MONTE DARWIN PAINTED BY ROCKWELL KENT (1882-1971

 ROCKWELL KENT (1882-1971)

Monte Darwin (2,438m - 7,999ft) 

Chile (Tierra del Fuego)

In  Mountain Lake -Tierra del Fuego, oil on canvas, 1922-25, The Phillips Collection

About the painting
 For Duncan Phillips, Rockwell Kent's art embodied "the eager linear expression of his own abounding energy and gusto for physical adventure in wild and desolate regions," an appropriate description of the small oil panel entitled Mountain Lake. A record of Kent’s 1922 sailing adventure to the Tierra del Fuego region of South America, it is one of many small studies that may have been painted on site. Kent described the view from his boat, which was anchored in the bay of Bahía Blanca in the Admiralty Sound, noting the emerald green bay and beyond it steep cliffs, heavily wooded, leading to high mountains, still capped with snow.
In Mountain Lake Kent abandoned his earlier preference for rich impasto and surface texture in favor of a thin, sleek finish. The space, arbitrarily adjusted into abstract, flat patterns, reflects a stylistic kinship with both precisionism—an American movement that was widely influential in the early 1920s—and with the simplified forms of woodblock printing, a medium in which Kent worked over a long period of time.
Kent brought many paintings from this trip back to New York with him in 1923. Though they were well reviewed, the artist sensed a declining interest in realism, despite high degree of simplification, verging on abstraction, present in this image. Phillips, however, greatly appreciated Kent's work and purchased Mountain Lake as a representation of the artist's adventures in South America. Phillips first exhibited the painting in 1926, writing in the exhibition catalogue "Kent [did] not need abstract vision, for he moves us like mighty music with images drawn from his own romantic experience."

The mountain 
Monte Darwin  (2,438m - 7,999ft)  is a peak in Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego forming part of the Cordillera Darwin, the southernmost range of the Andes, just to the north of the Beagle Channel in Chile. 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.
Both peaks are best climbed in late December, January, February and March. Monte Shipton was first climbed in 1962 by Eric Shipton, E. Garcia, F. Vivanco and C. Marangunic.
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.

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.
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.

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

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 

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 

RINGROSE PEAK BY ROCKWELL KENT

ROCKWELL KENT  (1882 – 1971) 

Ringrose Peak  (3,292 m - 10,801 ft) 
Canada (Alberta- British Columbia)

In Canadian rockies, oil on canvas 

The mountain 

Ringrose Peak  (3,292 m - 10,801 ft)  is a mountain on the Alberta- British Columbia border, in Canada. It is located on the Continental Divide on the border of Banff and Yoho National Parks and is part of the Bow Range of the Banff-Lake Louise Core Area in the Canadian Rockies.

The peak was named in 1894 after A.E.L. Ringrose by Samuel Allen, because previously Allen had met Ringrose, while Allen was visiting the Rockies. Ringrose was visiting from London, England.

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.

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.

THE BERKSHIRES PAINTED BY ROCKWELL KENT

ROCKWELL KENT (1882-1971)

The Berkshires (866m - 2, 841ft) 

United States of America (Mass.) 

In Berkshire Hills, 1909. Oil on canvas, 38 ½ x 44 ½ in.

The Williams College Museum of Art

About this painting 
In 1909, Rockwell Kent resided in the Berkshires and traveled daily to Pittsfield, Massachusetts. On this journey he would have encountered the landscape presented in Berkshire Hills, likely a view looking north toward Mt. Greylock and Saddle Ball Mountain. Dramatic light effects and subtle gradations of color are incorporated into a composition in which the shapes of rocks in the foreground echo those of the hills and mountains beyond. A small figure, lying on the central rock in the foreground, appears both one with nature and dwarfed by it.
Compared with Kent’s other representations of the Berkshires, this painting is the most panoramic and characteristic of the artist’s fully developed style. Kent said that the Berkshires reminded him of “old Greece, of Mt. Olympus,” which he conveyed here through formal elements that produce a sense of monumentality and timelessness.

About the artist
Rockwell Kent spent much of his life in New York City, studying painting under influential artists including William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri before venturing in 1903 to New Hampshire to apprentice with Abbott Handerson Thayer. Kent’s personal stylistic formation was influenced by modernism, grounded in realism, and wedded to his mystical beliefs about the power of nature and man’s insignificance in face of it. In 1905 Kent moved to Monhegan Island in Maine, the first of a series of trips to remote locations that included Newfoundland, Alaska, Greenland, and Tierra del Fuego.  Kent attended Socialist meetings in Pittsfield, MA in 1909, and his politics became increasingly controversial after WWII. By the 1930s he was associated with the Communist Party. During the Cold War, he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and was denied a passport in 1957. He eventually gave eighty works of art to the Soviet Union.

About the mountains
The Berkshires (866m - 2, 841ft) are a highland geologic region located in the western parts of Massachusetts and Connecticut. The term "Berkshires" is normally used by locals in reference to the portion of the Vermont-based Green Mountains that extend south into western Massachusetts; the portion extending further south into northwestern Connecticut is locally referred to as either the Northwest Hills or Litchfield Hills.
Also referred to as the Berkshire Hills, Berkshire Mountains, and Berkshire Plateau, the region enjoys a vibrant tourism industry based on music, arts, and recreation. Geologically, the mountains are a range of the Appalachian Mountains.
The Berkshires were named among the 200 Last Great Places by The Nature Conservancy.

___________________________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau 

VERY LARGE ICEBERG PAINTED BY ROCKWELL KENT

ROCKWELL KENT (1882-1971)
Very Large Iceberg (180m-590ft) Greenland / Danemark
In "Grayday, Green land Iceberg", oil on canvas.

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.
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.

The Iceberg
An iceberg is a piece of freshwater ice more than 15 m long that has broken off a glacier or an ice shelf and is floating freely in open (salt) water.  Smaller chunks of floating glacially-derived ice are called "growlers" or "bergy bits".  Both are generally spawned from disintegrating icebergs.[ Iceberg size classes, as established by the International Ice Patrol, are summarized in Table 1. The 1912 loss of the RMS Titanic led to the formation of the International Ice Patrol in 1914. Much of an iceberg is below the surface, which led to the expression "tip of the iceberg" to illustrate a small part of a larger unseen issue. Icebergs are considered a serious maritime hazard.  Icebergs vary considerably in size and shape. Icebergs that calve from glaciers in Greenland, are often irregularly shaped while Antarctic ice shelves often produce large tabular (table top) icebergs. The largest iceberg currently floating in the ocean, named A-76, calved from the Ronne Ice Shelf into the Weddell Sea in Antarctica measuring 4320 km2.  The largest iceberg in recent history, named B-15, measured nearly 300 km x 40 km. The B-15 iceberg calved from the Ross Ice Shelf in January 2000.  The largest iceberg on record was an Antarctic tabular iceberg of over 31,000 square kilometres (12,000 sq mi) [335 by 97 kilometres (208 by 60 mi)] sighted 240 kilometres (150 mi) west of Scott Island, in the South Pacific Ocean, by the USS Glacier on November 12, 1956. This iceberg was larger than Belgium. Big icebergs are also often compared in size to the area of Manhattan The largest icebergs recorded have been calved, or broken off, from the Ross Ice Shelf of Antarctica. Icebergs may reach a height of more than 100 metres (300 ft) above the sea surface, and have mass ranging from about 100,000 tonnes up to more than 10 million tonnes. Icebergs or pieces of floating ice smaller than 5 meters above the sea surface are classified as "bergy bits"; smaller than 1 meter—"growlers". The largest known iceberg in the North Atlantic was 168 metres (551 ft) above sea level, reported by the USCG icebreaker Eastwind in 1958, making it the height of a 55-story building. These icebergs originate from the glaciers of western Greenland and may have interior temperatures of −15 to −20 °C (5 to −4 °F).

___________________________________________
2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

LA BASE DE NORTH GREENLAND PEINTE PAR ROCKWELL KENT

 

ROCKWELL KENT (1882-1971),
North Greenland (82m)
Gröenland 

In" Seal Hunter", North Greenland, 1933, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russie.

Le peintre
Rockwell Kent, artiste, auteur et activiste politique, a eu une carrière longue et variée. Au cours de sa vie, il a travaillé comme dessinateur en architecture, illustrateur, graveur, peintre, homardier, charpentier de navire et producteur laitier. Né à Tarrytown Heights, New York, il a vécu dans le Maine, à Terre-Neuve, en Alaska, au Groenland et dans les Adirondacks et a exploré les eaux autour de la Terre de Feu sur un petit bateau. Les peintures, lithographies et gravures sur bois de Kent représentent souvent les aspects sombres et accidentés de la nature, reflets de sa vie dans des climats rigoureux. Son expérience de menuisier et de constructeur ainsi que sa connaissance des outils lui ont bien servi lorsqu'il s'est lancé dans la démarche graphique. Ses blocs de montagne étaient des merveilles de belle coupe, chaque ligne étant délibérée et parfaitement contrôlée. Les tons et les lignes de ses lithographies étaient solidement construits, subtils et avec une richesse de coloris exceptionnelle. Il effectuait généralement des études préliminaires - à l'ancienne - pour la composition ou les détails avant de commencer la version définitive. Son expression était toujours claire et délibérée. Ni les tonalités brumeuses ni le côté suggestif ne lui convenaient. C'était un art très objectivé – presque athlétique, parfois presque austère et froid. Soit il peignait sur le motif, soit il élaborait des idées de tableaux à partir de notes. Son atelier était un modèle d'efficacité : soigné, ordonné,  chaque chose étant à sa place. Le contraire d e la bohême ! Son écriture, fruit de sa formation d'architecte, était belle et précise.
Parmi les nombreuses notes témoignant d'une prise de conscience croissante des contributions de Kent à la culture américaine, on trouve la reproduction de l'un de ses dessins à la plume et à l'encre qu'i lfit pour Moby Dick sur un timbre-poste américain, qui fait partie du panneau commémoratif de 2001 célébrant des illustrateurs américains tels que Maxfield Parrish, Frederic Remington et Norman Rockwell.

Le lieu
Nordth Greenland est une base scientifique et militaire de l'armée danoise située à 924 kilomètres du Pôle Nord, sur la Prinsesse Ingeborg Halvø (« péninsule de la Princesse Ingeborg »). Il s'agit de l'un des lieux habités les plus septentrionaux du monde. La base est habitée en permanence par cinq membres de l'armée danoise et peut accueillir jusqu'à vingt scientifiques en été. Le nom de « Nord » signifie la même chose en français qu'en danois. En hiver, la nuit dure du 15 novembre au 28 février.
En juin 1950, le National Weather Service américain a pour projet de fonder une station météorologique dans le Nord-Est du Groenland en complément des autres stations météorologiques construites dans le nord canadien. À cette époque, Thulé possédait déjà une station américano-danoise. La station est initialement construite par « Grønlands Televæsen » pour les Américains entre 1952 et 1956. Pour les Danois, il était nécessaire de construire une station météorologique à Nord. Sa construction a été financée par le gouvernement danois, et le transport des équipements a été effectué par les Américains depuis leur base aérienne de Thulé. Jusqu'à sa fermeture en 1972, elle servait de base civile conduite par l'organisation technique du Groenland.
Avec une nouvelle station météorologique construite et la base remise à neuf, Nord reprend à nouveau du service en août 1975 comme base militaire pendant une période d'essai1. La maintenance de la station est sous la responsabilité de GLK (Grønlandskommandoen), et menée en permanence par un personnel de cinq volontaires.

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

LE MONT JUNEAU PEINT PAR ROCKWELL KENT

ROCKWELL KENT (1882-1971)
Mont Juneau /Yadaa.at Kalé (1,090m)
Etats-Unis d'Amérique (Alaska)

In, Glacier Bear ,huile sur panneau

La montagne
Le mont Juneau /Yadaa.at Kalé est un massif de 1 090 m situé dans le sud-est de l'Alaska, à seulement 2,4 km à l'est du centre-ville de Juneau dans les Boundary Ranges. Le mont Juneau est ancré dans l’histoire minière. Initialement nommé Gold Mountain en 1881 par les mineurs, il a également été nommé Bald Mountain vers 1896. Le nom « Juneau Mountain » a été utilisé pour la première fois dans les registres miniers par Pierre « French Pete » Erussard lorsqu'il a localisé des passages miniers sur la montagne en 1888. En 1976, Chuck Keen d'Alaska Trams (qui deviendra plus tard Mount Juneau Enterprises) proposa qu'un tramway aérien soit construit jusqu'au sommet de la montagne. L'entreprise n'a jamais abouti bien que Goldbelt Inc. ait fini par construire le tramway du mont Roberts jusqu'au mont Roberts voisin.
Le sentier menant au sommet du mont Juneau est accessible via le sentier de la Persévérance à environ 1,6 km . Le sentier présente  un assortiment de vues alpines, bien qu'il traverse de nombreuses pentes raides et que la prudence soit de mise par temps humide ou enneigé.
En mars 1962, une avalanche a dévalé le versant sud du mont Juneau. Cela a commencé avec de fortes chutes de neige venant du nord-est. Une partie de la neige à environ 220 mètres s'est détachée, provoquant l'avalanche.
L'avalanche a causé des dégâts à 34 maisons. 7 ont été gravement endommagés, 9 ont été modérément endommagés et 18 ont subi des dommages mineurs.

Le peintre
Rockwell Kent, artiste, auteur et activiste politique, a eu une carrière longue et variée. Au cours de sa vie, il a travaillé comme dessinateur en architecture, illustrateur, graveur, peintre, homardier, charpentier de navire et producteur laitier. Né à Tarrytown Heights, New York, il a vécu dans le Maine, à Terre-Neuve, en Alaska, au Groenland et dans les Adirondacks et a exploré les eaux autour de la Terre de Feu sur un petit bateau. Les peintures, lithographies et gravures sur bois de Kent représentent souvent les aspects sombres et accidentés de la nature, reflets de sa vie dans des climats rigoureux. Son expérience de menuisier et de constructeur ainsi que sa connaissance des outils lui ont bien servi lorsqu'il s'est lancé dans la démarche graphique. Ses blocs de montagne étaient des merveilles de belle coupe, chaque ligne étant délibérée et parfaitement contrôlée. Les tons et les lignes de ses lithographies étaient solidement construits, subtils et avec une richesse de coloris exceptionnelle. Il effectuait généralement des études préliminaires - à l'ancienne - pour la composition ou les détails avant de commencer la version définitive. Son expression était toujours claire et délibérée. Ni les tonalités brumeuses ni le côté suggestif ne lui convenaient. C'était un art très objectivé – presque athlétique, parfois presque austère et froid. Soit il peignait sur le motif, soit il élaborait des idées de tableaux à partir de notes. Son atelier était un modèle d'efficacité : soigné, ordonné,  chaque chose étant à sa place. Le contraire d e la bohême ! Son écriture, fruit de sa formation d'architecte, était belle et précise.
Parmi les nombreuses notes témoignant d'une prise de conscience croissante des contributions de Kent à la culture américaine, on trouve la reproduction de l'un de ses dessins à la plume et à l'encre qu'i lfit pour Moby Dick sur un timbre-poste américain, qui fait partie du panneau commémoratif de 2001 célébrant des illustrateurs américains tels que Maxfield Parrish, Frederic Remington et Norman Rockwell.

______________________________________

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

MOUNT MARCY (2) PAINTED BY ROCKWELL KENT

 

ROCKWELL KENT (1882-1971)

Mount Marcy (1,629m - 5,343ft) 

United States of America 

In  Moonlight in the Adirondacks, 1960, oil on panel

The mountain
Mount Marcy (1,629m - 5,343ft) in Mohawk langage Tewawe’estha is the highest point in New York State, USA. It is located in the Town of Keene in Essex County. The mountain is in the heart of the Adirondack High Peaks Region of the High Peaks Wilderness Area. Its stature and expansive views make it a popular destination for hikers, who crowd its summit in the summer months.
Lake Tear of the Clouds, at the col between Mt. Marcy and Mt. Skylight, is often cited as the highest source of the Hudson River, via Feldspar Brook and the Opalescent River, even though the main stem of the Opalescent River has as its source a higher point two miles north of Lake of the Clouds, and that stem is a mile longer than Feldspar Brook.
The mountain is named after Gov. William L. Marcy, the 19th-century Governor of New York, who authorized the environmental survey that explored the area. Its first recorded ascent was on August 5, 1837, by a large party led by Ebenezer Emmons looking for the source of the East Fork of the Hudson River.[6] Today the summit may be reached by multiple trails; though long by any route, a round-trip may be made in a day.

The painter
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.
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.

_________________________________________
2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

MOUNT MARCY BY ROCKWELL KENT

ROCKWELL KENT (1882-1971)

Mount Marcy (1,629m - 5,343ft) 

United States of America 

In Adirondacks View, watercolor, 1928-30 

The mountain
Mount Marcy (1,629m - 5,343ft) in Mohawk langage Tewawe’estha is the highest point in New York State, USA. It is located in the Town of Keene in Essex County. The mountain is in the heart of the Adirondack High Peaks Region of the High Peaks Wilderness Area. Its stature and expansive views make it a popular destination for hikers, who crowd its summit in the summer months.
Lake Tear of the Clouds, at the col between Mt. Marcy and Mt. Skylight, is often cited as the highest source of the Hudson River, via Feldspar Brook and the Opalescent River, even though the main stem of the Opalescent River has as its source a higher point two miles north of Lake of the Clouds, and that stem is a mile longer than Feldspar Brook.
The mountain is named after Gov. William L. Marcy, the 19th-century Governor of New York, who authorized the environmental survey that explored the area. Its first recorded ascent was on August 5, 1837, by a large party led by Ebenezer Emmons looking for the source of the East Fork of the Hudson River.[6] Today the summit may be reached by multiple trails; though long by any route, a round-trip may be made in a day.

The painter
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.
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.

_________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

MONTE BOVE (2) BY ROCKWELL KENT

ROCKWELL KENT (1882-1971)

Monte Bove  (2,279 m - 7,477 ft) 

Chile (Tierra del Fuego) 

The mountain
Monte Bove (2,279 m - 7,477 ft) is a mountain in southern Chile, not to be confused with the the same named mountains in Italy or in Argentina. Monte Bove is belonging to the province of Tierra del Fuego , which is included in the southern sector of the Magallanes Region and the Chilean Antarctic, in the southwestern sector of the Big Island of Tierra del Fuego, in the peninsula between the admiralty of the Strait of Magellan and the Beagle Channel.It is part of the Fuegian Andes, southern section of the Andes mountain range , specifically in the western sector, called the Darwin mountain range , which borders the Beagle Channel in the north.
The granite hill is located at the eastern end of the Darwin mountain range , in a mountainous knot where other important peaks stand out : the French mountains, Italy, Roncagli, etc. A glacier that bears the same name comes down from its Northeast slope.
On clear days, the summit of Mount Bove, always covered by eternal snow, is visible from the city of Ushuaia. It is one of the highest peaks of the Fuegian archipelago? The summit of this mountain is located on the border between the Alberto de Agostini National Park and the Yendegaia National Park , thus being in all its slopes in protected areas.
Etymologically, this place name is an eponym that honors the Italian navy lieutenant Giacomo Bove, who in 1882, sailing on the ship «Cape Horn», led the scientific expedition to southern Patagonia. In 1963, a team managed to conquer its summit for the first time; It was directed by British mountaineer Eric Earle Shipton and seconded by John Earle, Claudio Cortés and Peter Bruchhausen.

About the artist
Rockwell Kent spent much of his life in New York City, studying painting under influential artists including William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri before venturing in 1903 to New Hampshire to apprentice with Abbott Handerson Thayer. Kent’s personal stylistic formation was influenced by modernism, grounded in realism, and wedded to his mystical beliefs about the power of nature and man’s insignificance in face of it. In 1905 Kent moved to Monhegan Island in Maine, the first of a series of trips to remote locations that included Newfoundland, Alaska, Greenland, and Tierra del Fuego. Kent attended Socialist meetings in Pittsfield, MA in 1909, and his politics became increasingly controversial after WWII. By the 1930s he was associated with the Communist Party. During the Cold War, he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and was denied a passport in 1957. He eventually gave eighty works of art to the Soviet Union.
_____________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

ALMIRANTAZGO FJORD PAINTED BY ROCKWELL KENT

ROCKWELL KENT (1882-1971),

Almirantazgo Fjord (no elevation data)

Chile ( Tierra del Fuego) 

 In  Admiralty Sound/ Tierra del Fuego, oil on canvas

The fjord
Almirantazgo Fjord (Fiordo Almirantazgo), also known as Almirantazgo Sound or Admiralty Sound, is a Chilean fjord located in the far south of the country at 54°19′S 69°30′W.

 The fjord cuts deeply into the west coast of the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, extending southeastwards from the Whiteside Channel, which separates Isla Grande from Dawson Island. On its south side several smaller fjords and bays make significant indentations into the north coastline of the Cordillera Darwin. One of these, Ainsworth Bay, is home to a colony of elephant seals.[

 Azopardo River empties into the head of the fjord.
The sound was discovered in 1827 by the British Captain Phillip Parker King and named after the British Admiralty.
Ainsworth Bay, fed by the meltwater of Marinelli Glacier is a notable inlet along the Almirantazgo Fjord. The Marinelli Glacier has been in a state of retreat since at least 1960, and the retreat continues to the present time of 2008.

About the artist
Rockwell Kent spent much of his life in New York City, studying painting under influential artists including William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri before venturing in 1903 to New Hampshire to apprentice with Abbott Handerson Thayer. Kent’s personal stylistic formation was influenced by modernism, grounded in realism, and wedded to his mystical beliefs about the power of nature and man’s insignificance in face of it. In 1905 Kent moved to Monhegan Island in Maine, the first of a series of trips to remote locations that included Newfoundland, Alaska, Greenland, and Tierra del Fuego. Kent attended Socialist meetings in Pittsfield, MA in 1909, and his politics became increasingly controversial after WWII. By the 1930s he was associated with the Communist Party. During the Cold War, he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and was denied a passport in 1957. He eventually gave eighty works of art to the Soviet Union.
_____________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT BOVE / DARWIN RANGE PAINTED BY ROCKWELL KENT

ROCKWELL KENT (1882-1971)

Mount Bove (2,300m - 7,646 ft)

Chile (Tierra del Fuego) 

In  Calm Tierra del Fuego,  oil on board, Private collection 

The mountain 
Mount Bove (2,300m - 7,646 ft) is a mountain in southern Chile located in the eastern part of the Darwin range (Darwin Cordillera or Western Fuego Cordillera). It is a mountain range located in Chile, on a peninsula west of the great island of Tierra del Fuego. Darwin Cordillera represents the southernmost mountainous cord of the Andean cordillera. Until 2011, Darwin Mountain Range was one of the last terrae incognitae on the planet.
The Darwin range was named in 1832 by its discoverer, Robert FitzRoy, the captain of the ship HMS Beagle, in honor of the naturalist Charles Darwin who stayed on board. It is a strip of land 60 kilometers wide and 170 kilometers long, mainly occupied by an ice field of more than 2,300 km2, which is about the same area as all the glaciers in the Alps. Its highest point is Mount Shipton, whose altitude is 2,469 m. It is surrounded by sea: along the Almirantazgo Canal - connected to the Strait of Magellan - to the south by the Beagle Channel, it ends at west through the Cockburn Canal and the Pacific Ocean. Only its eastern part is connected to the land, close to the border with Argentina. The nearest cities are Ushuaia, Argentina as well as Puerto Williams and Porvenir, Chile. However, it is impossible to travel to the mountains from this city by land because of particularly difficult terrain and border problems. Ships and sailboats are the most suitable for its access. The Darwin mountain range is part of the Alberto de Agostini National Park.

About the artist
Rockwell Kent spent much of his life in New York City, studying painting under influential artists including William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri before venturing in 1903 to New Hampshire to apprentice with Abbott Handerson Thayer. Kent’s personal stylistic formation was influenced by modernism, grounded in realism, and wedded to his mystical beliefs about the power of nature and man’s insignificance in face of it. In 1905 Kent moved to Monhegan Island in Maine, the first of a series of trips to remote locations that included Newfoundland, Alaska, Greenland, and Tierra del Fuego.  Kent attended Socialist meetings in Pittsfield, MA in 1909, and his politics became increasingly controversial after WWII. By the 1930s he was associated with the Communist Party. During the Cold War, he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and was denied a passport in 1957. He eventually gave eighty works of art to the Soviet Union.

___________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

BLACKHEAD, MONHEGAN PAINTED BY EDWARD HOPPER

EDWARD HOPPER (1882-1967)

Blackhead (50 m-150 ft) 

United States of America (Maine)

1. In Blackhead, Monhegan, 1916-19,oil on wood, Whitney Museum of American Art, 

The mountain 

Blackhead (50m-150 ft) are northside cliffs situated on Monhegan, Manana Island, that have drawn the interest of  many artists.  The beginnings of the art colony on Monhegan date to the mid-19th century; by 1890, it was firmly established. Two of the early artists in residence from the 1890s, William Henry Singer (1868–1943) and Martin Borgord (1869–1935), left Monhegan to study at the Académie Julian in Paris in 1901. Among many early members who found inspiration on the island were summer visitors from the New York School of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, such as Robert Henri, Frederick Waugh, George Bellows, Edward Hopper and Rockwell Kent. The Monhegan Museum celebrated more the continuing draw of the island for artists in a 2014 exhibit entitled, “The Famous and the Forgotten: Revisiting Monhegan’s Celebrated 1914 Art Exhibition.

Monhegan is a plantation in Lincoln County, Maine, United States, about 12 nautical miles (22 km) off the mainland. The population was 75 at the 2000 census. The plantation comprises its namesake island and the uninhabited neighboring island of Manana. The island is accessible by scheduled boat service from Boothbay Harbor, New Harbor and Port Clyde. It was designated a National Natural Landmark for its coastal and island flora in 1966.[

The name Monhegan derives from Monchiggon, Algonquian for "out-to-sea island." European explorers Martin Pring visited in 1603, Samuel de Champlain in 1604, George Weymouth in 1605 and Captain John Smith in 1614. The island got its start as a British fishing camp prior to settlement of the Plymouth Colony. Cod was harvested from the rich fishing grounds of the Gulf of Maine, then dried on fish flakes before shipment to Europe. A trading post was built to conduct business with the Indians, particularly in the lucrative fur trade.  It was Monhegan traders who taught English to Samoset, the sagamore who in 1621 startled the Pilgrims by boldly walking into their new village at Plymouth and saying: "Welcome, Englishmen." 

The painter
Edward Hopper was a American realist painter and printmaker.

Conservative in politics and social matters (Hopper asserted for example that "artists' lives should be written by people very close to them"), he accepted things as they were and displayed a lack of idealism. Cultured and sophisticated, he was well-read, and many of his paintings show figures reading. He was generally good company and unperturbed by silences, though sometimes taciturn, grumpy, or detached. He was always serious about his art and the art of others, and when asked would return frank opinions.

Hopper's most systematic declaration of his philosophy as an artist was given in a handwritten note, entitled "Statement", submitted in 1953 to the journal, Reality:

"Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination. One of the weaknesses of much abstract painting is the attempt to substitute the inventions of the human intellect for a private imaginative conception.

The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm and does not concern itself alone with stimulating arrangements of color, form and design.

The term life used in art is something not to be held in contempt, for it implies all of existence and the province of art is to react to it and not to shun it.

Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great."
- More about Edward Hopper

BLACKHEAD PAINTED BY EDWARD HOPPER

 

EDWARD HOPPER (1882-1967)

Blackhead (50 m-150 ft) 

United States of America (Maine)

1. In Blackhead, Monhegan, 1916-19,oil on canvas,  Whitney Museum of American Art, 

The mountain 

Blackhead (50m-150 ft) are northside cliffs situated on Monhegan, Manana Island, that have drawn the interest of  many artists.  The beginnings of the art colony on Monhegan date to the mid-19th century; by 1890, it was firmly established. Two of the early artists in residence from the 1890s, William Henry Singer (1868–1943) and Martin Borgord (1869–1935), left Monhegan to study at the Académie Julian in Paris in 1901. Among many early members who found inspiration on the island were summer visitors from the New York School of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, such as Robert Henri, Frederick Waugh, George Bellows, Edward Hopper and Rockwell Kent. The Monhegan Museum celebrated more the continuing draw of the island for artists in a 2014 exhibit entitled, “The Famous and the Forgotten: Revisiting Monhegan’s Celebrated 1914 Art Exhibition.

Monhegan is a plantation in Lincoln County, Maine, United States, about 12 nautical miles (22 km) off the mainland. The population was 75 at the 2000 census. The plantation comprises its namesake island and the uninhabited neighboring island of Manana. The island is accessible by scheduled boat service from Boothbay Harbor, New Harbor and Port Clyde. It was designated a National Natural Landmark for its coastal and island flora in 1966.[

The name Monhegan derives from Monchiggon, Algonquian for "out-to-sea island." European explorers Martin Pring visited in 1603, Samuel de Champlain in 1604, George Weymouth in 1605 and Captain John Smith in 1614. The island got its start as a British fishing camp prior to settlement of the Plymouth Colony. Cod was harvested from the rich fishing grounds of the Gulf of Maine, then dried on fish flakes before shipment to Europe. A trading post was built to conduct business with the Indians, particularly in the lucrative fur trade.  It was Monhegan traders who taught English to Samoset, the sagamore who in 1621 startled the Pilgrims by boldly walking into their new village at Plymouth and saying: "Welcome, Englishmen." 

The painter
Edward Hopper was a American realist painter and printmaker.

Conservative in politics and social matters (Hopper asserted for example that "artists' lives should be written by people very close to them"), he accepted things as they were and displayed a lack of idealism. Cultured and sophisticated, he was well-read, and many of his paintings show figures reading. He was generally good company and unperturbed by silences, though sometimes taciturn, grumpy, or detached. He was always serious about his art and the art of others, and when asked would return frank opinions.

Hopper's most systematic declaration of his philosophy as an artist was given in a handwritten note, entitled "Statement", submitted in 1953 to the journal, Reality:

"Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination. One of the weaknesses of much abstract painting is the attempt to substitute the inventions of the human intellect for a private imaginative conception.

The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm and does not concern itself alone with stimulating arrangements of color, form and design.

The term life used in art is something not to be held in contempt, for it implies all of existence and the province of art is to react to it and not to shun it.

Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great."

 
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2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

BLAKCHEAD / MONHEGAN PAINTED BY NICHOLAS ROERICH

 

NICHOLAS ROERICH (1874-1947)

Blackhead (50 m-150 ft) 

United States of America (Maine)

In Monhegan, Maine From Ocean series,  1922, Roerich Museum NYC

The rock
Blackhead (50m-150 ft) are northside cliffs situated on Monhegan, Manana Island, that have drawn the interest of many artists. The beginnings of the art colony on Monhegan date to the mid-19th century; by 1890, it was firmly established. Two of the early artists in residence from the 1890s, William Henry Singer (1868–1943) and Martin Borgord (1869–1935), left Monhegan to study at the Académie Julian in Paris in 1901. Among many early members who found inspiration on the island were summer visitors from the New York School of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, such as Robert Henri, Frederick Waugh, George Bellows, Edward Hopper and Rockwell Kent. The Monhegan Museum celebrated more the continuing draw of the island for artists in a 2014 exhibit entitled, “The Famous and the Forgotten: Revisiting Monhegan’s Celebrated 1914 Art Exhibition."
Monhegan is a plantation in Lincoln County, Maine, United States, about 12 nautical miles (22 km) off the mainland. The population was 75 at the 2000 census. The plantation comprises its namesake island and the uninhabited neighboring island of Manana. The island is accessible by scheduled boat service from Boothbay Harbor, New Harbor and Port Clyde. It was designated a National Natural Landmark for its coastal and island flora in 1966.

The painter
Nicholas Roerich known also as Nikolai Konstantinovich Rerikh (Никола́й Константи́нович Ре́рих) is quite an important figure of mountain paintings in the early 20th century. He was a Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, perceived by some in Russia as an enlightener, philosopher, and public figure. In his youth was he was quite influenced by a movement in Russian society around the occult and was interested in hypnosis and other spiritual practices. His paintings are said to have hypnotic expression.

More about the painter =>

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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

NAN SHAN RANGE PAINTED BY NICHOLAS ROERICH

NICHOLAS ROERICH (1874-1947) 

Nan Shan range - Yema Shan   (5, 250m - 17, 224ft) 

China 

In  Nan Shan Tibetan frontier, oil on canvas,  1936, Nicolas Roerich  Museum 

The mountains 

The Nan Shan range continues to the west as Yema Shan (5,250 m) and Altun Shan (Altyn Tagh) (5,798 m). To the east, it passes north of Qinghai Lake, terminating as Daban Shan and Xinglong Shan near Lanzhou, with Maoma Shan peak (4,070 m) an eastern outlier. Sections of the Ming Dynasty's Great Wall pass along its northern slopes, and south of northern outlier Longshou Shan (3,616 m).

The four highest peaks are Sulamutag Feng (6,245 m - 20,489 ft)), Yusupu Aleketag Shan (6,065 m - 19,898 ft)), Altun Shan (5,830 - 19,130 ft) and Kogantag (4,800 metres (15,700 ft)).

The Qilian mountains are the source of numerous, mostly small, rivers and creeks that flow northeast, enabling irrigated agriculture in the Hexi Corridor (Gansu Corridor) communities, and eventually disappearing in the Alashan Desert. The best known of these streams is the Ejin (Heihe) River. The region has many glaciers, the largest of which is the Touming Mengke. These glaciers have undergone acceleration in their melting in recent decades.

The painter 
Nicholas Roerich known also as Nikolai Konstantinovich Rerikh (Никола́й Константи́нович Ре́рих) is quite an important figure of mountain paintings in the early 20th century.  He was a Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, perceived by some in Russia as an enlightener, philosopher, and public figure. In his youth was he was quite influenced by a movement in Russian society around the occult and was interested in hypnosis and other spiritual practices. His paintings are said to have hypnotic expression.
Born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, he lived in various places around the world until his death in Naggar, Himachal Pradesh, India. Trained as an artist and a lawyer, his main interests were literature, philosophy, archaeology, and especially art. After the February Revolution of 1917 and the end of the czarist regime, Roerich, a political moderate who valued Russia's cultural heritage more than ideology and party politics, had an active part in artistic politics. With Maxim Gorky and Aleksandr Benois, he participated with the so-called "Gorky Commission" and its successor organization, the Arts Union (SDI).
After the October Revolution and the acquisition of power of Lenin's Bolshevik Party, Roerich became increasingly discouraged about Russia's political future. During early 1918, he, Helena, and their two sons George and Sviatoslav emigrated to Finland. After some months in Finland and Scandinavia, the Roerichs relocated to London, arriving in mid-1919. Later, a successful exhibition resulted in an invitation from a director at the Art Institute of Chicago, offering to arrange for Roerich's art to tour the United States. During the autumn of 1920, the Roerichs traveled to America by sea.  The Roerichs remained in the United States from October 1920 until May 1923.
After leaving New York, the Roerichs – together with their son George and six friends – began the five-year-long 'Roerich Asian Expedition' that, in Roerich's own words: "started from Sikkim through Punjab, Kashmir, Ladakh, the Karakoram Mountains, Khotan, Kashgar, Qara Shar, Urumchi, Irtysh, the Altai Mountains, the Oyrot region of Mongolia, the Central Gobi, Kansu, Tsaidam, and Tibet" with a detour through Siberia to Moscow in 1926.
In 1929 Nicholas Roerich was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the University of Paris. He received two more nominations in 1932 and 1935. His concern for peace resulted in his creation of the Pax Cultura, the "Red Cross" of art and culture. His work for this cause also resulted in the United States and the twenty other nations of the Pan-American Union signing the Roerich Pact on April 15, 1935 at the White House. The Roerich Pact is an early international instrument protecting cultural property.
In 1934–1935, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (then headed by Roerich admirer Henry A. Wallace) sponsored an expedition by Roerich and USDA scientists H. G. MacMillan and James F. Stephens to Inner Mongolia, Manchuria, and China.
Roerich was in India during the Second World War, where he painted Russian epic heroic and saintly themes, including: Alexander Nevsky, The Fight of Mstislav...
In 1942, Roerich received Jawaharlal Nehru at his house in Kullu. Together they discussed the fate of the new world: "We spoke about Indian-Russian cultural association, it is time to think about useful and creative cooperation ...”.
Gandhi would later recall about several days spent together with Roerich's family: "That was a memorable visit to a surprising and gifted family where each member was a remarkable figure in himself, with a well-defined range of interests." ..."Roerich himself stays in my memory. He was a man with extensive knowledge and enormous experience, a man with a big heart, deeply influenced by all that he observed". During the visit, "ideas and thoughts about closer cooperation between India and USSR were expressed. Now, after India wins independence, they have got its own real implementation[clarification needed]. And as you know, there are friendly and mutually-understanding relationships today between both our countries".
In 1942, the American-Russian cultural Association (ARCA) was created in New York.
Its active participants were Ernest Hemingway, Rockwell Kent, Charlie Chaplin, Emil Cooper, Serge Koussevitzky, and Valeriy Ivanovich Tereshchenko. The Association's activity was welcomed by scientists like Robert Millikan and Arthur Compton.
Roerich died on December 13, 1947.
Presently, the Nicholas Roerich Museum in New York City is a major institution for Roerich's artistic work. Numerous Roerich societies continue to promote his theosophical teachings worldwide. His paintings can be seen in several museums including the Roerich Department of the State Museum of Oriental Arts in Moscow; the Roerich Museum at the International Centre of the Roerichs in Moscow; the Russian State Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia; a collection in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow; a collection in the Art Museum in Novosibirsk, Russia; an important collection in the National Gallery for Foreign Art in Sofia, Bulgaria; a collection in the Art Museum in Nizhny Novgorod Russia; National Museum of Serbia ; the Roerich Hall Estate in Nagar village in Kullu Valley, India; the Sree Chitra Art Gallery, Thiruvananthapuram, India;[17] in various art museums in India; and a selection featuring several of his larger works in The Latvian National Museum of Art.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau