'Imja Khola - est accessible en deux jours de marche depuis la capitale du pays sherpa, Namche Bazar. L'esthétique, la difficulté raisonnable et l'altitude de ce presque 7 000 en font un objectif prisé des expéditions commerciales.
Ama Dablam signifie « reliquaire de la mère » en référence au pendentif en forme d'étoile que portent les Sherpanis (femmes de l'ethnie sherpa).

Le peintre
Le travail de James Hart Dyke est centré sur la peinture de paysages, allant du caractère aimable de la campagne anglaise jusqu’aux peintures issues d'expéditions physiquement exigeantes dans des montagnes isolées et lointaines. James Hart Dyke a été également conduit à mener à bien une série de projets aussi différent que celui d'accompagner SAR le prince de Galles (l'actuel roi Charles III) en tant qu'artiste officiel lors de tournées royales, de travailler comme « artiste en résidence » pour les services secrets britanniques, ou encore comme peintre de guerre intégré aux forces britanniques dans les zones de combat, mais aussi pour les producteurs des films de James Bond et enfin comme « artiste en résidence » pour Aston Martin. Ces projets  lui ont permis d'expérimenter des formes de peinture plus graphiques influencées par ses études d'architecte au Royal College of Art. Ses portraits sont exposés à la National Portrait Gallery et à la Royal Society of Portrait Painters.

 ______________________________________

2023 - Gravir les montagnes en peinture
Un blog de Francis Rousseau   

NUPTSE PAINTED BY JAMES HART DYKE

 

JAMES HART DYKE  (bn 1966)
Nuptse  (7,861 m - 25,791 ft)
Nepal

In Nuptse Himalaya ,2011, Acrylic on paper,  Courtesy John Mitchell  Gallery, London

The mountain
Nuptse or Nubtse is a mountain in the Khumbu region of the Mahalangur Himal, in the Nepalese Himalayas. It lies two kilometres WSW of Mount Everest. Nubtse is Tibetan for "west peak", as it is the western segment of the Lhotse-Nubtse massif.
The main peak, Nubtse I, was first climbed on May 16, 1961 by Dennis Davis and Sherpa Tashi and the following day by Chris Bonington, Les Brown, James Swallow and Pemba Sherpa, members of a British expedition led by Joe Walmsley. After a long hiatus, Nubtse again became the objective of high-standard mountaineers in the 1990s and 2000s, with important routes being put up on its west, south, and north faces. While Nubtse is a dramatic peak when viewed from the south or west, and it towers above the base camp for the standard south col route on Everest, it is not a particularly independent peak: its topographic prominence is only 319 m (1,047 ft). Hence it is not ranked on the list of highest mountains.

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

___________________________
2022 - Wandering Vertexes
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

TOHIVEA / TOHIEA PAINTED BY CECIL WILLIAM HODGES

CECIL WILLIAM HODGES (1744-1797) 

 Mount Tohivea or Tohiea (1,207m- 3,960ft)  

  France  (French Polynesia )  

 In View taken in the bay of Moorea, 1774, oil on canvas,  The National Maritime Museum, London.

The mountain 

Mount Tohivea (1,207 m - 3,960 feet) also called  Tohiea is a volcanic peak and the highest point on the island of Moorea in French Polynesia. On its slopes are many streams and fertile soils. There are hiking trails along the summit close to Belvedere Point where people can view Mont Routui and the two bays and three peninsulas of Moorea. Mount Tohivea is a dormant volcano that is easily visible from Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia. The surrounding peaks are almost as tall as Mount Tohivea.

Mount Tohivea was formed about two million years ago. Its last eruption was so big, there was a landslide that formed the 2 bays. After the eruption, the volcano became dormant. The area was first settled by early Polynesians during the early 4th century. Then Charles Darwin explored the area. After many years the area became very populated. Then people made trails and then it become a park. Today, the park is a tourist attraction.
Mount Tohivea is a lot visited since it has easy access from Papeete. Many people walk the trails since there is beautiful scenery. People from Tahiti use the Moorea Temae Airport or the Aremeti Ferry to get to Moorea. Mount Tohivea is visible behind Mount Rotui from the two bays
There about 5 miles (8.0 km) of dirt hiking trails along the Mount Tohivea's slopes. The trails are about 2 feet (0.61 m) wide. There are some points with views of Cook's Bay, Opunohu Bay, the Pacific Ocean, and Pao Pao, the largest commune of Moorea. The animals that people can see are mainly Geckos and Salamanders. The hiking trails end close to Mont Mouaroa which is only a couple of miles west of Mont Tohivea. People can also see Mont Mouaroa from both the main road and the two bays. People can mainly see Mont Mouaroa from Opuhunu bay.S ome of the hiking trails go to the bottom of Moorea from the south point. People can also see Mont Tohivea from the south point and get on the trails from there.
There are also farms at the bottom of Mount Tohivea. The farmers mainly farm pineapples and potatoes. The farmers give the pineapples to the Moorea Juice Factory. People can see the farms as they drive the small road up the valley. The farms are mainly located at where the small road starts at the bottom of Opuhunu Bay. There is also a shrimp farm.

The painter 
William Hodges was an English painter, member of James Cook's second voyage to the Pacific Ocean, and best known for the sketches and paintings of locations he visited on that voyage, including Table Bay, Tahiti, Easter Island, and the Antarctic. He studied under William Shipley, and afterwards in the studio of Richard Wilson, where he met Thomas Jones. Between 1772 and 1775 Hodges accompanied James Cook to the Pacific as the expedition's artist. Many of his sketches and wash paintings were adapted as engravings in the original published edition of Cook's journals from the voyage.
Most of the large-scale landscape oil paintings from his Pacific travels for which Hodges is best known were finished after his return to London; he received a salary from the Admiralty for the purposes of completing them. These paintings depicted a stronger light and shadow than had been usual in European landscape tradition. Contemporary art critics complained that his use of light and colour contrasts gave his paintings a rough and unfinished appearance.
In 1778, under the patronage of Warren Hastings, Hodges travelled to India, one of the first British professional landscape painters to visit that country. He remained there for six years, staying in Lucknow with Claude Martin in 1783. His painting of "Futtypoor Sicri" is in Sir John Soane's Museum.
Later Hodges travelled also across Europe, including a visit to St. Petersburg in Russia in 1790.
In 1793 Hodges published an illustrated book about his travels in India.
In late 1794 Hodges opened an exhibition of his own works in London that included two large paintings called The Effects of Peace and The Effects of War.  In late January, 1795, with Britain engaged in the War of the First Coalition against Revolutionary France and feelings running high, the exhibition was visited by Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, the second son of King George III. The Duke took offence at the political nature of Hodges' paintings and ordered the exhibition closed; this royal censure effectively ended Hodges' career as a painter.
Hodges retired to Devon and became involved with a bank, which failed during the banking crisis of March, 1797. On 6 March of that year, he died from what was officially recorded as "gout in the stomach", but which was also rumoured to be suicide from an overdose of laudanum.
Hodges Knoll in Antarctica is named after William Hodges.
Source: 

- William Hodges Wikepedia page  

K2 PEAK BY VITTORIO SELLA

 

VITTORIO SELLA (1859-1843)  

 The K2  peak (8,611m - 28,251 ft) 

China - Pakistan border

Photographed during the 1909 expedition 

led by Prince Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi 

The artist

Vittorio Sella is a mountain italian climber and photographer who took his passion for mountains from his uncle, Quintino Sella, founder of the Italian Alpine Club.  He accomplished many remarkable climbs in the Alps, the first wintering in the Matterhorn and Mount Rose (1882) and the first winter crossing of Mont Blanc (1888).
He took part in various expeditions outside Italy:
- Three in the Caucasus in 1889, 1890 and 1896 where a summit still bears his name;
- The ascent of Mount Saint Elias in Alaska in 1897;
- Sikkim and Nepal in 1899;
- Possibly climb Mount Stanley in Uganda in 1906 during an expedition to the Rwenzori;
- Recognition at K2  in 1909;
- In Morocco in 1925.
During expeditions in Alaska, Uganda and Karakoram (K2), he accompanied the Duke of Abruzzi, Prince Luigi Amedeo di Savoia.
Sella continues the practice of climbing into his old age, completing his final attempt in the Matterhorn at the age of 76; a climb he had to interrupt the rise following an accident in which one of his guides injured. He died in his hometown during World War II.  His photographic collection is now managed by the Sella Foundation.
His photos mountain are still  considered today to be among the finest ever made.
Jim Curran believes that "Sella remains probably the greatest photographer of the mountain.  His name is synonymous with technical perfection and aesthetic refinement. "
The quality of the pictures of Vittorio Sella is partly explained by the use of a view camera 30 × 40 cm, despite the difficulty of the transportation of such a device, both heavy and fragile in places inaccessible; to be able to transport it safely, he had to make special pieces that can be stored in saddle bags.  His photographs have been widely distributed, either through the press or in the galleries, and were unanimously celebrated; Ansel Adams, who was able to admire thirty-one in an exhibition that was organized at Sella American Sierra Club, said they inspired him "a religious kind of sense of wonder."  Many of his pictures were taken in the mountains for the very first time in the History, which give them a much artistic, historical  but also scientific value ; for example, one could measure the decline in the Rwenzori glaciers in Central Africa.
Source:
 -  The Georgian Museum of Photography

The mountain 

K2 peak (8,611m - 28,251 ft)  also known as Mount Godwin-Austen or Chhogori is the second highest mountain in the world, after Mount Everest. It is located on the China-Pakistan border between Baltistan, in the Gilgit–Baltistan region of northern Pakistan, and the Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County of Xinjiang, China.

The name K2 is derived from the notation used by the Great Trigonometric Survey of British India. Thomas Montgomerie made the first survey of the Karakoram from Mount Haramukh, some 210 km (130 miles) to the south, and sketched the two most prominent peaks, labeling them K1 and K2.

The policy of the Great Trigonometric Survey was to use local names for mountains wherever possible and K1 was found to be known locally as Masherbrum. K2, however, appeared not to have acquired a local name, possibly due to its remoteness. The mountain is not visible from Askole, the last village to the south, or from the nearest habitation to the north, and is only fleetingly glimpsed from the end of the Baltoro Glacier, beyond which few local people would have ventured. The name Chogori, derived from two Balti words, chhogo ("big") and ri ("mountain")  has been suggested as a local name, but evidence for its widespread use is scant. It may have been a compound name invented by Western explorers or simply a bemused reply to the question "What's that called?" It does, however, form the basis for the name Qogir (simplified Chinese: 乔戈里峰; traditional Chinese: 喬戈里峰; pinyin: Qiбogēlǐ Fēng) by which Chinese authorities officially refer to the peak. Other local names have been suggested including Lamba Pahar ("Tall Mountain" in Urdu) and Dapsang, but are not widely used.

Lacking a local name, the name Mount Godwin-Austen was suggested, in honor of Henry Godwin-Austen, an early explorer of the area, and while the name was rejected by the Royal Geographical Society, it was used on several maps, and continues to be used occasionally.

The surveyor's mark, K2, therefore continues to be the name by which the mountain is commonly known. It is now also used in the Balti language, rendered as Kechu or Ketu (Urdu: کے ٹو‎). The Italian climber Fosco Maraini argued in his account of the ascent of Gasherbrum IV that while the name of K2 owes its origin to chance, its clipped, impersonal nature is highly appropriate for so remote and challenging a mountain. He concluded that it was ...

K2 is the highest point of the Karakoram range and the highest point in both Pakistan and Xinjiang.

Climbing history 

K2 is known as the Savage Mountain due to the extreme difficulty of ascent. It has the second-highest fatality rate among the eight thousanders. With around 300 successful summits and 80 fatalities, about one person dies on the mountain for every four who summit.  It is more difficult and hazardous to reach the peak of K2 from the Chinese side; thus, it is usually climbed from the Pakistani side. 

The mountain was first surveyed by a European survey team in 1856. Team member Thomas Montgomerie designated the mountain "K2" for being the second peak of the Karakoram range. The other peaks were originally named K1, K3, K4, and K5, but were eventually renamed Masherbrum, Gasherbrum IV, Gasherbrum II, and Gasherbrum I, respectively. 

In 1892, Martin Conway led a British expedition that reached "Concordia" on the Baltoro Glacier.

- The  first expedition in 1902

The first serious attempt to climb K2 was undertaken in 1902 by Oscar Eckenstein, Aleister Crowley, Jules Jacot-Guillarmod, Heinrich Pfannl, Victor Wessely, and Guy Knowles via the Northeast Ridge. In the early 1900s, modern transportation did not exist: it took "fourteen days just to reach the foot of the mountain". After five serious and costly attempts, the team reached 6,525m-21,407 ft) although considering the difficulty of the challenge, and the lack of modern climbing equipment or weatherproof fabrics, Crowley's statement that "neither man nor beast was injured" highlights the pioneering spirit and bravery of the attempt. The failures were also attributed to sickness (Crowley was suffering the residual effects of malaria), a combination of questionable physical training, personality conflicts, and poor weather conditions—of 68 days spent on K2 (at the time, the record for the longest time spent at such an altitude) only eight provided clear weather.

- The famous 1909 expedition

In 1909,  an  expedition led by Prince Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi, reached an elevation of around 6,250 m -20,510 ft on the South East Spur, now known as the Abruzzi Spur (or Abruzzi Ridge). This would eventually become part of the standard route but was abandoned at the time due to its steepness and difficulty. After trying and failing to find a feasible alternative route on the West Ridge or the North East Ridge, the Duke declared that K2 would never be climbed, and the team switched its attention to Chogolisa, where the Duke came within 150m-490 ft of the summit before being driven back by a storm.  During this historical 1909 expedition K2 was photographed for the first time by Vittoro Sella member of the expedition (see photo above).  

- Others expeditions 

In 1938, an American expedition led by Charles Houston made a reconnaissance of the mountain. They concluded that the Abruzzi Spur was the most practical route and reached a height of around 8,000 m- 26,000 ft before turning back due to diminishing supplies and the threat of bad weather.

In 1939, an expedition led by Fritz Wiessner came within 200 m -660 ft of the summit but ended in disaster when Dudley Wolfe, Pasang Kikuli, Pasang Kitar, and Pintso disappeared high on the mountain.

 In 1953 Charles Houston returned to K2 to lead the  "American expedition". The expedition failed due to a storm that pinned the team down for 10 days at 7,800m -25,590 ft, during which time Art Gilkey became critically ill. A desperate retreat followed, during which Pete Schoening saved almost the entire team during a mass fall, and Gilkey was killed, either in an avalanche or in a deliberate attempt to avoid burdening his companions. Despite the failure and tragedy, the courage shown by the team has given the expedition iconic status in mountaineering history.

- First expedition to the summit  

On July 31,  1954 Achille Compagnoni reached the  K2's summit on the first ascent, via the Abruzzi Spur. The expedition was led by Ardito Desio, and the two climbers who reached the summit were Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni. The team included a Pakistani member, Colonel Muhammad Ata-ullah, who had been a part of the 1953 American expedition. Also on the expedition were Walter Bonatti and Pakistani Hunza porter Amir Mehdi, who both proved vital to the expedition's success in that they carried oxygen tanks to 8,100m-26,600 ft for Lacedelli and Compagnoni. The ascent is controversial because Lacedelli and Compagnoni established their camp at a higher elevation than originally agreed with Medhi and Bonatti. It being too dark to ascend or descend, Medhi and Bonatti were forced to overnight without shelter above 8,000 m leaving the oxygen tanks behind as requested when they descended. Bonatti and Mehdi survived, but Mehdi was hospitalized for months and had to have his toes amputated because of frostbite. Efforts in the 1950s to suppress these facts to protect Lacedelli and Compagnoni's reputations as Italian national heroes were later brought to light. It was also revealed that the moving of the camp was deliberate, a move apparently made because Compagnoni feared being outshone by the younger Bonatti. Bonatti was given the blame for Medhi's hospitalization.

On 9 August 1977, 23 years after the Italian expedition, the japanese climber Chiro Yoshizawa led the second successful ascent, with Ashraf Aman as the first native Pakistani climber. The Japanese expedition took the Abruzzi Spur, and used more than 1,500 porters !

 In 1978 : third ascent of K2 via a new route, the long and corniced Northeast Ridge. The top of the route traversed left across the East Face to avoid a vertical headwall and joined the uppermost part of the Abruzzi route. This ascent was made by an American team, led by James Whittaker; the summit party was Louis Reichardt, Jim Wickwire, John Roskelley, and Rick Ridgeway. Wickwire endured an overnight bivouac about 150 m- 490 ft below the summit, one of the highest bivouacs in history. This ascent was emotional for the American team, as they saw themselves as completing a task that had been begun by the 1938 team forty years earlier.

In 1982  takes place another notable Japanese ascent with the climb of the difficult North Ridge on the Chinese side of the peak . A team from the Mountaineering Association of Japan led by Isao Shinkai and Masatsugo Konishi put three members, Naoe Sakashita, Hiroshi Yoshino, and Yukihiro Yanagisawa, on the summit on 14 August. However Yanagisawa fell and died on the descent. Four other members of the team achieved the summit the next day.

The first climber to reach the summit of K2 twice was Czech climber Josef Rakoncaj.  Rakoncaj was a member of the 1983 Italian expedition led by Francesco Santon, which made the second successful ascent of the North Ridge (31 July 1983). Three years later, on 5 July 1986, he reached the summit via the Abruzzi Spur (double with Broad Peak West Face solo) as a member of Agostino da Polenza's international expedition.

In 1983 the first woman to summit K2 was Pole Wanda Rutkiewicz.

In 1986, two Polish expeditions climbed via two new routes, the Magic Line and the Polish Line. This second has not yet been repeated.

In 2004 the Spanish climber Carlos Soria Fontбn became the oldest person ever to summit K2, at the age of 65.

The peak has now been climbed by almost all of its ridges. Although the summit of Everest is at a higher altitude, K2 is a much more difficult and dangerous climb, due in part to its more inclement weather and comparatively greater height from base to peak. The mountain is believed by many to be the world's most difficult and dangerous climb, hence its nickname "the Savage Mountain". It, and the surrounding peaks, have claimed more lives than any others. As of July 2010, only 302 people have completed the ascent, compared with over 2,700 who have ascended Everest. At least 80 (as of September 2010) people have died attempting the climb. Thirteen climbers from several expeditions died in the 1986 K2 Disaster. Another six mountaineers died on 13 August 1995, while eleven climbers died in the 2008 K2 disaster.

Recent attempts

2008. On 1 August 2008, a group of climbers went missing after a large piece of ice fell during an avalanche, taking out the fixed ropes on part of the route; four climbers were rescued, but 11, including Gerard McDonnell, the first Irish person to reach the summit, were confirmed dead.

2009. Despite several attempts, nobody reached the summit.

2010. On 6 August 2010, Fredrik Ericsson, who intended to ski from the summit, joined Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner on the way to the summit of K2. Ericsson fell 1,000 m-3,300 ft) and was killed. Kaltenbrunner aborted her summit attempt. Despite several attempts, nobody reached the summit.

2011. On 23 August 2011, a team of four climbers reached the summit of K2 from the North side. Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner became the first woman to complete all 14 eight-thousanders without supplemental oxygen.  Kazakhs Maxut Zhumayev and Vassiliy Pivtsov completed their eight-thousanders quest. The fourth team member was Dariusz Załuski from Poland.

2012. The year started with a Russian team aiming for a first winter ascent. The expedition ended with the death of Vitaly Gorelik due to frostbite and pneumonia. The Russian team cancelled the ascent.  In the summer season, K2 saw a record crowd standing on its summit—28 climbers in a single day—bringing the total for the year to 30.

2013 On 28 July 2013, two New Zealanders, Marty Schmidt and his son Denali, died after an avalanche destroyed their camp. A guide had reached the camp they were at, but said they were nowhere to be seen and the campsite tent showed signs of having been hit by an avalanche. British climber Adrian Hayes, who was with the group, later posted on his Facebook page that the campsite had been wiped out.

2014. On 26 July 2014, the first team of Pakistani climbers scaled K2. There are six Pakistani and three Italian climbers in the expedition, called K2 60 Years Later, according to BBC. Previously, K2 had only been summited by individual Pakistanis as part of international expeditions.  On 27 July 2014, Garrett Madison led a team of three American climbers and six Sherpas to summit K2.

K2 has never been climbed during winter.
References
-  Himalaya-Info.org page on K2 (German)
- The climbing history of K2
- Aleister Crowley's account of the 1902 K2 expedition
- List of ascents to December 2007
- Wikipedia K2 page 

MONTE DARWIN PAINTED BY ROCKWELL KENT

ROCKWELL KENT  (1882 - 1971)

Monte Darwin (2,438 m - 7,999ft)

Tierra del fuego - Chile 

The mountain 

Monte Darwin (2,438 m - 7,999ft) is a peak in Tierra del Fuego (Magallanes and Chilean Antarctic area) forming part of the Cordillera Darwin, the southernmost range of the Andes, just to the north of the Beagle Channel. It is formed of crystalline schists and has massive glaciers down its steep southern slopes. Monte Darwin was for a long time considered as the highest peak in Tierra del Fuego, but that distinction corresponds to a mountain unofficially named Monte Shipton, which is about 2,580 m (8,460 ft) high and is located at 54°39′33″S 69°35′54″W.   Monte Shipton was first climbed in 1962 by Eric Shipton, E. Garcia, F. Vivanco and C. Marangunic. Monte Darwin was first climbed in  1970 by M. Andrews, N. Banks, M. Taylor, P. Radcliffe and P. James,  N. Bennett and R. Heffernan. Both peaks are best climbed in late December, January, February and March. 

Mount Darwin was given its name during the voyage of the Beagle by HMS Beagle's captain Robert FitzRoy to celebrate Charles Darwin's 25th birthday on 12 February 1834. A year earlier FitzRoy had named an expanse of water to the southwest of the mountain the Darwin Sound to commemorate Darwin's quick wit and courage in saving them from being marooned when waves from a mass of ice splitting off a glacier threatened their boats.

The mountain is part of Alberto de Agostini National Park.

Sources: 

- Victory Adventures expeditions

The painter

Rockwell Kent, artist, author, and political activist, had a long  and varied career. During his lifetime, he worked as an architectural draftsman, illustrator, printmaker, painter, lobsterman, ship's carpenter, and dairy farmer. Born in Tarrytown Heights, New York, he lived in Maine, Newfoundland, Alaska, Greenland, and the Adirondacks and explored the waters around Tierra del Fuego in a small boat. Kent's paintings, lithographs, and woodcuts often portrayed the bleak and rugged aspects of nature; a reflection of his life in harsh climates.His experience as a carpenter and builder and his familiarity with tools served him well when he took up the graphic process. His blocks were marvels of beautiful cutting, every line deliberate and under perfect control. The tones and lines in his lithography were solidly built up, subtle, and full of color. He usually made preliminary studies- old-mater style- for composition or detail before starting on a print. Nothing was vague or accidental about his work; his expression was clear and deliberate. Neither misty tonalities nor suggestiveness were to his taste. He was a highly objectified art - clean, athletic, sometimes almost austere and cold. He either recorded adventures concretely, or dealt in ideas. His studio was a model of the efficient workshop: neat, orderly, with everything in its place. His handwriting, the fruit of his architectural training, was beautiful and precise.
When Kent died of a heart attack in 1971, The New York Times described him as "... a thoughtful, troublesome, profoundly independent, odd and kind man who made an imperishable contribution to the art of bookmaking in the United States."  Richer, more accurate accounts of the scope of the artist's influential career as a painter and writer have since superseded this cursory summing-up of an American life. Retrospectives of the artist's paintings and drawings have been mounted, most recently by The Rooms in St. John's, Newfoundland, where the exhibition Pointed North: Rockwell Kent in Newfoundland and Labrador was curated by Caroline Stone in the summer of 2014. Other recent exhibitions include the Richard F. Brush Art Gallery and Owen D. Young Library at St. Lawrence University (Canton, New York) in the autumn of 2012; the Farnsworth Art Museum (Rockland, Maine) during the spring through autumn of 2012; the Bennington Museum in Vermont during the summer of 2012; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the spring through summer of 2012. An exhibition marking the centennial of Kent's time in Winona, Minnesota, took place there in 2013. Among the many notes of increasing awareness of Kent's contributions to American culture is the reproduction of one of Kent's pen-and-ink drawings from Moby Dick on a U.S. postage stamp, part of the 2001 commemorative panel celebrating such American illustrators as Maxfield Parrish, Frederic Remington, and Norman Rockwell.
Noted American and Canadian writers in recent years have found much gold to mine in Kent's improbable personal and public life. The year he spent in Newfoundland, for example, is fictionally (and very loosely) recalled by Canadian writer Michael Winter in The Big Why, his 2004 Winterset Award-winning novel. And certain qualities of the protagonist of Russell Banks's 2008 novel The Reserve are inspired by aspects of Kent's complex personality. Kent's work also figures in Steve Martin's 2010 novel An Object of Beauty and is the subject of a chapter in Douglas Brinkley's 2011 history The Quiet World: Saving Alaska's Wilderness Kingdom: 1879–1960.
The Archives of American Art is the repository for Kent's voluminous correspondence.

Source: 

- Short Biography byPlattsburgh State Art Museum 

THE GROSSGLOCKNER BY NIKOLAI ASTUDIN

NIKOLAI ASTUDIN (1847-1925)   

Grossglockner or Glokner (3,798 m - 12,460ft)

Austria 

In Alpine landscape with the the Grossglockner,  1879, oil on canvas 

The mountain  

The Grossglockner (or just Glockner) (3,798 m - 12,460 ft) is above the Adriatic, the highest mountain of Austria and the highest mountain in the Alps east of the Brenner Pass. It is part of the larger Glockner Group of the Hohe Tauern range, situated along the main ridge of the Central Eastern Alps and the Alpine divide. The Pasterze, Austria's most extended glacier, lies on the Grossglockner's eastern slope. The characteristically pyramid-shaped peak actually consists of two pinnacles, the Grossglockner and the Kleinglockner (3,770 m -12,370 ft), from German: klein, "small"), separated by a saddle-like formation known as the Glocknerscharte.

The history of the climbs started with French-born natural scientist Belsazar Hacquet, from 1773 professor of anatomy at the Academy of Ljubljana. He travelled the Eastern Alps from 1779 to 1781 and published an itinerary in 1783, describing the Glokner mountain and stating that it had not been climbed yet. He estimated the mountain's height with converted (3,793 m -12,444 ft) and left an engraving illustrating Grossglockner and Pasterze, the first known depiction of the mountain.

Inspired by Hacquet's book and the first ascent of the Mont Blanc in 1786, the Gurk prince-bishop Count Franz Xaver of Salm (1749–1822) together with his vicar general Sigismund Ernst Hohenwart  (1745–1825) and Baron Franz Xaver von Wulfen (1728–1805) started efforts for a Grossglockner expedition. They engaged two peasants from Heiligenblut as mountain guides to do the first explorations for an ascent through the Leitertal valley, which is the side of Grossglockner with the least ice (people feared glaciers in these times). These valiant men, called "Glockners" in the records, did more than they were ordered to do - and probably reached the Kleinglockner summit on 23 July 1799.

One month later the bishop's expedition started: a mountain hut (the first Salm Hut) had been built and the path in the Leitertal valley was prepared so that the bishop could use a horse to reach it. 30 people, among them Salm, Hohenwart and Wulfen, were part of the expedition. They suffered with bad weather and a first effort failed, but on 25 August 1799 Hohenwart and at least four other people, including the two "Glockners", reached - again - the Kleinglockner, where they installed one of the first summit crosses (one of the main goals of the church expedition). Hohenwart's reports did not tell clearly that they had not touched the highest point but Bishop Salm (who had reached the Adlersruhe rock at 3,454 m (11,332 ft)) was informed. Dissatisfied, he invited another, even bigger expedition the next year.

On 28 July 1800, 62 people, among them the pedagogue Franz Michael Vierthaler and the botanist David Heinrich Hoppe, started again into the Leitertal valley. Four peasants and carpenters (the "Glockners" and two others who are not known) did a track in the snow, had installed fixed ropes at some steeper sections up to the end of the Glocknerleitl, and even built a second refuge, called Hohenwarte Hut. The vanguard reached the Kleinglockner peak, however, according to the expedition records by the Dellach priest Franz Joseph Horasch (Orasch), only the four guides and Mathias Hautzendorfer, the local priest of the Rangersdorf parish, were able to cross the Obere Glocknerscharte and climb the Grossglockner summit. Hautzendorfer had to be persuaded to venture the step and administered the last rites in advance.

The two "Glockners" are usually identified as the brothers Joseph (Sepp) and Martin Klotz, however, this surname is not listed in the Heiligenblut parish register. A local peasant named Sepp Hoysen is documented as a member of the second Grossglockner expedition in 1802, and the surveyor Ulrich Schiegg mentioned one Martin Reicher as "Glockner" guide. The peasants and several other members of the expedition (among them Schiegg and his young apprentice Valentin Stanič, who climbed Mt. Watzmann for the first time some weeks later) did the ascent again the next day and finally installed the summit cross and a barometer on the Grossglockner summit.

Bishop Salm undertook two more ascents in 1802 (with Hohenwart reaching the summit) and in 1806, however, he himself never climbed beyond the Adlersruhe rock. The climbing of the Grossglockner was also described by the botanist Josef August Schultes, who explored the massif together with Count Apponyi in 1802. No further ascents were made during the Napoleonic Wars, the huts decayed and were plundered by locals. In the following Vormärz era, however, the mountain became a popular venue for Alpinists like Hermann and Adolf Schlagintweit, who all followed the route of the first ascent.

By the mid 19th century, the developing Alpine tourism began to alter the traditional agriculture economy in the Heiligenblut area. Therefore, the people of Kals tried to lay out a straight ascent from the western side, which however was not reached until Julius von Payer explored the ridge between Glöcknerleitl and Ködnitzkees in 1863. Johann Stüdl had a via ferrata erected along the southwestern ridge the next year and the Stüdlhütte erected at its foot in 1868. Already in 1869, most expeditions to the summit started in Kals. The first winter ascent of the Grossglockner was made on January 2, 1875 by William Adolf Baillie Grohman, a member of the Alpine Club. In 1876 Count Pallavicini and his guide Hans Tribusser undertook the first expedition up the steep glaciated Northeast Face, chopping 2,500 steps into the Pallavicinirinne in an ice climbing master stroke not repeated for 23 years.

In 1879, Count Pallavicini dedicated a new iron summit cross on the occasion of the silver wedding of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria and Empress Elisabeth; both had visited Heiligenblut and walked to the present-day Franz-Josefs-Höhe viewpoint in 1865. The cross was installed on 2 October 1880. Pallavicini also had the Archduke John Hut erected at the former Adlersruhe resting place of Bishop Salm, today the highest situated mountain hut in Austria. The Austrian Alpine Club built the new Salmhütte and the Glocknerhaus along the alpine route from Heiligenblut.

A first ascent by skiing was made in 1909 and the circumnavigation of the massif soon became a popular ski mountaineering tour. The Grossglockner became Austria's highest mountain, when the South Tyrolean Ortler region had to be ceded to the Kingdom of Italy according to the 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain, which promoted its reputation as a tourist attraction.

The painter 

Nikolai Lvovoch Astudin ( Николай Львович Астудин)  was a Russian landscape painter.

Astudin was the son of an officer and completed his school education in Saint Petersburg. He then became a student of the landscape painter Armand-Théophile Cassagne (1823-1907) in Paris. Study trips lead him to Finland, to the Alpine countries and to Italy. As early as 1876 and 1877 Astudin had exhibitions in Berlin,  and in 1885 in Zurich.  Among his Bonner motifs are the Rhine Bridge (1898) and the Godesburg. In 1912, he moved to Oberlahnstein, where he lived until his death. In this late phase, he mainly painted the Rhine motifs and repeatedly painted Lahneck Castle and The Lorelei (above).  Astudin was widely known for his Rhine paintings and the numerous reproductions of his Rhine views. His work is an expression of the Rhine and Eifelromantik of the early 20th century.
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2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

CERRO TORRE (3) PAINTED BY JAMES HART DYKE

 

JAMES HART DYKE (bn.1966)

Cerro Torre (3,128 m - 10,262 ft)

Argentina, Chile border

In Cerro Torre, 2018, oil on canvas, Courtesy John Mitchell Gallery London

The mountain
Cerro Torre (3,128 m - 10,262 ft) is one of the mountains of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field in South America. It is located in the border between Argentina and Chile, west of Cerro Chalten /Fitz Roy. The peak is the highest in a four mountain chain: the other peaks are Torre Egger (2,685 m), Punta Herron, and Cerro Standhardt. The top of the mountain often has a mushroom of rime ice, formed by the constant strong winds, increasing the difficulty of reaching the actual summit.
Cesare Maestri claimed in 1959 that he and Toni Egger had reached the summit and that Egger had been swept to his death by an avalanche while they were descending. Maestri declared that Egger had the camera with the pictures of the summit, but this camera was never found. Inconsistencies in Maestri's account, and the lack of bolts, pitons or fixed ropes on the route, have led most mountaineers to doubt Maestri's claim.
More about the mountain =>

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

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2020 - Wandering Vertexes
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

CERRO TORRE PAINTED BY JAMES HART DYKE

 

JAMES HART DYKE (bn.1966)
Cerro Torre (3,128 m - 10,262 ft)
Argentina, Chile border

In  Cerro Torre, 2018, oil on canvas, Courtesy Gallery John Mitchell, London

The mountain
 Cerro Torre (3,128 m - 10,262 ft) is one of the mountains of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field in South America. It is located in the border between Argentina and Chile, west of Cerro Chalten /Fitz Roy. The peak is the highest in a four mountain chain: the other peaks are Torre Egger (2,685 m), Punta Herron, and Cerro Standhardt. The top of the mountain often has a mushroom of rime ice, formed by the constant strong winds, increasing the difficulty of reaching the actual summit.
Cesare Maestri claimed in 1959 that he and Toni Egger had reached the summit and that Egger had been swept to his death by an avalanche while they were descending. Maestri declared that Egger had the camera with the pictures of the summit, but this camera was never found. Inconsistencies in Maestri's account, and the lack of bolts, pitons or fixed ropes on the route, have led most mountaineers to doubt Maestri's claim.
In 2005, Ermanno Salvaterra, Rolando Garibotti and Alessandro Beltrami, after many attempts by world-class alpinists, put up a confirmed route on the face that Maestri claimed to have climbed. They did not find any evidence of previous climbing on the route described by Maestri and found the route significantly different from Maestri's description. In 2015 Rolando Garibotti published evidence that the information provided by Maestri do not agree with respect to the alleged summit ascent. Instead he and Egger were on the western flank of Perfil de Indio.
Maestri went back to Cerro Torre in 1970 with Ezio Alimonta, Daniele Angeli, Claudio Baldessarri, Carlo Claus and Pietro Vidi, trying a new route on the southeast face. With the aid of a gas-powered compressor drill, Maestri equipped 350 m of rock with bolts and got to the end of the rocky part of the mountain, just below the ice mushroom. Maestri claimed that "the mushroom is not part of the mountain" and did not continue to the summit. The compressor was left, tied to the last bolts, 100 m below the top. Maestri was heavily criticised for the "unfair" methods he used to climb the mountain.
The route Maestri followed is now known as the Compressor route and was climbed to the summit in 1979 by Jim Bridwell and Steve Brewer. Most parties consider the ascent complete only if they summit the often-difficult ice-rime mushroom.
The first undisputed ascent was made in 1974 by the "Ragni di Lecco" climbers Daniele Chiappa, Mario Conti, Casimiro Ferrari, and Pino Negri.

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

 ___________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

GROSSGLOCKNER BY HEINRICH. C. BERANN

HEINRICH C. BERANN  (1915-1999) 

Grossglockner or Glokner (3,798 m - 12,460ft)

Austria 

 In  Grossglockner poster, 1932

The mountain  

The Grossglockner (or just Glockner) (3,798 m - 12,460 ft) is above the Adriatic, the highest mountain of Austria and the highest mountain in the Alps east of the Brenner Pass. It is part of the larger Glockner Group of the Hohe Tauern range, situated along the main ridge of the Central Eastern Alps and the Alpine divide. The Pasterze, Austria's most extended glacier, lies on the Grossglockner's eastern slope. The characteristically pyramid-shaped peak actually consists of two pinnacles, the Grossglockner and the Kleinglockner (3,770 m -12,370 ft), from German: klein, "small"), separated by a saddle-like formation known as the Glocknerscharte.

The history of the climbs started with French-born natural scientist Belsazar Hacquet, from 1773 professor of anatomy at the Academy of Ljubljana. He travelled the Eastern Alps from 1779 to 1781 and published an itinerary in 1783, describing the Glokner mountain and stating that it had not been climbed yet. He estimated the mountain's height with converted (3,793 m -12,444 ft) and left an engraving illustrating Grossglockner and Pasterze, the first known depiction of the mountain.

Inspired by Hacquet's book and the first ascent of the Mont Blanc in 1786, the Gurk prince-bishop Count Franz Xaver of Salm (1749–1822) together with his vicar general Sigismund Ernst Hohenwart  (1745–1825) and Baron Franz Xaver von Wulfen (1728–1805) started efforts for a Grossglockner expedition. They engaged two peasants from Heiligenblut as mountain guides to do the first explorations for an ascent through the Leitertal valley, which is the side of Grossglockner with the least ice (people feared glaciers in these times). These valiant men, called "Glockners" in the records, did more than they were ordered to do - and probably reached the Kleinglockner summit on 23 July 1799.

One month later the bishop's expedition started: a mountain hut (the first Salm Hut) had been built and the path in the Leitertal valley was prepared so that the bishop could use a horse to reach it. 30 people, among them Salm, Hohenwart and Wulfen, were part of the expedition. They suffered with bad weather and a first effort failed, but on 25 August 1799 Hohenwart and at least four other people, including the two "Glockners", reached - again - the Kleinglockner, where they installed one of the first summit crosses (one of the main goals of the church expedition). Hohenwart's reports did not tell clearly that they had not touched the highest point but Bishop Salm (who had reached the Adlersruhe rock at 3,454 m (11,332 ft)) was informed. Dissatisfied, he invited another, even bigger expedition the next year.

On 28 July 1800, 62 people, among them the pedagogue Franz Michael Vierthaler and the botanist David Heinrich Hoppe, started again into the Leitertal valley. Four peasants and carpenters (the "Glockners" and two others who are not known) did a track in the snow, had installed fixed ropes at some steeper sections up to the end of the Glocknerleitl, and even built a second refuge, called Hohenwarte Hut. The vanguard reached the Kleinglockner peak, however, according to the expedition records by the Dellach priest Franz Joseph Horasch (Orasch), only the four guides and Mathias Hautzendorfer, the local priest of the Rangersdorf parish, were able to cross the Obere Glocknerscharte and climb the Grossglockner summit. Hautzendorfer had to be persuaded to venture the step and administered the last rites in advance.

The two "Glockners" are usually identified as the brothers Joseph (Sepp) and Martin Klotz, however, this surname is not listed in the Heiligenblut parish register. A local peasant named Sepp Hoysen is documented as a member of the second Grossglockner expedition in 1802, and the surveyor Ulrich Schiegg mentioned one Martin Reicher as "Glockner" guide. The peasants and several other members of the expedition (among them Schiegg and his young apprentice Valentin Stanič, who climbed Mt. Watzmann for the first time some weeks later) did the ascent again the next day and finally installed the summit cross and a barometer on the Grossglockner summit.

Bishop Salm undertook two more ascents in 1802 (with Hohenwart reaching the summit) and in 1806, however, he himself never climbed beyond the Adlersruhe rock. The climbing of the Grossglockner was also described by the botanist Josef August Schultes, who explored the massif together with Count Apponyi in 1802. No further ascents were made during the Napoleonic Wars, the huts decayed and were plundered by locals. In the following Vormärz era, however, the mountain became a popular venue for Alpinists like Hermann and Adolf Schlagintweit, who all followed the route of the first ascent.

By the mid 19th century, the developing Alpine tourism began to alter the traditional agriculture economy in the Heiligenblut area. Therefore, the people of Kals tried to lay out a straight ascent from the western side, which however was not reached until Julius von Payer explored the ridge between Glöcknerleitl and Ködnitzkees in 1863. Johann Stüdl had a via ferrata erected along the southwestern ridge the next year and the Stüdlhütte erected at its foot in 1868. Already in 1869, most expeditions to the summit started in Kals. The first winter ascent of the Grossglockner was made on January 2, 1875 by William Adolf Baillie Grohman, a member of the Alpine Club. In 1876 Count Pallavicini and his guide Hans Tribusser undertook the first expedition up the steep glaciated Northeast Face, chopping 2,500 steps into the Pallavicinirinne in an ice climbing master stroke not repeated for 23 years.

In 1879, Count Pallavicini dedicated a new iron summit cross on the occasion of the silver wedding of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria and Empress Elisabeth; both had visited Heiligenblut and walked to the present-day Franz-Josefs-Höhe viewpoint in 1865. The cross was installed on 2 October 1880. Pallavicini also had the Archduke John Hut erected at the former Adlersruhe resting place of Bishop Salm, today the highest situated mountain hut in Austria. The Austrian Alpine Club built the new Salmhütte and the Glocknerhaus along the alpine route from Heiligenblut.

A first ascent by skiing was made in 1909 and the circumnavigation of the massif soon became a popular ski mountaineering tour. The Grossglockner became Austria's highest mountain, when the South Tyrolean Ortler region had to be ceded to the Kingdom of Italy according to the 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain, which promoted its reputation as a tourist attraction.

The artist

Heinrich C. Berann, (1915–1999) the father of the modern panorama map, was born into a family of painters and sculptors in Innsbruck, Austria. He taught himself by trial and error. In the years 1930-1933 he attended the arts and design school "Bundeslehranstalt für Malerei" in Innsbruck.

Winning of first prize at a competition for a panorama map created great enthusiasm in him. Using his artistic heritage and new self-discovered techniques he invented a new way of painting landscapes for tourist purposes. The further development of both these panorama maps and his artistic style was influenced by lasting impressions he received during his military service in German Army in Norway and Northern Finland in 1942.

In 1962 he painted Mount Everest for the National Geographic Society, one of his most famous panoramic maps. He worked with Marie Tharp and Bruce C. Heezen to produce maps of the entire ocean floor in 1977.

He later created four panoramas for the United States National Park Service: Yellowstone National Park, North Cascades National Park, Yosemite National Park and finally Mt. McKinley National Park (now Denali). He was very sick when he painted Denali (above) - but he finished it in the age of 81.

In 2000, Tom Patterson of the National Park Service explored ways of digitally creating panoramas like Berann did for the Park Service.