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Tuesday, August 9, 2016

MOUNT VESUVIUS (FIRST KNOWN REPRESENTATION)

POMPEI FRESCOES

Mount Vesuvius (1,281m - 4,203ft)

Italy

In Vesuvius with Bacchus and Agathodaemon, Frescoe, Casa del Centenario Pompei,

2nd century BC, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli

The representation

This wall painting in the House of the Centenary (Casa del Centenario) in Pompeii (Italy) features the earliest known representation of Vesuvius. It appears under the inscribed name Vesuvius as a serpent in the decorative frescos of many lararia. or houses. An inscription from Capu to IOVI VESVVIO indicates that he was worshipped as a power of Jupiter.That is, Jupiter Vesuvius.

The House of the Centenary was the house of a wealthy resident of Pompeii, preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. The house was discovered in 1879, and was given its modern name to mark the 18th centenary of the disaster. Built in the mid-2nd century BC, it is among the largest houses in the city, with private baths, a nymphaeum, a fish pond (piscina), and two atria. The Centenary underwent a remodeling around 15 AD, at which time the bath complex and swimming pool were added. In the last years before the eruption, several rooms had been extensively redecorated with a number of paintings. Vesuvius has a long historic and literary tradition. It was considered a divinity of the Genius type at the time of the eruption of 79 AD: the Jupiter Vesuvius. Mount Vesuvius was regarded by the Romans as being devoted to the hero and demigod Hercules.

Hundreds of artists, from anonymous amateurs to international masters like J. M. W . Turner, Alexandre-Yacinthe Dunouy, Johan Christian Claussen Dahl, Pierre-Jacques Volaire, Joseph Wright of Derby, Pompeo Batoni and many painters of the Neapolitan school of painting (from 1600 to 1850)... incorporated an usually docile, distant Vesuvius or an erupting, furious mountain into their works. In 20th century, american artist Andy Warhol went further and dedicated a series of 18 painting to the Mount Vesuvius known as "Vesuvius by Warhol" (1985) ... Readers of this blog will be able to see those works in our tomorrow post.

The mountain

Mount Vesuvius (1,281 meters- 4,203 ft at present) is one of those legendary and mythic mountains the Earth paid regularly tribute. Monte Vesuvio in Italian modern langage or Mons Vesuvius in antique Latin langage is a stratovolcano in the Gulf of Naples (Italy) about 9 km (5.6 mi) east of Naples and a short distance from the shore.

It is one of several volcanoes which form the Campanian volcanic arc. Vesuvius consists of a large cone partially encircled by the steep rim of a summit caldera caused by the collapse of an earlier and originally much higher structure.

Mount Vesuvius is best known for its eruption in AD 79 that led to the burying and destruction of the Roman antique cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and several other settlements. That eruption ejected a cloud of stones, ash, and fumes to a height of 33 km (20.5 mi), spewing molten rock and pulverized pumice at the rate of 1.5 million tons per second, ultimately releasing a hundred thousand times the thermal energy released by the Hiroshima bombing. At least 1,000 people died in the eruption. The only surviving eyewitness account of the event consists of two letters by Pliny the Younger to the historian Tacitus.

Vesuvius has erupted many times since and is the only volcano on the European mainland to have erupted within the last hundred years. Nowadays, it is regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of the population of 3,000,000 people living nearby and its tendency towards explosive eruptions (said Plinian eruptions). It is the most densely populated volcanic region in the world.

Vesuvius was formed as a result of the collision of two tectonic plates, the African and the Eurasian. The former was subducted beneath the latter, deeper into the earth. As the water-saturated sediments of the oceanic African plate were pushed to hotter depths in the earth, the water boiled off and caused the melting point of the upper mantle to drop enough to create partial melting of the rocks. Because magma is less dense than the solid rock around it, it was pushed upward. Finding a weak place at the Earth's surface it broke through, producing the volcano.

he area around Vesuvius was officially declared a national park on June 5, 1995. The summit of Vesuvius is open to visitors and there is a small network of paths around the mountain that are maintained by the park authorities on weekends.

There is access by road to within 200 metres (660 ft) of the summit (measured vertically), but thereafter access is on foot only. There is a spiral walkway around the mountain from the road to the crater.

The first funicular cable car on Mount Vesuvius opened in 1880. It was later destroyed by the 1944 eruption. "Funiculì, Funiculà", a famous Neapolitan song with lyrics by journalist Peppino Turco set to music by composer Luigi Denza, commemorates its opening.

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

MOUNT VESUVIUS PAINTED BY ANDY WARHOL

ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)

Mount Vesuvius (1,281m - 4,203ft)
Italy

In Vesuvius by Warhol, 1985, series of 18 paintings, oil on canvas

The Mount Vesuvius' Andy Warhol series

Showing Vesuvius erupting in a violent and dramatic explosion, Warhol saw Vesuvius for its fiery energy of past. Shown in a brilliant orange, Andy used schismatic lines to express its volcanic, radiating potential, streaking across a crimson atmosphere.

Andy Warhol left his beloved serigraphies and photographic manipulations to experiment something different for the first time in 1985, when he created the series 'Vesuvius by Warhol', 18 paintings that the artist dedicated to the Italian volcano.

The American pop-art icon portrayed the volcano in the 'catastrophic' act of eruption, which is immortalized at different hours of the day, from dawn to sunset. Thanks to the various chromatisms, as the artist explained in an interview "the volcanoes seemed to be painted just one minute after the eruption." A range of visions and feelings that are also conveyed by the black and white photography, which are Warhol's favourite colours and those easiest to remember.

In Vesuvius, Warhol wrestles the infamous volcano into a visually arresting icon of Amelio’s home city, dressing it up in the garish Pop aesthetic for which he made his name as an artist. Ostensibly, the work celebrates the sublime volatility of nature (hardly an untapped trope in Western art) but, this is Andy Warhol; he would hardly rehearse another’s aesthetics. Instead, Vesuvius falls in-line with the artist’s fixation with the mass-reproduction of culture through imagery, and it is imprinted upon this work as it was upon his silkscreens of criminals, car crashes and mid-century starlets.

Two centuries prior, in the context of Grand Tour art and ephemera circulating around Western Europe, Mount Vesuvius was very much an overexposed icon. In the 18th century, the British sent off their elite sons on the Grand Tour, or a cultural immersion vacation around the capitals of Europe, and visits to Mount Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples was a perrennial and highly popular destination. Like camera-toting tourists do now, these visitors found in maquettes, paintings and woodcuts of Vesuvius the best means to memorialize their stop in Naples.

The mountain

Saturday, May 1, 2021

MOUNT VESUVIUS PAINTED BY CHARLES-FRANÇOIS DE LA CROIX DE MARSEILLE

CHARLES-FRANÇOIS DE LA CROIX DE MARSEILLE (1700-1782)
Mount Vesuvius (1,281m - 4,203ft)
Italy

In Eruption du Vésuve en 1770, oil on canvas, Private collection

The volcano
Mount Vesuvius (1,281 meters- 4,203 ft at present) is one of those legendary and mythic mountains the Earth paid regularly tribute. Monte Vesuvius or Vesuvio in Italian modern langage or Mons Vesuvius in antique Latin langage is a stratovolcano in the Gulf of Naples (Italy) about 9 km (5.6 mi) east of Naples and a short distance from the shore. It is one of several volcanoes which form the Campanian volcanic arc. Vesuvius consists of a large cone partially encircled by the steep rim of a summit caldera caused by the collapse of an earlier and originally much higher structure.
Mount Vesuvius is best known for its eruption in AD 79 that led to the burying and destruction of the Roman antique cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and several other settlements. That eruption ejected a cloud of stones, ash, and fumes to a height of 33 km (20.5 mi), spewing molten rock and pulverized pumice at the rate of 1.5 million tons per second, ultimately releasing a hundred thousand times the thermal energy released by the Hiroshima bombing. At least 1,000 people died in the eruption. The only surviving eyewitness account of the event consists of two letters by Pliny the Younger to the historian Tacitus. Since the eruption of AD 79, Vesuvius has erupted around three dozen times.
It erupted again in 203, during the lifetime of the historian Cassius Dio.
In 472, it ejected such a volume of ash that ashfalls were reported as far away as Constantinople (760 mi.; 1,220 kms).
The eruptions of 512 were so severe that those inhabiting the slopes of Vesuvius were granted exemption from taxes by Theodoric the Great, the Gothicking of Italy.
Further eruptions were recorded in 787, 968, 991, 999, 1007 and 1036 with the first recorded lava flows. The volcano became quiescent at the end of the 13th century and in the following years it again became covered with gardens and vineyards as of old. Even the inside of the crater was moderately filled with shrubbery.
Vesuvius entered a new phase in December 1631, when a major eruption buried many villages under lava flows, killing around 3,000 people. Torrents of lahar were also created, adding to the devastation. Activity thereafter became almost continuous, with relatively severe eruptions occurring in 1660, 1682, 1694, 1698, 1707, 1737, 1760, 1767, 1779, 1794, 1822, 1834, 1839, 1850, 1855, 1861, 1868, 1872, 1906, 1926, 1929, and 1944. Nowadays, it is regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of the population of 3,000,000 people living nearby and its tendency towards explosive eruptions (said Plinian eruptions). It is the most densely populated volcanic region in the world.
Vesuvius was formed as a result of the collision of two tectonic plates, the African and the Eurasian.
The area around Vesuvius was officially declared a national park on June 5, 1995. The summit of Vesuvius is open to visitors and there is a small network of paths around the mountain that are maintained by the park authorities on weekends.

The painter
Charles François Grenier de Lacroix, called Charles Francois Lacroix de Marseille, was a French painter
reknown for his landscapes and marines, in the style of Claude Joseph Vernet, Jean-Joseph Kapeller and Henry of Arles. He was a pupil and imitator of Joseph Vernet, and stayed in Rome in 1754. From 1776, he exhibited with great success and spent a good part of his life between Italy and Provence. In 1780, he published an ad to welcome students in his studio in Paris. Jean-Jacques Le Veau and Noël Le Mire engraved some of his paintings.

__________________________________________
2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

Friday, November 4, 2016

MOUNT VESUVIUS BY ALEXANDRE-HYACINTHE DUNOUY

ALEXANDRE-HYACINTHE DUNOUY (1757-1841)
Mount Vesuvius (1, 281m - 4,203 ft current)

Italy

In L'éruption du Vésuve en 1813, Château de Fontainebleau, France

The mountain

The painter

Alexandre-Hyacinthe Dunouy (1757–1841) was a French painter known for his landscapes.

A native of Paris, Dunouy began his career depicting views of the city and the surrounding region, exhibiting a views of the area around Rome and Naples he painted in the 1780's

at the Paris Salon in 1791. He went back Italy in 1810 under the patronage of Joachim Murat, made king of Naples by Napoleon 1st, whose he married the sister Caroline. Dunouy became the official painter of the King of Naples and of his wife Caroline Bonaparte. At this time, he painted studies for the decorations of the Royal Palace of Portici. Therefore, Dunouy frequently receives orders from the french Imperial family, as views of the castle of Mortefontaine for Joseph Bonaparte, an other of the Emperor's brother.

in 1815, after the exil of Napoleon and the fall of the First French Empire, Dunouy left Italy but does not cease its activity. HE continue to paint for the next regime and received from king Louis XVIII, for a view of Eruption of Mount Vesuvius (the one reproduced above). This painting entrusts the kink to ask Dunouy to realize decorations projects for the Trianon, Compiègne Castle and St. Cloud castle. His paintings, of small dimensions, are primarily decorative. It is usually presented as classical compositions abounding details. His work follows in the footsteps of Jean-Victor Bertin and Jean-Joseph-Xavier Bidault. Some of his works include elements painted by Jean-Louis Demarne and Nicolas-Antoine Taunay. He continued to exhibit regularly until 1833 and became the master of Achille-Etna Michallon. He received medals in 1819 and 1827. He is also associated with the Auvergne, Savoy, and the area around Lyon.

Source:
- Dunouy in BnF catalogue général

2 others paintings of Vesuvius on this blog:

- Antique roman first known picture

- Vesuvius series by Andy Warhol

Tuesday, January 15, 2019

VESUVIUS ERUPTION BY GEORGE-JULIUS POULETT SCROPE

GEORGE-JULIUS POULETT SCROPE (1797-1876)

Mount Vesuvius(1,281 m- 4,203 ft at present)

Italy

In The Eruption of Vesuvius as seen from Naples, October 1822,

Historical drawing from George Julius Poulett Scrope

The mountain

The artist
George Julius Poulett Scrope (1797- 1876) was an English geologist and political economist as well as a magistrate for Stroud in Gloucestershire. He was educated at Harrow, and for a short time at Pembroke College, Oxford, but in 1816 he entered St John's College, Cambridge, graduating BA in 1821. Through the influence of Edward Clarke and Adam Sedgwick he became interested in mineralogy and geology.
During the winter of 1816–1817 he was at Naples, and was so keenly interested in Vesuvius that he renewed his studies of the volcano in 1818; and in the following year visited Etna and the Lipari Islands. In 1821 he married the daughter and heiress of William Scrope of Castle Combe, Wiltshire, and assumed her name; and he entered the House of Commons of the United Kingdom in 1833 as MP for Stroud, retaining his seat until 1868.
Meanwhile he began to study the volcanic regions of central France in 1821, and visited the Eifel district in 1823. In 1825 he published Considerations on Volcanos, leading to the establishment of a new theory of the Earth, and in the following year was elected FRS. This earlier work was subsequently amplified and issued under the title of Volcanos (1862); an authoritative text-book of which a second edition was published ten years later.
In 1827 he issued his classic Memoir on the Geology of Central France, including the Volcanic formations of Auvergne, the Velay and the Vivarais, a quarto volume illustrated by maps and plates. The substance of this was reproduced in a revised and somewhat more popular form in The Geology and extinct Volcanos of Central France (1858). These books were the first widely published descriptions of the Chaîne des Puys, a chain of over 70 small volcanoes in the Massif Central.
Scrope was awarded the Wollaston Medal by the Geological Society of London in 1867. Among his other works was the History of the Manor and Ancient Barony of Castle Combe (printed for private circulation, 1852).
He died at Fairlawn near Cobham, Surrey on 19 January 1876.

_______________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

Tuesday, October 6, 2020

MOUNT VESUVIUS PAINTED BY JOHN MARTIN

JOHN MARTIN (1789-1854)
Mount Vesuvius (1,281m - 4,203ft)
Italy

In The destruction of Pompei in 79. c.1821, Tate Britain, London

The painter
John Martin was an English Romantic painter, engraver and illustrator. He was celebrated for his typically vast and melodramatic paintings of religious subjects and fantastic compositions, populated with minute figures placed in imposing landscapes. Martin's paintings, and the prints made from them, enjoyed great success with the general public—in 1821 Thomas Lawrence referred to him as "the most popular painter of his day"—but were lambasted by John Ruskin and other critics. Martin's large paintings were closely connected with contemporary dioramas or panoramas, popular entertainments in which large painted cloths were displayed, and animated by the skilful use of artificial light. Martin has often been claimed as a forerunner of the epic cinema, and there is no doubt that the pioneer director D. W. Griffith was aware of his work." In turn, the diorama makers borrowed Martin's work, to the point of plagiarism. A 2,000-square-foot (190 m2) version of Belshazzar's Feast was mounted at a facility called the British Diorama in 1833; Martin tried, but failed, to shut down the display with a court order. Another diorama of the same picture was staged in New York City in 1835. These dioramas were tremendous successes with their audiences, but wounded Martin's reputation in the serious art world.

The volcano
Mount Vesuvius (1,281 m- 4,203 ft at present) is one of those legendary and mythic mountains the Earth paid regularly tribute. Monte Vesuvio in Italian modern langage or Mons Vesuvius in antique Latin langage is a stratovolcano in the Gulf of Naples (Italy) about 9 km (5.6 mi) east of Naples and a short distance from the shore.
It is one of several volcanoes which form the Campanian volcanic arc. Vesuvius consists of a large cone partially encircled by the steep rim of a summit caldera caused by the collapse of an earlier and originally much higher structure.
Mount Vesuvius is best known for its eruption in AD 79 that led to the burying and destruction of the Roman antique cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and several other settlements. That eruption ejected a cloud of stones, ash, and fumes to a height of 33 km (20.5 mi), spewing molten rock and pulverized pumice at the rate of 1.5 million tons per second, ultimately releasing a hundred thousand times the thermal energy released by the Hiroshima bombing. At least 1,000 people died in the eruption. The only surviving eyewitness account of the event consists of two letters by Pliny the Younger to the historian Tacitus.
Vesuvius has erupted many times since and is the only volcano on the European mainland to have erupted within the last hundred years. Nowadays, it is regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of the population of 3,000,000 people living nearby and its tendency towards explosive eruptions (said Plinian eruptions). It is the most densely populated volcanic region in the world.
Vesuvius was formed as a result of the collision of two tectonic plates, the African and the Eurasian. The former was subducted beneath the latter, deeper into the earth. As the water-saturated sediments of the oceanic African plate were pushed to hotter depths in the earth, the water boiled off and caused the melting point of the upper mantle to drop enough to create partial melting of the rocks. Because magma is less dense than the solid rock around it, it was pushed upward. Finding a weak place at the Earth's surface it broke through, producing the volcano.
he area around Vesuvius was officially declared a national park on June 5, 1995. The summit of Vesuvius is open to visitors and there is a small network of paths around the mountain that are maintained by the park authorities on weekends.
There is access by road to within 200 metres (660 ft) of the summit (measured vertically), but thereafter access is on foot only. There is a spiral walkway around the mountain from the road to the crater.
The first funicular cable car on Mount Vesuvius opened in 1880. It was later destroyed by the 1944 eruption. "Funiculì, Funiculà", a famous Neapolitan song with lyrics by journalist Peppino Turco set to music by composer Luigi Denza, commemorates its opening.

___________________________
2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

MOUNT VESUVIUS PAINTED BY ALBERT MARQUET (3)

https://wanderingvertexes.blogspot.com/2020/12/mount-vesuvius-painted-by-albert.html

ALBERT MARQUET (1875–1947),
Mount Vesuvius (1,281 m- 4,203 ft at present)
Italy

In La Baie de Naples et le Vésuve, 1909, oil on canvas, Tate London

About this painting

During his jounrey to Italy in 1909, Albert Marquet has painted Vesuvius several times, at different moment of the day and, each time with the same title, which doen'st make their identificationn very easy ! Here are too others examples already pusblished in this blog :

- La baie de Naples et le Vésuve, 1909, Pushkin museum, Moscow
- La baie de Naples et le Vésuve, 1909, Ermitage Museum, Sankt-Petersburg, Russia

The mountain
Mount Vesuvius (1,281 m - 4,203 ft at present) is one of those legendary and mythic mountains the Earth paid regularly tribute. Monte Vesuvio in Italian modern langage or Mons Vesuvius in antique Latin langage is a stratovolcano in the Gulf of Naples (Italy) about 9 km (5.6 mi) east of Naples and a short distance from the shore.
It is one of several volcanoes which form the Campanian volcanic arc. Vesuvius consists of a large cone partially encircled by the steep rim of a summit caldera caused by the collapse of an earlier and originally much higher structure.
Mount Vesuvius is best known for its eruption in AD 79 that led to the burying and destruction of the Roman antique cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and several other settlements. That eruption ejected a cloud of stones, ash, and fumes to a height of 33 km (20.5 mi), spewing molten rock and pulverized pumice at the rate of 1.5 million tons per second, ultimately releasing a hundred thousand times the thermal energy released by the Hiroshima bombing. At least 1,000 people died in the eruption. The only surviving eyewitness account of the event consists of two letters by Pliny the Younger to the historian Tacitus.
Vesuvius has erupted many times since and is the only volcano on the European mainland to have erupted within the last hundred years. Nowadays, it is regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of the population of 3,000,000 people living nearby and its tendency towards explosive eruptions (said Plinian eruptions). It is the most densely populated volcanic region in the world.
Vesuvius was formed as a result of the collision of two tectonic plates, the African and the Eurasian. The former was subducted beneath the latter, deeper into the earth. As the water-saturated sediments of the oceanic African plate were pushed to hotter depths in the earth, the water boiled off and caused the melting point of the upper mantle to drop enough to create partial melting of the rocks. Because magma is less dense than the solid rock around it, it was pushed upward. Finding a weak place at the Earth's surface it broke through, producing the volcano.
The area around Vesuvius was officially declared a national park on June 5, 1995. The summit of Vesuvius is open to visitors and there is a small network of paths around the mountain that are maintained by the park authorities on weekends.

The painter
Albert Marquet was a French painter, associated with the Fauvist movement. He initially became one of the Fauve painters and a lifelong friend of Henri Matisse. In 1890 Marquet moved to Paris to attend the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs, where he met Henri Matisse. They were roommates for a time, and they influenced each other's work. Marquet began studies in 1892 at the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris under Gustave Moreau, the famous symbolist artist. In 1905 he exhibited at the Salon d'Automne. Dismayed by the intense coloration in these paintings, critics reacted by naming the artists the "Fauves", i.e. the wild beasts. Although Marquet painted with the fauves for years, he used less bright and violent colours than the others, and emphasized less intense tones made by mixing complementaries, thus always as colors and never as grays.
From 1907 to his death, Marquet alternated between working in his studio in Paris (a city he painted a lot of times) and many parts of the European coast and in North Africa. He was most involved with Algeria and Algiers and Tunisia. He remained also impressed particularly with Naples and Venice where he painted the sea and boats, accenting the light over water. During his voyages to Germany and Sweden he painted the subjects he usually preferred: river and sea views, ports and ships, but also cityscapes.
Matisse said : "When I look at Hokusai, I think of Marquet—and vice versa ... I don't mean imitation of Hokusai, I mean similarity with him".

___________________________________________
2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

Thursday, August 8, 2019

VESUVIUS PAINTED BY THOMAS JONES

THOMAS JONES (1742-1803)

Mount Vesuvius (1,281m - 4,203ft)

Italy

In Mount Vesuvius from Torre dell Annunziata oil on canvas, 1783, Tate Gallery

The painter
Thomas Jones was a Welsh landscape painter, the pupil of Richard Wilson. He was best known in his lifetime as a painter of Welsh and Italian landscapes in the style of his master. However, Jones's reputation grew in the 20th century when more unconventional works by him, not originally intended for exhibition, came to light. Most notable among these is a series of views of Naples which he painted from 1782 to 1783. By breaking with the conventions of classical landscape painting in favour of direct observation, they look forward to the work of Camille Corot and the Barbizon School in the 19th century.

Jones made his first visit to Naples in September 1778, staying there for five months. He returned to Rome for a time, living in a house near the Spanish Steps built by Salvator Rosa. He took on a Danish widow called Maria Moncke as his "Maid Servant" in April 1779, eloping with her to Naples a year later. Then the largest city in Italy, Naples promised more opportunities for patronage than had Rome, and Jones sought the patronage of the British Ambassador Sir William Hamilton in particular.Maria gave birth to two daughters in Naples, Anna Maria (in 1780) and Elizabetha (in 1781). His autobiography, Memoirs of Thomas Jones of Penkerrig, went unpublished until 1951 but is now recognised as an important source of information on the 18th-century art world.

The mountain

___________________________________________

2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau

Friday, April 29, 2022

MOUNT VESUVIUS SEEN FROM SORRENTE BY ALFRED DE CURZON

ALFRED DE CURZON (1820-1895)
Mount Vesuvius (1,281 m- 4,203 ft at present)
Italy

In "Sorrente, devant la mer de Naples ", 1851, huile sur papier marouflé sur toile 24,5 x 33 cm,
Collection privée, courtesy Galerie d'Athènes, Paris

The painter
Alfred de Curzon is a French painter, grandson of Joseph-Emmanuel-Auguste-François de Lambertye and brother of Emmanuel Parent de Curzon. Alfred de Curzon's family is part of the aristocracy of western France. While he was a student, the painting Médée furieuse by Eugène Delacroix, exhibited at the Salon of 1838, made a strong impression on him. He tries his hand at pastel and decides to become a painter. He entered the 1 April 1840 at the School of Fine Arts in Paris in the studio of Michel Martin Drolling. On the advice of one of his classmates from the school, Louis Georges Brillouin (1817-1893), he changed studio to follow the lessons of Louis Cabat from 1845.
In 1849 he painted La Mort de Milon de Crotone. At the request of the Academy, he obtained from the minister the enjoyment of the pension of Rome for two years. There he met Alexandre Cabanel, Jean-Achille Benouville, François-Léon Benouville, Louis Français and Charles Busson who remained his friend. He travel to Greece in 1852 with the writer Edmond About and the architect Charles Garnier. Greek antiquity then strongly impregnated him and is found in many of his paintings.
He began at the Salon of 1843 with a painting entitled Landscape. He obtained a 2nd class medal in 1857, followed by recalls in 1859, 1861 and 1863. He was awarded a 3rd class medal at the Universal Exhibition of 1867.
Charles Baudelaire notes, in his Salon of 1845: "A serenade in a boat, - is one of the most distinguished things of the Salon. - The arrangement of all these figures is very happily conceived; the old man at the end of the boat, lying in the middle of the garlands, is a very pretty idea. - The compositions of M. Brillouin and that of M. Curzon have some analogy; they have this above all in common, that they are well drawn - and drawn with spirit."
Alfred de Curzon practiced all genres, but it was his landscapes that made him famous. Many drawings can be seen at the Sainte-Croix museum in Poitiers (France).

The mountain

Mount Vesuvius (1,281 m- 4,203 ft at present) is one of those legendary and mythic mountains the Earth paid regularly tribute. Monte Vesuvio in Italian modern langage or Mons Vesuvius in antique Latin langage is a stratovolcano in the Gulf of Naples (Italy) about 9 km (5.6 mi) east of Naples and a short distance from the shore.

_______________________________

2022 - Wandering Vertexes / Mountain painting
By Francis Rousseau

Friday, July 6, 2018

VESUVIUS PAINTED BY CLAUDE-LOUIS CHATELET

CLAUDE-LOUIS CHATELET (1753-1795)

Mount Vesuvius (1, 281m - 4,203 ft current)

Italy

In Vue du Vésuve et de la Baie de Naples, Oil on canvas, 1781, Private collection

The mountain

The painter
The french artist Claude-Louis Châtelet, died guillotined May 7, 1795, is a painter, draftsman and engraver French. He first distinguished himself by his contribution to the monumental work edited by the influential farmer general Jean-Benjamin de La Borde, Topographical Tables of Switzerland, commented by Baron Zurlauben around 1776. Then he became one of the favorite painters of Queen Marie-Antoinette, who commissioned him a number of illustrations of albums depicting the Trianon and its gardens, albums offered by the Queen to her distinguished visitors.
Châtelet is also known for many animated landscapes of Italy and England.
The paintings and drawings of Claude-Louis Châtelet reveal a technique, a talent and a style of a high degree of accomplishment. The characters animating the landscapes blend with charm and poetry in an atmosphere where dense foliage and fertile nature contrast with the geometric mastery of buildings and architectural elements. The games of light and shadow give these paintings a spatial depth and a perspective in which the gaze is lost, going from one group of characters to another and lingering on stair steps or some sumptuous abode. without having breathed the scent of a nature always present and reassuring. This painter, because of his short existence and his political engagements, has left posterity too limited a production to be retained by the history of art as an important figure in the painting of the eighteenth century French. However, his style and mastery, his connections and his talent, could have made, like Hubert Robert, one of the most eminent and endearing painters of this century, if only he had dedicated all his energy to the nobility of his art.

Thursday, November 29, 2018

MOUNT VESUVIUS PAINTED BY BYJEAN-DOMINIQUE INGRES

JEAN-DOMINIQUE INGRES (1780-1867)

Mount Vesuvius (1, 281m - 4,203 ft current)

Italy

In Caroline Murat, reine de Naples, 1814 oil on canvas 92 × 60 cm) Private owner

The painting
The portrait shows Queen Caroline Murat, wife of Joachim Murat and sister of Napoleon Ist, shortly before the fall of the kingdom led by her husband then King of Naples. She is shown "en pieds ", the body in profile, and wearing a black dress. She is holding a notebook on a table covered with green, and looks at the viewer. She is represented in the large cabinet of the Royal, Palace furnished in the antique style, framed by the large draped curtains. Behind her, a gold and crimson armchair. A large bay window faces the Bay of Naples, where Vesuvius can be seen from afar, from which a plume of smoke escapes. The portrait is signed lower left: Ingres Pxit Roma 18141.
Ingres left Rome in February 1814 to go to Naples, where he remained for three months. He works on the portrait of Queen Caroline Murat in July, as evidenced by a correspondence to Marcotte d'Argenteuil dated July 7, 1814: "I work in this moment-cy for the Queen of Naples. I just finished a little portrait of her ".
The work painted in 1814, is part of the series of portraits painted by Ingres in Italy, and mainly in Rome, from 1807, representing the models detached on a landscape background
Ingres began by drawing several preparatory studies, including a drawing of the face (Museum Ingres de Montauban), three studies for the dress and the hand, and several drawings of draperies, furniture, and a view of the Bay of Naples and Vesuvius (Ingres Museum).

The painter
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was a French Neoclassical painter.
Ingres was profoundly influenced by past artistic traditions and aspired to become the guardian of academic orthodoxy against the ascendant Romantic style. Although he considered himself a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, it is his portraits, both painted and drawn, that are recognized as his greatest legacy. His expressive distortions of form and space made him an important precursor of modern art, influencing Picasso, Matisse and other modernists.
Born into a modest family in Montauban, he travelled to Paris to study in the studio of David.
In 1802 he made his Salon debut, and won the Prix de Rome for his painting The Ambassadors of Agamemnon in the tent of Achilles. By the time he departed in 1806 for his residency in Rome, his style—revealing his close study of Italian and Flemish Renaissance masters—was fully developed, and would change little for the rest of his life. While working in Rome and subsequently Florence from 1806 to 1824, he regularly sent paintings to the Paris Salon, where they were faulted by critics who found his style bizarre and archaic. He received few commissions during this period for the history paintings he aspired to paint, but was able to support himself and his wife as a portrait painter and draughtsman.
He was finally recognized at the Salon in 1824, when his Raphaelesque painting of the Vow of Louis XIII was met with acclaim, and Ingres was acknowledged as the leader of the Neoclassical school in France. Although the income from commissions for history paintings allowed him to paint fewer portraits, his Portrait of Monsieur Bertin marked his next popular success in 1833. The following year, his indignation at the harsh criticism of his ambitious composition The Martyrdom of Saint Symphorian caused him to return to Italy, where he assumed directorship of the French Academy in Rome in 1835. He returned to Paris for good in 1841. In his later years he painted new versions of many of his earlier compositions, a series of designs for stained glass windows, several important portraits of women, and The Turkish Bath, the last of his several Orientalist paintings of the female nude, which he finished at the age of 83.

The mountain
Mount Vesuvius (1,281 meters- 4,203 ft current) is one of those legendary and mythic mountains the Earth paid regularly tribute. Monte Vesuvio in Italian modern langage or Mons Vesuvius in antique Latin langage is a stratovolcano in the Gulf of Naples (Italy) about 9 km (5.6 mi) east of Naples and a short distance from the shore.
It is one of several volcanoes which form the Campanian volcanic arc. Vesuvius consists of a large cone partially encircled by the steep rim of a summit caldera caused by the collapse of an earlier and originally much higher structure.
Mount Vesuvius is best known for its eruption in AD 79 that led to the burying and destruction of the Roman antique cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and several other settlements. That eruption ejected a cloud of stones, ash, and fumes to a height of 33 km (20.5 mi), spewing molten rock and pulverized pumice at the rate of 1.5 million tons per second, ultimately releasing a hundred thousand times the thermal energy released by the Hiroshima bombing. At least 1,000 people died in the eruption. The only surviving eyewitness account of the event consists of two letters by Pliny the Younger to the historian Tacitus.
Vesuvius has erupted many times since and is the only volcano on the European mainland to have erupted within the last hundred years. Nowadays, it is regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of the population of 3,000,000 people living nearby and its tendency towards explosive eruptions (said Plinian eruptions). It is the most densely populated volcanic region in the world.
Vesuvius was formed as a result of the collision of two tectonic plates, the African and the Eurasian. The former was subducted beneath the latter, deeper into the earth. As the water-saturated sediments of the oceanic African plate were pushed to hotter depths in the earth, the water boiled off and caused the melting point of the upper mantle to drop enough to create partial melting of the rocks. Because magma is less dense than the solid rock around it, it was pushed upward. Finding a weak place at the Earth's surface it broke through, producing the volcano.
The area around Vesuvius was officially declared a national park on June 5, 1995. The summit of Vesuvius is open to visitors and there is a small network of paths around the mountain that are maintained by the park authorities on weekends.
There is access by road to within 200 metres (660 ft) of the summit (measured vertically), but thereafter access is on foot only. There is a spiral walkway around the mountain from the road to the crater.
The first funicular cable car on Mount Vesuvius opened in 1880. It was later destroyed by the 1944 eruption. "Funiculì, Funiculà", a famous Neapolitan song with lyrics by journalist Peppino Turco set to music by composer Luigi Denza, commemorates its opening.

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2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

Sunday, June 2, 2019

VESUVIUS PAINTED BY GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE

GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE (1848-1894)

Vesuvius (1,281m - 4,203ft)

Italy

In Sur une route à Naples (c. 1872), Oil on canvas, 60 x 40 cm. Private Collection

About the painting

The mountain was not, strictly speaking, Caillebotte's main subject of interest ! He painted very little, (not to say) no mountains! The canvas above is his only known example and still represents a mountain (the Vesuvius) seized as by accident while he wants especially to paint the horse-drawn car which led him in this Neapolitan campaign to observe this most famous volcano under a nes angle. The result is a masterwork with this unexpected view of the volcano !

The mountain

The painter
The very important french painter Gustave Caillebotte, (known in US more than his own country) was a member and patron of the artists known as Impressionists,(or independents) although he painted in a more realistic manner than many others in the group. Caillebotte was noted for his early interest in photography as an art form.
With regard to the composition and painting style of his works, Caillebotte may be considered part of the first movement after Impressionism: Neo-Impressionism. The second period of Pointillism, whose main representative was Georges Seurat, announced its influence in the late works that Caillebotte painted at his country house in Petit Gennevilliers.

Caillebotte's style belongs to the School of Realism but was strongly influenced by his Impressionist associates. In common with his precursors Jean-François Millet and Gustave Courbet, as well his contemporary Degas, Caillebotte aimed to paint reality as it existed and as he saw it, hoping to reduce the inherent theatricality of painting. Perhaps because of his close relationship with so many of his peers, his style and technique vary considerably among his works, as if "borrowing" and experimenting, but not really sticking to any one style. At times, he seems very much in the Edgar Degas camp of rich-colored realism (especially his interior scenes); at other times, he shares the Impressionist commitment to "optical truth" and employs an impressionistic pastel-softness and loose brush strokes most similar to Renoir and Pissarro, although with a less vibrant palette.
The tilted ground common to these paintings is very characteristic of Caillebotte's work, which may have been strongly influenced by Japanese prints and the new technology of photography, although evidence of his use of photography is lacking. Cropping and "zooming-in", techniques that commonly are found in Caillebotte's oeuvre, may also be the result of his interest in photography, but may just as likely be derived from his intense interest in perspective effects. A large number of Caillebotte's works also employ a very high vantage point, including View of Rooftops - Snow (Vue de toits (Effet de neige) 1878, Boulevard Seen from Above (Boulevard vu d'en haut) 1880, and A Traffic Island (Un refuge, boulevard Haussmann), 1880.
Caillebotte is best known for his paintings of still life , water sports and urban Paris, The latter is almost unique among his works for its particularly flat colors and photo-realistic effect, which give the painting its distinctive and modern look, almost akin to American Realists such as Edward Hopper.

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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...

by Francis Rousseau

Thursday, September 21, 2017

MOUNT VESUVIUS PAINTED BY J.M.W. TURNER

J.M.W. TURNER (1775-1851)
Mount Vesuvius (1, 281m - 4,203 ft current)

Italy

In Mount Vesuvius in eruption,1817, oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, USA.

The mountain

Mount Vesuvius (1,281 meters- 4,203 ft current) is one of those legendary and mythic mountains the Earth paid regularly tribute. Monte Vesuvio in Italian modern langage or Mons Vesuvius in antique Latin langage is a stratovolcano in the Gulf of Naples (Italy) about 9 km (5.6 mi) east of Naples and a short distance from the shore.
It is one of several volcanoes which form the Campanian volcanic arc. Vesuvius consists of a large cone partially encircled by the steep rim of a summit caldera caused by the collapse of an earlier and originally much higher structure.
Mount Vesuvius is best known for its eruption in AD 79 that led to the burying and destruction of the Roman antique cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and several other settlements. That eruption ejected a cloud of stones, ash, and fumes to a height of 33 km (20.5 mi), spewing molten rock and pulverized pumice at the rate of 1.5 million tons per second, ultimately releasing a hundred thousand times the thermal energy released by the Hiroshima bombing. At least 1,000 people died in the eruption. The only surviving eyewitness account of the event consists of two letters by Pliny the Younger to the historian Tacitus.
Vesuvius has erupted many times since and is the only volcano on the European mainland to have erupted within the last hundred years. Nowadays, it is regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of the population of 3,000,000 people living nearby and its tendency towards explosive eruptions (said Plinian eruptions). It is the most densely populated volcanic region in the world.
Vesuvius was formed as a result of the collision of two tectonic plates, the African and the Eurasian. The former was subducted beneath the latter, deeper into the earth. As the water-saturated sediments of the oceanic African plate were pushed to hotter depths in the earth, the water boiled off and caused the melting point of the upper mantle to drop enough to create partial melting of the rocks. Because magma is less dense than the solid rock around it, it was pushed upward. Finding a weak place at the Earth's surface it broke through, producing the volcano.
he area around Vesuvius was officially declared a national park on June 5, 1995. The summit of Vesuvius is open to visitors and there is a small network of paths around the mountain that are maintained by the park authorities on weekends.
There is access by road to within 200 metres (660 ft) of the summit (measured vertically), but thereafter access is on foot only. There is a spiral walkway around the mountain from the road to the crater.
The first funicular cable car on Mount Vesuvius opened in 1880. It was later destroyed by the 1944 eruption. "Funiculì, Funiculà", a famous Neapolitan song with lyrics by journalist Peppino Turco set to music by composer Luigi Denza, commemorates its opening.

The painter

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

In his thirties, Turner travelled widely in Europe, starting with France and Switzerland in 1802 and studying in the Louvre in Paris in the same year. He made many visits to Venice. Turner's talent was recognized early in his life. Financial independence allowed Turner to innovate freely; his mature work is characterized by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint. According to David Piper's The Illustrated History of Art, his later pictures were called "fantastic puzzles." Turner was recognized as an artistic genius: influential English art critic John Ruskin described him as the artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature."

Turner's major venture into printmaking was the Liber Studiorum (Book of Studies), seventy prints that he worked on from 1806 to 1819. The Liber Studiorum was an expression of his intentions for landscape art. The idea was loosely based on Claude Lorrain's Liber Veritatis (Book of Truth), where Lorrain had recorded his completed paintings; a series of print copies of these drawings, by then at Devonshire House, had been a huge publishing success. Turner's plates were meant to be widely disseminated, and categorized the genre into six types: Marine, Mountainous, Pastoral, Historical, Architectural, and Elevated or Epic Pastoral. His printmaking was a major part of his output, and a museum is devoted to it, the Turner Museum in Sarasota, Florida, founded in 1974 by Douglas Montrose-Graem to house his collection of Turner prints.

Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his affection for humanity on the one hand (note the frequent scenes of people drinking or working or walking in the foreground), but its vulnerability and vulgarity amid the 'sublime' nature of the world on the other. 'Sublime' here means awe-inspiring, savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by man, evidence of the power of God – a theme that romanticist artists and poets were exploring in this period. Although these late paintings appear to be 'impressionistic' and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena.

Turner used pigments like carmine in his paintings, knowing that they were not long-lasting, despite the advice of contemporary experts to use more durable pigments. As a result, many of his colours have now faded greatly.

John Ruskin says in his "Notes" on Turner in March 1878 : "His true master was Dr Monro; to the practical teaching of that first patron and the wise simplicity of method of watercolour study, in which he was disciplined by him and companioned by Girtin, the healthy and constant development of the greater power is primarily to be attributed; the greatness of the power itself, it is impossible to over-estimate. "