THE JUNGFRAU BY EDGARD BOUILLETTE

EDGARD BOUILLETTE (1872-1960)

The Jungfrau (4,158 m-13,642 ft)

Switzerland

The mountain 

The Jungfrau (4,158 m-13,642 ft) ("The virgin" in german)  is one of the main summits of the Bernese Alps, located between the northern canton of Bern and the southern canton of Valais, halfway between Interlaken and Fiesch. Together with the Eiger and Mönch, the Jungfrau forms a massive wall overlooking the Bernese Oberland and the Swiss Plateau, one of the most distinctive sights of the Swiss Alps. It is one of the most represented by artists summits with the Matterhorn and the Mont Blanc.
Full  Wandering Vertexes entry =>

The artist 
Alphonse Henri Edgard Bouillette is a French painter best known for his mountain painting.
Born in Paris, he spent  his childhood there. Brilliant subject, he studied law and also passed a doctorate of science and a doctorate of letters. He began a legal career as a trainee lawyer at the Paris Court d'Appel but will quickly abandon it for an artistic career that will lead parallel to an intense activity of mountaineer.
He stayed for a long time in Chamonix, where he had a chalet built, from where he often went on errands with the great guide Joseph Ravanel "Le Rouge". It also frequents the massifs of Oisans and Pyrenees. He is mobilized for the Great War and fights in the trenches of the Yser.
After giving up his early career as a lawyer, he trained as a painter with Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1836-1911), Jean-André Rixens (1846-1924) and Tony Robert-Fleury (1837-1911). He was admitted to the Society of Mountain Painters in 1904, became general secretary in 1938, vice-president in 1949 and president from 1955 to 1962. He is also a member of the Independents, the French Artists and the Salon d'hiver.
He becomes one of the first members of the French Alpine Club and is vice-president of the Chamonix section. He leads many collective races in the mountains.
He died in Chamonix at the age of 89.
Edgard Bouillette has dedicated his artistic career to the representation of the mountain, especially the peaks of the Chamonix valley (Mont Blanc, Les Drus, the Bossons glacier, etc.)
He is well known for his etchings but also made oil paintings and watercolors.
Some of his works are visible in the Alpine Museum of Chamonix, the mountain museum of Les Houches and the Museum of Annecy (France)

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

GRINDELWALD VALLEY PANORAMA BY CASPAR WOLF

CASPAR WOLF (1735-1783) 

The Eiger (3,970 m - 13, 020ft)

The Mettenberg (3,104m -10,184ft)

The Wetterhorn (3,692m - 12, 133ft) 

Grindelwald Valley (1,034 m (3,392 ft) 

Switzerland

 In Panorama of the Grindelwald valley with  the Eiger, the Mettenberg, the Wetterhorn, 

oil on canvas, Private collection 

The mountains 

The Eiger (3,970 m - 13,020 ft)  is a mountain of the Bernese Alps, overlooking Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen in the Bernese Oberland of Switzerland, just north of the main watershed and border with Valais. It is the easternmost peak of a ridge crest that extends across the Mönch to the Jungfrau (4,158 m -13,642 ft), constituting one of the most emblematic sights of the Swiss Alps.
The Mettenberg  (3,104m -10,184ft) also spelled Mättenberg, is a mountain of the Bernese Alps, overlooking Grindelwald in the Bernese Oberland. It lies north of the Schreckhorn.

The Wetterhorn (3,692m - 12, 133ft)  is a mountain in the Swiss Alps towering above the village of Grindelwald. Formerly known as Hasle Jungfrau, it is one of three summits of a mountain named Wetterhorn sensu lato, or the "Wetterhцrner", the highest summit of which is the Mittelhorn (3,704 m) and the most distant the Rosenhorn (3,689 m). The Mittelhorn and Rosenhorn are mostly hidden from view from Grindelwald. The Grosse Scheidegg Pass crosses the col to the north, between the Wetterhorn and the Schwarzhorn.

Grindelwald (1,034 m 3,392 ft) designates a valley, a village and a municipality in the Interlaken-Oberhasli administrative district in the canton of Berne in Switzerland. In addition to the village of Grindelwald, the municipality also includes the settlements of Alpiglen, Burglauenen, Grund, Itramen, Mühlebach, Schwendi, Tschingelberg and Wargistal.

The Painter 

Caspar Wolf was a Swiss painter, known mostly for his dramatic paintings of Alps. He was strongly influenced by Albrecht von Hallers poem on the Alps, and the Sturm und Drang movement. After 1773 Wolf mostly painted glaciers, caves, waterfalls and gorges.

Wolf was trained in Konstanz, between 1753 and 1759 he worked in Augsburg, Munich, Passau as a decoration painter. Not being able to sell his work he went disappointed back to his home town. For Horben Castle he painted by hand the wallpaper on the first floor. In 1768 Wolf lived in Basel. From 1769 till 1771 he stayed in Paris and worked with Philip James de Loutherbourg. In 1774 he moved to Bern. Wolf made a deal with the local publisher Abraham Wagner who had a geological interest, to deliver 200 paintings. He travelled with Wagner or a minister Jakob Samuel Wyttenbach in Berner Oberland and Wallis. From 1780-1781 he was working in Spa, Cologne, Aix-la-Chapelle and Düsseldorf. He died in poor circumstances in a hospital.

In 1779 his prints were exhibited in Bern but the book failed to sell. Wagner received help from a Swiss army officer in Dutch service and in 1785 thirty aquatints were published in Amsterdam. Till 1948 ninety of these aquatints were exhibited in Keukenhof Castle, but sold. Today these works can be seen in the Kunsthaus in Aarau. His son Theodor Wolf (1770–1818) was a still life painter.

THE JUNFRAU BY JOHN SINGER SARGENT

 

JOHN SINGER SARGENT  (1856-1925)

The Jungfrau (4,158m -13, 642ft)

Switzerland

 

In Jungfrau from "Splendid Mountain Watercolours",  Sketchbook,  The MET museum

The mountain
The Jungfrau (4,158 m-13,642 ft) ("The virgin" in german) is one of the main summits of the Bernese Alps, located between the northern canton of Bern and the southern canton of Valais, halfway between Interlaken and Fiesch. Together with the Eiger and Mönch, the Jungfrau forms a massive wall overlooking the Bernese Oberland and the Swiss Plateau, one of the most distinctive sights of the Swiss Alps. It is one of the most represented by artists summits with the Matterhorn and the Mont Blanc.
Politically, the Jungfrau is split between the municipalities of Lauterbrunnen (Bern) and Fieschertal (Valais). It is the third-highest mountain of the Bernese Alps after the nearby Finsteraarhorn and Aletschhorn, respectively 12 and 8 km away. But from Lake Thun, and the greater part of the canton of Bern, it is the most conspicuous and the nearest of the Bernese Oberland peaks; with a height difference of 3,600 m between the summit and the town of Interlaken. This, and the extreme steepness of the north face, secured for it an early reputation for inaccessibility.
The landscapes around the Jungfrau are extremely contrasted. Instead of the vertiginous precipices of the north-west, the south-east side emerges from the upper snows of the Aletsch Glacier at around 3,500 metres. The 20 km long valley of Aletsch on the south-east is completely uninhabited and also surrounded by other similar glacier valleys. The whole area constitutes the largest glaciated area in the Alps as well as in Europe.
More about The Jungfrau 

The painter
John Singer Sargent was an American artist who created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Switzerland, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida.
He was trained in Paris prior to moving to London. Sargent enjoyed international acclaim as a portrait painter, but in later life he expressed ambivalence about the restrictions of formal portrait work, and devoted much of his energy to mural painting and working en plein air. He lived most of his life in Europe. Each destination offered pictorial stimulation and treasure. Even at his leisure, in escaping the pressures of the portrait studio, he painted with restless intensity, often painting from morning until night. His hundreds of watercolors of Venice are especially notable, many done from the perspective of a gondola. His colors were sometimes extremely vivid and as one reviewer noted, "Everything is given with the intensity of a dream."  

 In the Middle East and North Africa Sargent painted Bedouins, goatherds, and fisherman. In the last decade of his life, he produced many watercolors in Maine, Florida, and in the American West, of fauna, flora, and native peoples.
With his watercolors, Sargent was able to indulge his earliest artistic inclinations for nature, architecture, exotic peoples, and noble mountain landscapes. And it is in some of his late works where one senses Sargent painting most purely for himself. His watercolors were executed with a joyful fluidness. His first major solo exhibit of watercolor works was at the Carfax Gallery in London in 1905. In 1909, he exhibited eighty-six watercolors in New York City, eighty-three of which were bought by the Brooklyn Museum. Evan Charteris wrote in 1927: 'To live with Sargent's water-colours is to live with sunshine captured and held, with the luster of a bright and legible world, 'the refluent shade' and 'the Ambient ardours of the noon.'
Although not generally accorded the critical respect given Winslow Homer, perhaps America's greatest watercolorist, scholarship has revealed that Sargent was fluent in the entire range of opaque and transparent watercolor technique, including the methods used by Homer.
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2020 - Wandering Vertexes / Mountain paintings
by Francis Rousseau

 

THE JUNGRAU PAINTED BY KARL MILLNER

KARL MILLNER (1825-1895)

The Jungfrau  (4,158m- 13, 642ft)

Switzerland

In Die Junfrau, 1867, oil on canvas, private collection 

The mountain 

The Jungfrau (4,158 m- 13,642 ft) ("The virgin" in german) is one of the main summits of the Bernese Alps, located between the northern canton of Bern and the southern canton of Valais, halfway between Interlaken and Fiesch. Together with The Eiger and  the Mönch, the Jungfrau forms a massive wall overlooking the Bernese Oberland and the Swiss Plateau, one of the most distinctive sights of the Swiss Alps. It is one of the most represented by artists summits with the Matterhorn and the Mont Blanc.

- More about the Jungfrau

The painter  

Karl Millner was a German landscape painter. In 1850, Millner moved from Mindelheim (Allgäu) to Munich, Germany's cultural capital, in order to perfect his artistic abilities and to receive new stimuli. Influenced by Carl Rottmann (1797-1850) and Eduard Schleich (the older 1812-1874), Millner quickly made a name for himself as a good painter especially for alpine landscapes. From 1858 Millner also studied painting with Julius Lange. Characteristic of his style were the dramatic appearance of the high Alps. He painted with great meticulous mountain panoramas, which were characterized by fine details and skillfully used light and shadow contrasts. The connection to the art dealer Daniel Loffel in 1857 opened the possibility for Millner to work in a financially secure framework. It also created the prerequisite for letting many young artists of this time work in his studio.

THE EIGER SKETCHED BY JOHN SINGER SARGENT

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


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

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


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

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau