LA MEIJE BY AUGUSTE RODIN

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AUGUSTE RODIN (1840-1917)  

La Meije (3,984m- 13, 071ft)

France (Isère)

In Le Glacier, crayon au graphite, estompe, watercolor, n° 4225, Musée Rodin, Paris 

(La Meije view from the Col du Lautaret) 

The mountain 

La Meije (3,984m- 13, 071ft) is a mountain in the Massif des Écrins range, located at the border of the Hautes-Alpes and Isère départements. It overlooks the nearby village of La Grave, a mountaineering centre and ski resort, well known for its off-piste and extreme skiing possibilities, and also dominates the view west of the Col du Lautaret. It is the second highest mountain of the Écrins after Barre des Écrins. The central and second highest summit has five teeth, the highest of which is known as Le Doigt de Dieu (The Finger of God). This summit was reached from the northeast on June 28, 1870, by Christian and Ulrich Almer and Christian Gertsch, guiding Meta Brevoort and W.A.B. Coolidge. The ridge from the central to the main, Western peak, which is 13 meters higher, was considered an insurmountable obstacle for the next 15 years.
The Western true summit of La Meije, the Grand Pic, is notorious in that there is no "easy" path to its top and it was the last major peak in the Alps to be summited. The first ascent was eventually made from the southwest on 16 August 1877 by father and son Pierre Gaspard and their client Emmanuel Boileau de Castelnau. Their approach, over the south buttress Arête du Promontoire and further over the Glacier Carré and the southwest face of the Grand Pic is now the normal route.
On July 26, 1885, Ludwig Purtscheller and the brothers Otto and Emil Zsigmondy made the first traverse from the central to the main summit, via the "insurmountable" gap that is now known as the Brèche Zsigmondy, in what is still considered a classic route though thoroughly modified by a may 1964 rockfall. The traverse in the opposite direction was accomplished 6 years later by Ulrich Almer, Fritz Boss and J.H. Gibson.
The south face is widely considered to be the most difficult of La Meije. Within two weeks after their successful traverse, the Zsigmondy brothers, together with Karl Schulz, tried to reach the Brèche Zsigmondy over the south face, but Emil died in the attempt. The first successful attempt was not until twenty-seven years later, in 1912 by Angelo Dibona, Luigi Rizzi, and the brothers Guido and Max Mayer, while a direct route over the south face to the Grand Pic was only climbed in 1935 and that to the Central Pic in 1951.
For mountaineering, La Meije can be approached from two mountain refuges:
- The refuge du Promontoire at 3,082 metres, situated at the bottom of the steep south buttress of the peak, and allows access to routes on the south face of the mountain.
- The refuge de l'Aigle at 3,450 metres, situated at the top of the Tabuchet glacier, and allows access to the north face.

The artist

François Auguste René Rodin known as Auguste Rodin was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past. He was schooled traditionally, took a craftsman-like approach to his work, and desired academic recognition, although he was never accepted into Paris's foremost school of art.

When Rodin does not sculpt, he draws. Auguste Rodin has created some 10,000 drawings among which more than 7,000 are preserved in the Rodin Museum. It is very rare that the drawing serves as a study, a project for a sculpture or a monument. The work of the draftsman is developed in parallel with that of the sculptor. If, for reasons of conservation, the works on paper can only be shown very punctually, they are not a minor part of the art of Rodin, who affirms at the end of his life in his notebooks : « My drawings are the key to my work, my sculpture is only drawing in all dimensions ».  Beyond the simple preparatory work, drawing is for Rodin another practice, another field of artistic reflection that he discovers even before sculpture, at the age of ten.  Inventor of the first draft, Rodin takes the habit of letting the model evolve in front of him without indicating artificial pose, so as to capture on the sheet the natural movement.

Rodin also practiced the engraving which allowed him to diffuse his drawings and his sculptures. These engravings are gathered in an album.  He produced about 1,000 engravings. Auguste-Hilaire Léveillé is one of the engravers who reproduced a number of his statues.

Rodin practiced  also photography and used it abundantly. He had a team of photographers, such as Gaudanzio Marconi, Karl Bodmer, Victor Pannelier and Freuler who photograph the models, sculptures finalized or in the course of work. These photographs serve as blanks, but also for corrections, Rodin underlining or retouching some part with pencil, pen, brush or wash, on the photographic prints of his sculptures. They serve to dialogue with the practitioners as can be read in the correspondence with Bourdelle or to correct the drawings.

2017 - A Still Life Collection 
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

MOUNT KOLSASS PAINTED BY CLAUDE MONET

 

CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926)
Kolsås or Kolsass mountain (342 m - 1,122 ft)
Norway

In "Le village de Sandviken, près du Mount Kolsaas" Norvège, 1895, Huile sur toile 73,4 x92, 5 cm - Art Institute Chicago

Monet and Mount Kolsass
A text in french from the book Claude Monet, une vie dans le paysage by Marianne Alphant - Editions Hazan, 1993. (You may use the Google translation tool in this blog to tranlaste into your own langage)
« Au cours l'hiver 1895 le peintre français fit un séjour en Norvège. et peignit a plusieurs reprises à différentes heures du jour et dans différentes conditions climatiques une montagne, le mont Kolsaas. Mais sitôt réalisées leur auteur n'en fut guère satisfait et elles furent vite éclipsées par l'exposition des Cathédrales. Des vingt-sept ou vingt-huit qui furent recensées, le musée Rodin n'en propose qu'une douzaine, issues de collections publiques (Orsay, Marmottan) aussi bien que privées (Japon, Etats-Unis) et déjà présentées à Stavanger, en Norvège.
Monet effectua ce long voyage vers le Nord sur l'invitation de son beau-fils Jacques Hoschedé, pour saisir quelques effets de neige qu'il escomptait bien capter facilement là-bas. En quoi il se trompait généreusement, erreur à l'origine d'un de ses plus intéressants ratages.
Les quatre «portraits» du mont Kolsaas sont assez intrigants en ce que l’on y perçoit tout l'art du peintre pour «rendre» l'impalpable bien que cela l'entraînent vers des contrées inexplorées. « Le motif se met à flotter dans une atmosphère qui ne le porte plus, ne le soutient plus, l'abandonnant au gré d'une humeur vagabonde, à la manière d'un nuage libre de dériver au gré des vents. L'impression d'échec provient alors d'une incapacité à arrimer la figure, à saisir l'objet à bras le corps, à se tenir d'aplomb face à ce qui le surplombe. Mais la valeur inestimable de cet apparent échec excède largement cet effet de brouillon. (…)
Les peintures ne doivent pas leur sentiment d'incomplétude à une quelconque précipitation mais bien plutôt au désir de se fondre dans un immense éloge à la blancheur. (…)
Le mont Kolsaas ressemble de la sorte au dernier souffle ou à l'éternuement d'un linceul qui, l'instant suivant, s'affaissera dans l'indéterminé d'une forme sans contour. Autrement dit, l'informe. Ces quelques peintures représentent sans doute l'une des rares tentatives de distinguer la neige de la blancheur, de séparer les deux corps comme on le ferait dans une expérience chimique de dissociation. Car la neige n'est pas blanche, pas plus que le blanc n'est la couleur de la neige. L'un et l'autre entrent doucement en conflit pour que, dans l'intervalle, à la faveur d'une anecdote ­ petit pont ou rivière ­, se glisse l'élément qui permettra de rassurer la vision. Entre la neige et la blancheur, il y a un mariage fatal qu'il faut à tout prix éviter faute de s'y endormir. Entre le ciel et le bleu, c'est pareil mais c'est une autre histoire. Les deux histoires se rejouent chaque fois qu'un peintre essaie de fixer leur frontière, leur bord extrême. Comment cette peinture pourrait-elle alors s'achever ?."

The mountain
Kolsås or Kolsass Mountain (342 m - 1,122 ft) is a wooded mountain ridge in the municipality of Bærum, Norway. Geologically, Kolsås belongs to the Oslo Graben area. Its two peaks (one at 387m the other at 342m) consist of hard rhomb porphyric lava covering softer rocks, forming steep cliffs to the east, south and west. An old farm beneath the mountain has the name Kolsberg. The first element in this name is the genitive case of the old male name Kolr, and the last element is "berg" (mountain). The parish and municipality of Bærum (Old Norse Bergheimr) is probably named after this prominent mountain. The last element in the name of the mountain was later changed to ås (mountain ridge) to distinguish it from the name of the farm.
The French painter Claude Monet painted Mont Kolsaas in 1895 in a series of 4 paintings  one is permanently shown at the Musée d’Orsay , an other in Musée Marmottan. in Paris The 2 others shows on this blog are held in private collections in USA and Japan.

The painter
The painter Oscar-Claude Monet better known as Claude Monet was a founder of French Impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. The term "Impressionism" is derived from the title of his painting « Impression, soleil levant » (Impression, Sunrise), which was exhibited in 1874 in the first of the independent exhibitions mounted by Monet and his associates as an alternative to the Salon de Paris.
Monet's ambition of documenting the French countryside led him to adopt a method of painting the same scene many times in order to capture the changing of light and the passing of the seasons exactly like the japanese artist Hokusai (1760-1849) did with his 36 views of Mount Fuji.
  Monet repeated this kinf of "exercise de stylee with his series on Les Petites Dalles.

 
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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

KOLSASS MOUNTAIN PAINTED BY CLAUDE MONET

CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926)

  Kolsås or Kolsass  mountain  (342 m - 1,122 ft)

Norway

Four "portraits" of Mont Kolsass in 1895 

1.  In Mont Kolsass, 1895, oil on canvas,  Musée Marmottan, Paris 

2. In Mont Kolsass, 1895, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay. Paris 

3. In Mont Kolsass, reflets roses 1895, oil on canvas, Private collection, USA.  

4. In Mont Kolsass,  tempête de neige 1895, oil on canvas, Private collection, Japan

The mountain 

Kolsås or Kolsass Mountain (342 m - 1,122 ft) is a wooded mountain ridge in the municipality of Bærum, Norway. Geologically, Kolsås belongs to the Oslo Graben area. Its two peaks (one at 387m the other at 342m) consist of hard rhomb porphyric lava covering softer rocks, forming steep cliffs to the east, south and west. An old farm beneath the mountain has the name Kolsberg. The first element in this name is the genitive case of the old male name Kolr, and the last element is "berg" (mountain). The parish and municipality of Bærum (Old Norse Bergheimr) is probably named after this prominent mountain. The last element in the name of the mountain was later changed to ås (mountain ridge) to distinguish it from the name of the farm.

The area from Kolsås to Dælivannet is a protected landscape area from 1978 (five square kilometers), with four nature reserves: Skotta, Dalbo, Kolsåsstupene and Kolsåstoppen nature reserve.

Kolsås has been a training area for climbers since beginning of the 20th century. Today it is the largest rock climbing area in the Oslo region. The wall Øvre Sydstup on the southern wall has more than 200 climbing routes. The northern hillside of Kolsås has alpine skiing facilities.

Kolsåsbanen is part of the subway rail system Oslo T-bane, running from downtown Oslo to Kolsås station, via Gjettum station and Hauger station.

The military base Kolsås leir, partly located inside the mountain, was home of NATO's Allied Forces Northern Europe (AFNORTH) until 1994.

The area has occurrences of old petroglyphs, tumuli and limestone quarries.

The French painter Claude Monet painted Mont Kolsaas in 1895 in a series of 4 paintings (see above)  one is permanently shown at the Musée d’Orsay , an other in Musée Marmottan. in Paris The 2 others shows on this blog are held in private collections in  USA and Japan. 

The painter 

Oscar-Claude Monet better known as Claude Monet  was a founder of French Impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. The term "Impressionism" is derived from the title of his painting « Impression, soleil levant » (Impression, Sunrise), which was exhibited in 1874 in the first of the independent exhibitions mounted by Monet and his associates as an alternative to the Salon de Paris.
Monet's ambition of documenting the French countryside led him to adopt a method of painting the same scene many times in order to capture the changing of light and the passing of the seasons exactly like the japanese artist  Hokusai (1760-1849) did with his 36 views of Mount Fuji.
Monet repeated this kind of exercice de style with his series on Les Petites Dalles

Monet and Mont Kolsass
 A text  in french  from the book Claude Monet, une vie dans le paysage by Marianne Alphant - Editions Hazan, 1993.

 « Au cours  l'hiver 1895 le peintre français fit un séjour en Norvège. et peignit a plusieurs reprises à différentes heures du jour et dans différentes conditions climatiques une montagne, le mont Kolsaas. Mais sitôt réalisées leur auteur n'en fut guère satisfait et elles furent vite éclipsées par l'exposition des Cathédrales. Des vingt-sept ou vingt-huit qui furent recensées, le musée Rodin n'en propose qu'une douzaine, issues de collections publiques (Orsay, Marmottan) aussi bien que privées (Japon, Etats-Unis) et déjà présentées à Stavanger, en Norvège.
Monet effectua ce long voyage vers le Nord sur l'invitation de son beau-fils Jacques Hoschedé, pour saisir quelques effets de neige qu'il escomptait bien capter facilement là-bas. En quoi il se trompait généreusement, erreur à l'origine d'un de ses plus intéressants ratages. 
Les quatre «portraits» du mont Kolsaas sont assez intrigants en ce que l’on y perçoit tout l'art du peintre pour «rendre» l'impalpable  bien que cela l'entraînent vers des contrées inexplorées.  « Le motif se met à flotter dans une atmosphère qui ne le porte plus, ne le soutient plus, l'abandonnant au gré d'une humeur vagabonde, à la manière d'un nuage libre de dériver au gré des vents. L'impression d'échec provient alors d'une incapacité à arrimer la figure, à saisir l'objet à bras le corps, à se tenir d'aplomb face à ce qui le surplombe. Mais la valeur inestimable de cet apparent échec excède largement cet effet de brouillon. (…) 
Les peintures  ne doivent pas leur sentiment d'incomplétude à une quelconque précipitation mais bien plutôt au désir de se fondre dans un immense éloge à la blancheur. (…) 
 Le mont Kolsaas ressemble de la sorte au dernier souffle ou à l'éternuement d'un linceul qui, l'instant suivant, s'affaissera dans l'indéterminé d'une forme sans contour. Autrement dit, l'informe. Ces quelques peintures représentent sans doute l'une des rares tentatives de distinguer la neige de la blancheur, de séparer les deux corps comme on le ferait dans une expérience chimique de dissociation. Car la neige n'est pas blanche, pas plus que le blanc n'est la couleur de la neige. L'un et l'autre entrent doucement en conflit pour que, dans l'intervalle, à la faveur d'une anecdote ­ petit pont ou rivière ­, se glisse l'élément qui permettra de rassurer la vision. Entre la neige et la blancheur, il y a un mariage fatal qu'il faut à tout prix éviter faute de s'y endormir. Entre le ciel et le bleu, c'est pareil mais c'est une autre histoire. Les deux histoires se rejouent chaque fois qu'un peintre essaie de fixer leur frontière, leur bord extrême. Comment cette peinture pourrait-elle alors s'achever ?.  "

 

___________________________________________

2016 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE MZAB PLATEAU PAINTED BY NASR'EDDINE ETIENNE DINET

 

NASR'EDDINE ETIENNE DINET (1861-1929),

The Mzab Plateau (526m - 1,725ft)

Algeria (Sahara)

In Caravane se dirigeant vers Ghardaia (Caravan on the way to Ghardaia), oil on canvas

The formation
The Mzab plateau is a rocky formation whose altitude varies between 300 and 800 meters.  The average altitude is 500 meters (Ghardaia: 526 meters).This relief, of which the origin is  from the Upper Cretaceous, is in the form of a vast stony expanse and brown and blackish rocks. The grounds are limestone. Their roughly horizontal structure indicates that they have remained in place, away from the orogenic movements, since their formation.
The deepest valleys bordered by rocky cliffs with steep slopes have a gradient that rarely exceeds 100 meters in relation to the plateau.
The M'zab is therefore generally a flat region but where fluvial erosion, combined with the action of the desert climate, has created a multitude of superficial accidents that make communications most difficult.
Due to  the low latitude and the moderate altitude, the temperature is very high in summer (absolute maximum in Ghardaia: 50 ° C), moderately cool in winter (absolute minimum: minus 1 ° C in Ghardaia).  In winter as in summer, the diurnal variation of temperature is important, due to the perfect dryness of the atmosphere. For the same reason, the brightness is intense.
Sandwash from the southwest periodically accentuate the dryness of the climate. They are particularly frequent and violent in late winter and early spring.
The Mzab Valley is part of World Heritage since 1982, as an untouched example of a traditional human habitat perfectly adapted to the environment.

The painter 

Nasr'Eddine Dinet (born as Alphonse-Étienne Dinet in Paris) was a French orientalist painter.

Compared to modernist painters such as Henri Matisse, who also visited northern Africa in the first decade of the 20th century, Dinet’s paintings are extremely conservative. They are highly mimetic, indeed ethnographic, in their treatment of their subject.

Dinet’s understanding of Arab culture and language set him apart from other orientalist artists. Surprisingly, he was able to find nude models in rural Algeria. Before 1900, most of his works could be characterized as "anecdotal genre scenes". As he became more interested in Islam, he began to paint religious subjects more often. He was active in translating Arabic literature into French, publishing a translation of an Arab epic poem by Antarah ibn Shaddad in 1898.

Dinet was born the son of a prominent French judge.   From 1871, he studied at the prestogious Lycée Henry IV in Paris, where the future president Alexandre Millerand was also among the students. Upon graduation in 1881 he enrolled in the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts and entered the studio of Victor Galland. The following year he studied under William Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury at the Académie Julian. He also exhibited for the first time at the Salon des artistes français.

Dinet made his first trip to Bou Saâda by the Ouled Naïl Range in southern Algeria in 1884, with a team of entomologists. The following year he made a second trip on a government scholarship, this time to Laghouat. At that time he painted his first two Algerian pictures: les Terrasses de Laghouat  (Laghouat Terraces) or  Oued M’Sila après l’orage (Oued M'Sila after the storm).

He won the silver medal for painting at the Exposition Universelle in 1889, and in the same year founded the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts along with Meissonier, Puvis de Chavannes, Rodin, Carolus-Duran and Charles Cottet. In 1887 he further founded with Léonce Bénédite, director of the Musée du Luxembourg, the Société des Peintres Orientalistes Français.

In 1903 he bought a house in Bou Saâda and spent three quarters of each year there.

He announced his conversion to Islam in a private letter of 1908, and completed his formal conversion in 1913, upon which he changed his name to Nasr’Eddine Dinet. In 1929 he and his wife undertook the Hajj to Mecca. The respect he earned from the natives of Algeria was reflected by the 5,000 who attended his funeral on 12 January 1930 in Bou Saâda. There he was eulogized by the former Governor General of Algeria Maurice Viollette.

.___________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

JEBEL AMOUR BY NASR'EDDINE ETIENNE DINET

NASR'EDDINE ETIENNE DINET (1861-1929) 

Jebel Amour  / Jebel Ksel (2,008 m - 6,587 ft) 

Algeria 

 In Caravane à Laghouat, 1890, oil on canvas

The mountain 

Jebel Amour (جبال العمور)  (Jebel Love in English) is a mountain range of Algeria located in the center of the country, constituting part of the Saharan Atlas and culminating at Jebel Ksel (2,008 m - 6,587 ft). In the Middle Ages, Jebel Amour was called Jebel Rached. It owes its current name to the Bedouin Arab tribe of Loves. Jebel Amour is part of the Saharan Atlas. It is located between the Ksour Mountains in the west and those of the Ouled Naïl in the East, but it is difficult to define its limits. It stretches over a hundred kilometers in length, from south-west to north-east, for a width of 60 kilometers, between the Sahara in the south and the "Hauts-Plateaux" in the north. It alternates between tabular surfaces and deep valleys. Djebel Amour is the best watered of the mountains of the Saharan Atlas; rainfall is between 300 and 400 mm per year, the central part receives more than 500 mm1. It is also rich in sources, bottoms of wadis, orchards and clear forests on the summits where still live rare species like some birds of prey and mouflon.

The painter 

Nasr'Eddine Dinet (born as Alphonse-Étienne Dinet in Paris) was a French orientalist painter.

Compared to modernist painters such as Henri Matisse, who also visited northern Africa in the first decade of the 20th century, Dinet’s paintings are extremely conservative. They are highly mimetic, indeed ethnographic, in their treatment of their subject.

Dinet’s understanding of Arab culture and language set him apart from other orientalist artists. Surprisingly, he was able to find nude models in rural Algeria. Before 1900, most of his works could be characterized as "anecdotal genre scenes". As he became more interested in Islam, he began to paint religious subjects more often. He was active in translating Arabic literature into French, publishing a translation of an Arab epic poem by Antarah ibn Shaddad in 1898.

Dinet was born the son of a prominent French judge.   From 1871, he studied at the prestogious Lycée Henry IV in Paris, where the future president Alexandre Millerand was also among the students. Upon graduation in 1881 he enrolled in the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts and entered the studio of Victor Galland. The following year he studied under William Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury at the Académie Julian. He also exhibited for the first time at the Salon des artistes français.

Dinet made his first trip to Bou Saâda by the Ouled Naïl Range in southern Algeria in 1884, with a team of entomologists. The following year he made a second trip on a government scholarship, this time to Laghouat. At that time he painted his first two Algerian pictures: les Terrasses de Laghouat and l’Oued M’Sila après l’orage (Oued M'Sila after the storm).

He won the silver medal for painting at the Exposition Universelle in 1889, and in the same year founded the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts along with Meissonier, Puvis de Chavannes, Rodin, Carolus-Duran and Charles Cottet. In 1887 he further founded with Léonce Bénédite, director of the Musée du Luxembourg, the Société des Peintres Orientalistes Français.

In 1903 he bought a house in Bou Saâda and spent three quarters of each year there.

He announced his conversion to Islam in a private letter of 1908, and completed his formal conversion in 1913, upon which he changed his name to Nasr’Eddine Dinet. In 1929 he and his wife undertook the Hajj to Mecca. The respect he earned from the natives of Algeria was reflected by the 5,000 who attended his funeral on 12 January 1930 in Bou Saâda. There he was eulogized by the former Governor General of Algeria Maurice Viollette.

___________________________________________
2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

JEBEL EL-AZREG PAINTED BY NASR'EDDINE ETIENNE DINET

NASR'EDDINE ETIENNE DINET (1861-1929)

Jebel el-Azreg (1,491 m - 4,892 ft)

Algeria

In  Midi en juillet à Bou-Saâda (Noon In July in Bou Saâda), watercolour, 1884  

The mountain
Jebel el-Azreg  (1,491m) is the highest point of the Ouled Nail mountains (جبال أولاد نايل), a  range of the Saharian Atlas, located in Algeria near the town of Bou-Saâda. The Ouled Nail mountains  owe their name to the tribal confederation of Ouled Naïl who live in the massif.
The Ouled Nail mountains  are located between Jebel Amour to the east and the Zab mountains to the west, from Djelfa to Messaad, and constitute a set of links and depressions. The human presence in the region is attested from prehistoric times; enameled vestiges of Libyan-Berber writings, rock engravings and funerary monuments are found here. In antiquity, the region was populated by the Gétules, then by the Romans who installed advanced military posts as the castellium of Demmedi in Messaad.
During the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb in the seventh century, the region was inhabited by Zen Berbers: Sindjas, Ghomra and Laghouat who were islamized but remained independent over successive dynasties and empires. In the eleventh century, Zoghba Arab hordes enter the region.
During the Ottoman period, the Eastern tribes (Ouled Naipl Cheraga) depended on the authority of the Beylik of Constantine while the tribes of the West (Gheraba) fell under that of the Titteri.
The first French incursions into the region date from 1843, in 1861 the city of Djelfa is created. During the Algerian war, the region became a stronghold of the NLA, the armed wing of the FLN.
The Ouled Nail mountains  are home to some ksour, especially to Zaccar and Amourah, which testify that sedentary and village life was more developed at certain times. Numerous rock formations are present in the Ouled Naïl mountains, which are an extension of those of Jebel Amour and the Ksour mountains, the oldest dating back to 8000 BC .

The painter 

Nasr'Eddine Dinet (born as Alphonse-Étienne Dinet in Paris) was a French orientalist painter.

Compared to modernist painters such as Henri Matisse, who also visited northern Africa in the first decade of the 20th century, Dinet’s paintings are extremely conservative. They are highly mimetic, indeed ethnographic, in their treatment of their subject.

Dinet’s understanding of Arab culture and language set him apart from other orientalist artists. Surprisingly, he was able to find nude models in rural Algeria. Before 1900, most of his works could be characterized as "anecdotal genre scenes". As he became more interested in Islam, he began to paint religious subjects more often. He was active in translating Arabic literature into French, publishing a translation of an Arab epic poem by Antarah ibn Shaddad in 1898.

Dinet was born the son of a prominent French judge.   From 1871, he studied at the prestogious Lycée Henry IV in Paris, where the future president Alexandre Millerand was also among the students. Upon graduation in 1881 he enrolled in the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts and entered the studio of Victor Galland. The following year he studied under William Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury at the Académie Julian. He also exhibited for the first time at the Salon des artistes français.

Dinet made his first trip to Bou Saâda by the Ouled Naïl Range in southern Algeria in 1884, with a team of entomologists. The following year he made a second trip on a government scholarship, this time to Laghouat. At that time he painted his first two Algerian pictures: les Terrasses de Laghouat  (Laghouat Terraces) or  Oued M’Sila après l’orage (Oued M'Sila after the storm).

He won the silver medal for painting at the Exposition Universelle in 1889, and in the same year founded the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts along with Meissonier, Puvis de Chavannes, Rodin, Carolus-Duran and Charles Cottet. In 1887 he further founded with Léonce Bénédite, director of the Musée du Luxembourg, the Société des Peintres Orientalistes Français.

In 1903 he bought a house in Bou Saâda and spent three quarters of each year there.

He announced his conversion to Islam in a private letter of 1908, and completed his formal conversion in 1913, upon which he changed his name to Nasr’Eddine Dinet. In 1929 he and his wife undertook the Hajj to Mecca. The respect he earned from the natives of Algeria was reflected by the 5,000 who attended his funeral on 12 January 1930 in Bou Saâda. There he was eulogized by the former Governor General of Algeria Maurice Viollette.

.___________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

LE MONT SALÈVE PEINT PAR FERDINAND HODLER

 

FERDINAND HODLER (1853-1918)
Mont Salève (1, 379m - 4,524ft)
France (Haute-Savoie)

In  (Der Salève im Herbst - Le Salève en Automne, huile sur toile, 1891

La montagne
Le Salève  (1, 379m - 4,524ft) ou mont Salève est une montagne des Préalpes située dans le département de la Haute-Savoie, en France. On l'appelle aussi parfois le « balcon de Genève » car bien que situé intégralement en France, il est voisin de l'agglomération transfrontalière de Genève située au nord-ouest, la frontière passant au pied des falaises de l'extrémité nord de la montagne. Il offre l'un des points de vue les plus appréciés sur le canton de Genève et le Léman, étant facilement accessible par la route et par son téléphérique. Bien qu'appartenant d'un point de vue géologique au massif du Jura, ce crêt de calcaire plissé est rattaché aux Préalpes. Le Salève s’étend sur 21 kilomètres de longueur entre Étrembières au nord et le pont de la Caille au sud. Il est régulièrement orienté du nord-est au sud-ouest, et il est constitué de trois parties d’inégales longueurs, séparées par deux dépressions : le Petit Salève qui culmine à 899 mètres d'altitude au Camp des Allobroges, le Grand Salève qui culmine à 1 309 mètres d'altitude et le massif Pitons-Plan12 parfois appelé Salève des Pitons ou simplement Les Pitons. Ce dernier massif culmine au Grand Piton (1 379 mètres) et comporte trois autres sommets nommés : la pointe de la Piollière (1 349 mètres), le Petit Piton (1 369 mètres) au nord12 et la pointe du Plan au sud (1 349 mètres). Entre le Petit et le Grand Salève, le vallon de Monnetier a une altitude de 684 mètres et entre le Grand Salève et le massif des Pitons, le col de la Croisette s’élève à 1 175 mètres et est franchi par la route départementale 45. 

Le peintre 
Ferdinand Hodler est un peintre suisse considéré comme le peintre  qui a le plus marqué la fin du 19e et le début du 20e siècle. Ami de Klimt et de Jawlensky, admiré par Puvis de Chavannes, Rodin et Kandinsky, Hodler est l’un des principaux moteurs de la modernité dans l’Europe de la Belle Époque. Son œuvre, puissante, navigue entre réalisme, symbolisme et expressionnisme. Au cours de sa carrière, il aura touché à tous les genres, privilégiant le portrait, le paysage, la peinture historique et monumentale et les compositions de figures. Hodler était surtout réputé en Suisse dans les années 1900-1910 pour ses peintures à caractère patriotique. En novembre 1900, la Poste suisse choisit sur concours son Berger de Fribourg qui sera utilisé jusqu'en 1936. En 1909, la Banque nationale suisse lui commande deux vignettes monétaires, qui deviendront le billet de 50 (« Le Bûcheron ») et de 100 francs (« Le Faucheur »), mis en circulation en 1911.  L'Institut Ferdinand Hodler, sis à Genève et Delémont (Suisse) a été fondé dans le but de réunir les ressources et les compétences utiles à l'étude et à la valorisation de l'œuvre du peintre. La création de cette institution s'est faite progressivement, à la suite du décès de l'historien de l'art Jura Brüschweiler (1927-2013), l'un des plus importants spécialistes du peintre, à qui il a consacré sa vie de chercheur et de collectionneur. L'Institut Ferdinand Hodler mène un vaste programme de recherche et de publication consacré au peintre.

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