THE BELUKHA MOUNTAIN BY NICHOLAS ROERICH

NICHOLAS ROERICH (1874-1947) 

 Belukha mountain  (4,506m - 14, 783 ft) 

Russia - Kazakhstan border 

In Victory Gorynych the Serpent ,1942, oil on canvas, Russian State Museum

About the painting
Zmei Gorynych (Змей Горыныч) is a legendary creature of Slavic mythology, the eternal enemy of the heavenly gods; is literally "the dragon of the mountain". Zmei is depicted as a serpent or a huge dragon spitting fire from its many heads (three, six, nine or twelve in different versions), which killed without reason and a symbol of disorder. It fulfills an important function in the Slavonic cosmogony. Legends say that he was defeated by Svarog during the creation of the world and used as a plow to draw the boundaries between the three spheres (Jav, Prav and Nav). Zmei was later relegated to Nav, the realm of the dead and the invisible. According to other sources, Zmei was a beneficent creature, protective of water and seeds.
In Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia and Montenegro, it is known as Zmaj (dragon), in Bulgaria  as Zmej, in Rumania as Zmeu and in Poland the name of this god is Żmij (viper). The fight between Zmei and Svarog can be compared to the battle between Tiamat and Marduk in Babylonian mythology. This painting by Nicholas Roerich represents  this fight settled with the Belukha mountain in the background, the highest peaks in the Altai Mountains.

The mountain
Belukha Mountain  (4,506 m - 14,783 ft), Russian: Белуха, lit "whitey", located in the Katun Mountains, is the highest peak of the Altai Mountains in Russia. It is part of the World Heritage Site entitled Golden Mountains of Altai. Belukha is a three-peaked mountain massif that rises along the border of Russia and Kazakhstan, just a few tens of miles north of the point where this border meets with the border of China. There are several small glaciers on the mountain, including Belukha Glacier. Of the two peaks, the eastern peak (4,506 m - 14,784 ft.) is higher than the western peak (4,440 m - 14,567 ft.).
Belukha was first climbed in 1914 by the Tronov brothers. Most ascents of the eastern peak follow the same southern route as that taken in the first ascent. Though the Altai is lower in elevation than other Asian mountain groups, it is very remote, and much time and planning are required for its approach. A team of scientists, traveled to this remote glacier in the summer of 2001 to assess the feasibility of studying the glacier and extracting ice cores at the site. A Swiss-Russian team also worked on the glacier in 2001. Research was carried out from 2001 to 2003; glaciological observations were made, and both shallow cores and cores to bedrock were extracted and analyzed (Olivier and others, 2003; Fujita and others, 2004). Based on tritium analysis to date, the deeper cores may contain as much as 3–5,000 years of climatic and environmental records.
Since 2008, one is required to apply for a special border zone permit in order to be allowed into the area (if travelling independently without using an agency). Foreigners should apply for the permit to regional FSB border guard office two months before the planned date.

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.

_______________________________
2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

THE CROTCHED MOUNTAIN PAINTED BY JOHN J. ENNEKING

JOHN JOSEPH ENNEKING  (1841-1916) 

Crotched Mountain (629 m - 2,063 ft)

United States of America (New Hampshire) 

In Crotched Mountain in October, oil on canvas, 1891

The mountain
Crotched Mountain (629 m- 2,063 ft) is a small mountain in western Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, in the United States. The summit of the mountain is in the town of Francestown, while the western slopes of the mountain rise in the town of Bennington, and a long southern ridge of the mountain is in Greenfield. The mountain was named for its appearance. Early settlers thought its V-shaped peaks resembled the fork or "crotch" of a tree.
The Crotched Mountain Ski & Ride occupies the northern slopes of the mountain. It has 25 trails, 5 chairlifts, and 900 feet (270 m) of vertical drop. The Crotched Mountain Rehabilitation Center occupies a portion of the mountain's southern ridge in Greenfield.
The mountain was the site of the world's first wind farm. In 1980, US Windpower installed 20 wind turbines rated at 30 kilowatts each, on the shoulder of Crotched Mountain. The company went out of business and the wind turbines were dismantled years ago.

The Painter 
John Joseph Enneking was an American Impressionist painter associated with the Boston School.
Enneking was born of German ancestry in Minster, Ohio. He was educated at Mount St. Mary's College, Cincinnati, served in the American Civil War in 1861-1862, studied art in New York and Boston, and gave it up because his eyes were weak, only to return to it after failing in the manufacture of tinware.
From 1873 to 1876 he studied in Münich under Schleich and Leier, and in Paris under Daubigny and Bonnat. In 1878-1879, he studied in Paris again and sketched in the Netherlands. Enneking is a plein air painter, and his favorite subject is the November twilight of New England, and more generally the half lights of early spring, late autumn, and winter dawn and evening.
Enneking died at Boston in 1916. The Enneking Parkway in Hyde Park, Massachusetts is named after Enneking.

URI ROTSTOCK PAINTED BY FRANÇOIS DIDAY

FRANÇOIS DIDAY (1802-1877)

Uri Rotstock (2,928 m - 9, 606ft) 

Switzerland

 In L'Uri Rotstock depuis Brunnen (matin), 1848, oil on canvas,  The Diday Foundation

The mountain 
The Uri Rotstock  (2,928 m - 9, 606ft)  is a mountain in the Uri Alps and the highest mountain within 10 km of Lake Lucerne. It lies in the area of ​​the Urner community Isenthal. The mountain is not developed, but there are some hiking trails and climbing opportunities.
It lies between the Engelbergertal and the Vierwaldstättersee.
In the south, separated by the Blüemlisalpfirn, from West to East the following peaks : Engelberger Rotstock ( 2,818 m  ), Wissigstock ( 2,887 m  ), Blackenstock ( 2,930 m ), Brunnistock ( 2,952 m). Its western flank falls into the Grosstal, its eastern flank into the Chlital, here is also the Chlitalerfirn. On its northern spur, which ends as Chulm south of Isenthal, is still the Schlieren ( 2,830 m ).

The painter 
François Diday is a Swiss painter. Originally from Graubünden, François Diday studied art at the Society of Arts. Landscapers such as Charles-Joseph Auriol, Joseph Hornung and Wolgang-Adam Toepffer also gave him lessons and trained him in their art.
In 1821, François Diday made a short stay in Paris  where he   he worked in 1823 at Antoine Gros's studio. In 1824  he received a small scholarship for a stay in Italy. His works are noticed by the French painter Alexandre-Auguste Robineau   Around 1830, François Diday opens his own studio and trains young painters. He takes the head of the School of Alpine painting in Geneva, criticized by the french painters as representing only mountain landscapes. The paintings by François Diday are characterized by a harmonious light that illuminates the landscape.
François Diday received awards, notably in Paris (gold medal in 1841 and Legion of honor in 1842 for his painting Le Lac de Brienz or Les Baigneuses) and in Vienna in 1873 (bronze medal at the Universal Exhibition). He then exhibited in Berlin and Switzerland.
In politics, he joined the city council of Geneva in 1854. Upon his death, he bequeathed part of his property to the city of Geneva through the Diday Foundation and the Society of Arts.
He is buried in the Cimetière des Rois in Geneva.

LUNGHU SHAN / 龙虎山 BY FANG CONGYI / 方從義

FANG CONGYI / 方從義  (ca. 1301 - after 1378) 

 Lunghu shan / 龙虎山  (150m - 290ft) 

China 

 In Cloudy Mountains (元 方從義 雲山圖 卷) ,  Handscroll, ink and color on paper, 1360, The MET 

About this painting  (from the MET)
According to Daoist geomantic beliefs, a powerful life energy pulsates through mountain ranges and watercourses in patterns known as longmo (dragon veins). In Cloudy Mountains, the painter's kinetic brushwork, wound up as if in a whirlwind, charges the mountains with an expressive liveliness that defies their physical structure. The great mountain range, weightless and dematerialized, resembles a dragon ascending into the clouds.

The mountain 
 Lunghu shan / 龙虎山  (150m - 290ft)  meaning Dragon Tiger Mountain, is located in Jiangxi, China. It is famous for being one of the birthplaces of Taoism, with many Taoist temples built upon the mountainside. It is particularly important to the Zhengyi Dao as it the Shangqing Temple and the Mansion of the Taoist Master are located here.  It is known as one of the Four Sacred Mountains of Taoism. Two of them are the temples of Immortal City  and Zheng Yi , all founded by Zhang Daoling, the Han Dynasty founder of the religion. There are more Taoist temples in nearby Shangqing Town.
Mount Longhu also has cultural significance has a historical burial site of the Guyue people, who placed their dead in hanging coffins on the mountains cliff faces.
In August 2010 UNESCO inscribed Mount Longhu on the World Heritage List as part of the complex of six sites that make up the China Danxia.
Mount Longhu can be reached from the nearby city of Yingtan.

The painter 
Fang Congyi /方從義  (1302-1393), courtesy name Wuyu (無隅), sobriquets Fanghu (方壺), Bumang Daoren (不芒道人), Jinmen Yuke (金門羽客) and Guigu Shanren (鬼谷山人), was a famed Chinese painter during the Yuan Dynasty. Fang was a native of Guixi, Jiangxi Province. In his youth he studied and became a Daoist priest, joining the Zhengyi Dao sect at his local temple. After the death of his principal instructor in the early 1340s, Fang traveled along the Yangtze River to the capital Khanbaliq, now Beijing. It was there that he began painting. He obtained a patron, and produced a number of works based on his travels. He traveled extensively in the north before settling down at the seat of the Orthodox Unity Daoist church, the Shangqing Temple on Mount Longhu (Dragon Tiger Mountain), Jiangxi province. Imbued with Daoist mysticism, he painted landscapes that "turned the shapeless into shapes and returned things that have shapes to the shapeless."

THE LAUTERHORN BY CASPAR WOLF

CASPAR WOLF (1735-1783) 

 Lauterhorn (2,472 m-8,110 ft)

Switzerland  

In The Lauter-Aar Glacier with the Stone Table in front, oil on canvas 1776, Kunstmuseum Basel

The mountain 

The Lauberhorn (2,472 m-8,110 ft) is a mountain in the Bernese Alps of Switzerland, located between Wengen and Grindelwald, north of the Kleine Scheidegg. The mountain is best known for the Lauberhorn World Cup alpine ski races, held annually in mid-January above Wengen. The downhill course is currently (as of 2016) the longest in the world; its length of 4.48 km (2.78 mi) results in run times of two and a half minutes.The Lauberhorn ski races (downhill, slalom, and combined) are among the highest-attended winter sports events in the world, attracting around 30,000 spectators each year.

The painter 

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

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

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

GRAND TETON (1) BY EVE DREWELOWE

 EVE DREWELOWE (1899-1988)

Grand Teton  (4,199 m - 13,775 ft)

United States of America  (Wyoming)

 In The Tetons, Wyoming,  oil on canvas, 1936, CU Art Museum, University of Colorado Boulder,

The mountain 
Grand Teton (4,199 m - 13,775 ft) is the highest mountain in Grand Teton National Park in Northwest Wyoming, and a classic destination in American mountaineering. It is the highest point of the Teton Range, and the second highest peak in the U.S. state of Wyoming after Gannett Peak. The mountain is entirely within the Snake River drainage basin, which it feeds by several local creeks and glaciers.The Teton Range is a subrange of the Rocky Mountains, which extend from southern Alaska to northern New Mexico.
Grand Teton's name was first recorded as Mount Hayden by the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition of 1870. However, the name "the Grand Teton" had early currency. The Edition of April, 1901 of the USGS 1:125,000 quadrangle map of the area shows "Grand Teton" as the name of the peak. A United States National Park named "Grand Teton National Park" was established by law in 1929. By 1931, the name Grand Teton Peak was in such common usage that it was recognized by the USGS Board on Geographic Names. Another shift in usage led the Board to shorten the name on maps to Grand Teton in 1970.
The origin of the name is disputed. The most common explanation is that "Grand Teton" means "large teat" in French, named by either French-Canadian or Iroquois members of an expedition led by Donald McKenzie of the North West Company. However, other historians disagree, and claim that the mountain was named after the Teton Sioux tribe of Native Americans.

The painter 
 Eve Drewelowe was an American painter. Her career spanned six decades and produced more than 1,000 works of art in oil, watercolor, pen and ink and other media in styles that included impressionism, social realism and abstraction.
Despite dabbling with other artistic styles, Drewelowe always showed an inclination toward landscapes.  She once said: “my waking thought from an embryo on was my need to be an artist.” 
Though never known to have used the word to describe herself, Eve Drewelowe is often considered a feminist artist. Her personal life exhibited feminist themes: the artist retained her maiden name and publicly stated a disinterest in housework and parenting. Drewelowe chose not to take her husband’s last name because in her opinion it should not matter to others whether she is married or not. When Drewelowe and Van Ek returned from their travels and started building a house together.  She did not want to be involved in the pleasantries of being the dean’s wife, especially hosting dinner parties, so she specified to have the house built lacking a dining room.  She always maintained that she did not want to have children of her own, much to her mother’s dismay.
Although Drewelowe is mainly renowned in Colorado and Iowa, she had solo exhibitions all over the country. Her work was shown at National Association of Women Artists exhibitions, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Denver Art Museum, the National Museum of Women in the Arts and numerous other esteemed institutions. Although women had been in the profession of art for 20–30 years at the beginning of Drewelowe’s career, she still faced opposition and sexism. Critics believe that she could have been much more acclaimed had she not been a woman and had she not fallen ill at the peak of her career. Others believe that her “reincarnation” and transition to abstract paintings increased Drewelowe’s popularity as an artist by keeping her relevant in an evolving artistic world.

ROY'S PEAK BY JOHN TURNBULL THOMSON

JOHN TURNBULL THOMSON (1821-1884) 

Roy 's peak  (1,578m - 5,177ft) 

New Zealand  (South Island) 

In Lake Wanaka from Trig Hill with Mt Roy's Peak in the background, oil on canvas, 1857

The mountain 
Roy's Peak  (1,578m - 5,177ft)  is one of the mountains located on the west bank of Lake Wanaka in the South Island of New Zealand.  At the top of Roy's Peak there are a couple of radio antennas to spoil the fantastic view.. it offers the most  spectacular view on the lake just after  5 hours walk. The start of Roys Peak walk is only 6 Km from Wanaka. From Roys peak you will get the best ever views of the South Island Lakes and Wanaka town. Roys Peak is an exposed alpine track. During the winter you could get caught out in a snow blizzard.

The painter 
John Turnbull Thomson was a British civil engineer and artist who played an instrumental role in the development of the early infrastructure of nineteenth-century Singapore and New Zealand.
After his father was killed in a hunting accident in 1830, the young Thomson and his mother went to live in Abbey St. Bathans, Berwickshire. He was educated at Wooler and Duns Academy, later spending some time attached to Marischal College, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh University before studying engineering at Peter Nicholson's School of Engineering at Newcastle-on-Tyne.
Thomson arrived in the Malay Straits in 1838 and was employed by the East India Survey. In 1841 he was appointed Government Surveyor at Singapore and in 1844 became Superintendent of Roads and Public Works. He was responsible for the design and construction of a number of notable engineering works including bridges, roads, and hospitals. His outstanding achievement was the erection of the Horsburgh Lighthouse on Pedra Branca. In 1853 his health failed and he returned to England where he studied modern engineering techniques, and travelled widely through Britain and the Continent inspecting engineering works. Early in 1856 he emigrated to New Zealand, where he worked as Chief Surveyor of the Otago Province until 1873. From 1876 until 1879 he was Surveyor-General of New Zealand. He was also the original surveyor of the city of Invercargill.
From 1856 until 1858 Thomson surveyed and explored large sections of the interior of the South Island, covering most of the southern half of the island.
He was also a amateur painter of landscapes, working mostly in oils. Almost known for the interisting historical topographical viewpoint of his paintings, he was long regarded, wrongly, as a painter of little interest.

THE MONT BLANC BY FRIEDRICH WILHELM MORITZ

FRIEDRICH WILHELM MORITZ (1783-1855)

The Mont Blanc (4,808 m - 15,776 ft)

  France - Italy  border

In Le mont Blanc vu de Sallanches, 1831, watercolour, collection Paul Payot 

The mountain 

Mont Blanc (in French) or Monte Bianco (in Italian)  both meaning "White Mountain", is the highest mountain (4,808.73 m - 15,777 ft) in the Alps and the highest in Europe after the Caucasus peaks. It  is ranked 11th in the world in topographic prominence.  The Mont Blanc is one of the Seven Summit, which includes the highest mountains of each of the seven continents. Summiting all of them is regarded as a mountaineering challenge, first achieved on April 30, 1985 by Richard Bass.  

The 7 highest summit, (which are obviously 8 with 2 in Europe !) are :  

Mount Everest (8,848m), Aconcagua (6,961m), Mt Denali or Mc Kinley (6,194m),  Kilimandjaro (5,895m), Mt Elbrus (5,642m), Mount Vinson (4,892m) and Mount Kosciuszko  (2,228m) in Australia.

The mountain lies in a range called the Graian Alps, between the regions of Aosta Valley, Italy, and Savoie and Haute-Savoie, France. The location of the summit is on the watershed line between the valleys of Ferret and Veny in Italy and the valleys of Montjoie, and Arve in France. The Mont Blanc massif is popular for mountaineering, hiking, skiing, and snowboarding.

The three towns and their communes which surround Mont Blanc are Courmayeur in Aosta Valley, Italy, and Saint-Gervais-les-Bains and Chamonix in Haute-Savoie, France.  A cable car ascends and crosses the mountain range from Courmayeur to Chamonix, through the Col du Géant. Constructed beginning in 1957 and completed in 1965, the 11.6 km (7¼ mi) Mont Blanc Tunnel runs beneath the mountain between these two countries and is one of the major trans-Alpine transport routes.

Since the French Revolution, the issue of the ownership of the summit has been debated. 

From 1416 to 1792, the entire mountain was within the Duchy of Savoy. In 1723 the Duke of Savoy, Victor Amadeus II, acquired the Kingdom of Sardinia. The resulting state of Sardinia was to become preeminent in the Italian unification.[ In September 1792, the French revolutionary Army of the Alps under Anne-Pierre de Montesquiou-Fézensac seized Savoy without much resistance and created a department of the Mont-Blanc. In a treaty of 15 May 1796, Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia was forced to cede Savoy and Nice to France. In article 4 of this treaty it says: "The border between the Sardinian kingdom and the departments of the French Republic will be established on a line determined by the most advanced points on the Piedmont side, of the summits, peaks of mountains and other locations subsequently mentioned, as well as the intermediary peaks, knowing: starting from the point where the borders of Faucigny, the Duchy of Aoust and the Valais, to the extremity of the glaciers or Monts-Maudits: first the peaks or plateaus of the Alps, to the rising edge of the Col-Mayor". This act further states that the border should be visible from the town of Chamonix and Courmayeur. However, neither the peak of the Mont Blanc is visible from Courmayeur nor the peak of the Mont Blanc de Courmayeur is visible from Chamonix because part of the mountains lower down obscure them. A Sardinian Atlas map of 1869 showing the summit lying two thirds in Italy and one third in France.

After the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna restored the King of Sardinia in Savoy, Nice and Piedmont, his traditional territories, overruling the 1796 Treaty of Paris. Forty-five years later, after the Second Italian War of Independence, it was replaced by a new legal act. This act was signed in Turin on 24 March 1860 by Napoleon III and Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy, and deals with the annexation of Savoy (following the French neutrality for the plebiscites held in Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna to join the Kingdom of Sardinia, against the Pope's will). A demarcation agreement, signed on 7 March 1861, defines the new border. With the formation of Italy, for the first time Mont Blanc is located on the border of France and Italy.

The 1860 act and attached maps are still legally valid for both the French and Italian governments. One of the prints from the 1823 Sarde Atlas  positions the border exactly on the summit edge of the mountain (and measures it to be 4,804 m (15,761 ft) high). The convention of 7 March 1861 recognises this through an attached map, taking into consideration the limits of the massif, and drawing the border on the icecap of Mont Blanc, making it both French and Italian.Watershed analysis of modern topographic mapping not only places the main summit on the border, but also suggests that the border should follow a line northwards from the main summit towards Mont Maudit, leaving the southeast ridge to Mont Blanc de Courmayeur wholly within Italy.

Although the Franco-Italian border was redefined in both 1947 and 1963, the commission made up of both Italians and French ignored the Mont Blanc issue. In the early 21st century, administration of the mountain is shared between the Italian town of Courmayeur and the French town of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, although the larger part of the mountain lies within the commune of the latter.

The artist 

Frédéric- Wilhelm Moritz (probably a cousin of painter Gabriel Lory fils (1784-1846) is a watercolourist and a teacher.  Not a lot of information about him expect he resided in Florence until 1831, depeciting the city on the Arno in the background of many of his watercolours. He made a lot of watercolours of Alps mountains and landscapes seen for Switzerland and Italy. 

MYOKO-SAN BY ITO TAKASHI

ITO TAKASHI (1894-1982)

Mount Myoko or Myoko-san  (2, 454 m - 8, 051ft) 

Japan 

 In Myokosan at dawn, print on paper, Private collection 

The Mountain 
Mount Myōkō (2, 454 m - 8, 051ft)  or Myōkō-san  (妙高山) is an active stratovolcano in Honshu, Japan. It is situated at the southwest of Myōkō city, Niigata Prefecture, and a part of Joshinetsu Kogen National Park. Mount Myōkō is listed as one of 100 Famous Japanese Mountains, and together with Mount Yahiko, it is well known as the "famous mountain" of Niigata Prefecture.
Echigofuji (越後富士) is another name given to this mountain. Being close to the border with Nagano Prefecture, it is linked to those on the Nagano side as one of the Five Peaks in Hokushin. The mountain was originally named Mount Koshinonaka  koshinonakayama) but was later changed to Mount Myōkō or Myōkōsan.
Mount Myōkō was formed beginning about 300,000 years ago, in a series of eruptions producing a broad spectrum of lava types including basalt, andesite, and dacite. Its maximum height is estimated to have been between 2,800 metres (9,200 ft) and 2,900 metres (9,500 ft), but it presently reaches only 2,454 metres (8,051 ft). Around 19,000 years ago, the top was blown off in a major eruption, forming a 3 km (2 mi) wide caldera. About 6,000 years ago, the central crater developed and assumed its present shape. A lava dome forms the volcano's present summit. The most recent eruptions about 4,300 years ago produced pyroclastic flows down the eastern flanks. Present activity is solfataric from fumaroles near the lava dome, where sulfur was once mined.
There are onsen and ski resorts at the foot of the mountain, including Akakura, Suginohara and Ikenotaira.
The mountain appears invariably in school songs of elementary and middle schools in the Jōetsu Region.

The artist

Itō Takashi was born in Kama, Shizuoka Prefecture.  He was one of the lesser known landscape artists who designed prints for the shin hanga publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō. Like several other print artists of this period, including Ito Shinsui (1898-1972) and Kawase Hasui (1883-1957), Ito Takashi studied painting under Kaburagi Kiyokata (1878-1973). He graduated from the Kyoto Koto Kogei (Higher Polytechnic) School of Designing where he studied Yoga (Western-style painting) with Totori Eiki (1873-1943), the Koto Kogei Gakko (Kyoto Higher Technical Art School) where he studied Nihonga (traditional Japanese-style painting) with Takeuchi Seihō (1864-1942) and the Tokyo Academy of Fine Arts where he studied Nihonga with painter Yuki Somei (1875-1957). Takashi primarily worked as a painter and started making color woodblock prints in 1922, which he did intermittently throughout the rest of his career.  He exhibited paintings at the Teiten.  He designed about 85 woodblock prints from the early 1920's through 1965.

Many of Takashi's early woodblock prints were only printed in one or two colors, because he was still experimenting with composition and design. These prints were probably not widely distributed. In 1923, a devastating earthquake struck Tokyo destroying the blocks for Takashi's early prints. However, at least one print, Ferry at Odai, Tokyo, was recarved by Watanabe's craftsmen and reprinted for many years afterward.

Many of Takashi's prints are idealistic images that emphasize the beauty of the unspoiled Japanese landscape. He enjoyed depicting dramatic seasonal and weather phenomena and often used bright, almost surreal colors to emphasize these changes. Occasionally people are part of his designs, but they are always incidental, solitary figures. A typical print, Takegawa River at Dawn, shows man living in harmony with nature. Takashi's prints evoke the Japan of old and represent the height of romantic shin hanga landscapes.

Watanabe describes Ito as an artist who experimented frequently with printing and overprinting, and that he also carved one design himself entitled Sinking Sun which illustrated the courtyard of Tokyo Imperial University (present-day University of Tokyo.)  Sinking Sun was apparently not published by Watanabe and was distributed by Ito to members of the Edo-Picture Appreciation Society.  Watanabe also states that at the time of the Great Kanto Earthquake in September 1923 a number of trial prints by Ito, done in conjunction with Watanabe's printers, were in progress.  They were subsequently abandoned due to the destruction of his shop premises.

GIEWONT PAINTED BY JAN STANISLAWSKI

JAN STANISLAWSKI (1860-1907)

Giewont (1,895 m- 6, 217 ft)

Poland

In  Evening under Koziniec, oil on canvas, 1906  

The mountains 

Giewont is a mountain massif in the Tatra Mountains of Poland. It  is 1,895 m - at its highest.

The massif has three peaks (all m/metres in AMSL):

- Great Giewont - Wielki Giewont (1,895 m- 6, 217 ft)

- Long Giewont - Długi Giewont (1,867 m- 6, 125 ft)

- Small Giewont -  Polish Mały Giewont (1,728 m - 5,669 ft)

There is a mountain pass located between Great and Long Giewont, known as Szczerba (1,823 m-  5, 980 ft).  Long Giewont and Great Giewont are situated at a higher altitude than the nearby town of Zakopane, making them clearly visible from that city.

On Great Giewont, there is a 15 m steel cross (erected in 1901) - the site of religious pilgrimages. The area is notorious for its hazardous nature during thunderstorms, so this should be taken into consideration when approaching the summit.

The first recorded ascent to Giewont's summit was undertaken in 1830 by Franciszek Herbich and Aleksander Zawadzki (a19th century explorer). The first winter ascent of Giewont occurred in 1904 by a group of five mountaineers led by Mariusz Zaruski. Nowadays the climbing on Giewont is strictly banned. On the other hand, hiking on the hiking trails is allowed and the access (except the winter) is not difficult hence Giewont is a very popular destination among amblers and Sunday tourists. In the summer up to few thousands tourists a day ascend the top.

Giewont lies in the area of the Polish Tatra National Park (Tatrzański Park Narodowy). In Polish folklore it is associated with a legend about oversleeping knights, who will awake when Poland is in danger. 

The painter 

Jan Stanisławski was a Polish modernist painter, art educator, founder and member of various innovative art groups and literary societies. He began to learn painting at the art studio in Warsaw which later gave rise to the School of Fine Arts, under Wojciech Gerson.  In 1885, he continued his studies in Paris under Charles Emile Auguste Durand. While based in Paris, he travelled much, visiting Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and eastern Galicia.
His early works were exhibited at the inauguration of the Salon du Champ-de-Mars in Paris in 1890 and at the Kraków Society of Friends of Fine Arts in 1892. In the 1890s, he travelled extensively and his sketchbooks filled up with drawings from Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Kraków, and various places in Ukraine.  In 1897, he initiated and helped organise the Separate Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture at Kraków’s Cloth Hall. That year, he became a teacher of landscape painting at the School of Fine Arts in Kraków, and in 1906 – after the school was upgraded to an academy in 1900 – was granted full professorship and also taught at Teodor Axentowicz’s Private School of Painting and Drawing for Women and at Teofila Certowicz’s Art School for Women in Kraków.
He co-founded the Society of Polish Artists "Sztuka" ("Art") in Kraków in 1897.  In 1898, he became a member of the Viennese Secession, and his works were exhibited among theirs in 1901, 1902 and 1905. In 1901, he became a founding member of the Polish Applied Arts Society. He worked in the Wawel Castle Reconstruction Committee and was involved in the activities of the Green Balloon (Zielony Balonik) Cabaret. After his death, two exhibitions were opened at the Palace of Art by the Kraków Society of Friends of Fine Arts in November 1907, one to show 154 of his oil paintings, as well as drawings and watercolours, and the other to present the works of his numerous outstanding students.
_______________________________
2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MOUNT EREBUS BY HERBERT PONTING

HERBERT PONTING (1870-1935) 

Mount Erebus  (3, 794 m - 12, 448ft)

Antarctica (Ross Island)

In Mt. Erebus and a Dome Cloud, Scott Expedition, Antarctica 1911

The photographer 

Herbert George Ponting, FRGS  was a professional photographer. He is best known as the expedition photographer and cinematographer for Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova Expedition to the Ross Sea and South Pole (1910–1913). In this role, he captured some of the most enduring images of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

As a member of the shore party in early 1911, Ponting helped set up the Terra Nova Expedition's Antarctic winter camp at Cape Evans, Ross Island. The camp included a tiny photographic darkroom. Although the expedition came more than 20 years after the invention of photographic film, Ponting preferred high-quality images taken on glass plates.

Ponting was one of the first men to use a portable movie camera in Antarctica. The primitive device, called a cinematograph, could take short video sequences. Ponting also brought some autochrome plates to Antarctica and took some of the first known color still photographs there.

The expedition's scientists studied the behavior of large Antarctic animals, especially killer whales, seals, and penguins. Ponting tried to get as close as possible to these animals, both on the Terra Nova in the sea ice and later on Ross Island, and narrowly escaped death on one occasion in early 1911 when a pod of eight killer whales broke up the ice floe in McMurdo Sound on which he was standing.

During the 1911 winter, Ponting took many flash photographs of Scott and the other members of the expedition in their Cape Evans hut. With the start of the 1911–12 sledging season, Ponting's field work began to come to an end. As a middle-aged man, he was not expected to help pull supplies southward over the Ross Ice Shelf for the push to the South Pole. Ponting photographed other members of the shore party setting off for what was expected to be a successful trek. After 14 months at Cape Evans, Ponting, along with eight other men, boarded the Terra Nova in February 1912 to return to civilization, arrange his inventory of more than 1,700 photographic plates, and shape a narrative of the expedition. Ponting's illustrated narrative would be waiting for Captain Scott to use for lectures and fundraising in 1913.

The catastrophic end of "Scott's Last Expedition" also affected Ponting's later life and career. When the Terra Nova had sailed south in 1910, it had left massive debts behind. It was expected that Scott would return from the South Pole as a celebrity and that he could use moving images from his expedition in a one-man show. Ponting's cinematograph sequences, pieced out with magic lantern slides, were to have been a key element in the expedition's financial payback.

However, when the bodies of Scott and his companions were discovered in their tent on the Ross Ice Shelf in November 1912, their diaries and journals were also found. These records described the explorers' final days while suffering from exposure and malnutrition, and their desperate effort to get to a depot of food and fuel that could have saved them. Scott knew he was doomed, and used his final hours to write pleas to his countrymen to look after the welfare of the expedition's widows and survivors.

The eloquent appeals, upon publication in the British press, wrung massive donations from the public. The gifts repaid the entire cost of the expedition, provided large annuities (carefully doled out by expedition status and rank) for the widows and survivors, and left a substantial surplus for eventual use as the startup endowment of the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI), an affiliate of Cambridge University.

Under these conditions, Ponting's Antarctic work took on a tragic overtone and became a memorial to Scott and his companions rather than a celebration. It was, however, used extensively in the press and exhibited at the Fine Art Society, Bond Street, shown in venues all over Britain and used in numerous lectures by Ponting and other expedition members (including at Buckingham Palace and the Royal Albert Hall). When World War I began Ponting tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade the War Office to make use of his skills as a photographer and war correspondent, but his age was cited as a reason for his being rejected for war service. Copies of his films of Scott were shown to soldiers at the front who were, according to an army chaplain, moved by the heroism of Scott and his men.

With the conclusion of the war, Ponting's archive drew a nibble of interest. He published The Great White South, the photographic narrative of the expedition, in 1921 which was a popular success, and produced two films based upon his surviving cinematograph sequences, The Great White Silence (1924 - silent) and Ninety Degrees South (1933 - sound). He also lectured extensively on the Antarctic. These works brought him little personal recompense but he continued to work on inventions related to the 'movies', including a special effects machine which was used in the English language version of "Emil and the Detectives" (1935). Ponting died in London in 1935; his photographs were sold to raise funds to pay for medical and other expenses.

The Scott Polar Research Institute purchased the Ponting Collection in 2004 for Ј533,000.

 In 2009, SPRI and publisher Salto Ulbeek platinum-printed and published a selection of the Collection. The Great White Silence was restored by the British Film Institute and re-released in 2011. During the period of the Scott expedition centenary (2010-3) his work was widely published and exhibited, reaching new audiences.

In addition, one of Ponting's photographic darkrooms was reconstructed in the collections of the Ferrymead Heritage Park in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The mountain 

Mount Erebus (3, 794 m - 12, 448ft), not to be confused with Mount Elbrus is the second-highest volcano in Antarctica (after Mount Sidley) and the southernmost active volcano on Earth. It is the sixth highest ultra mountain on an island, located on Ross Island, which is also home to three inactive volcanoes:  Mount Terror, Mount Bird, and Mount Terra Nova.

The volcano has been active since c. 1.3 million years ago and is the site of the Mount Erebus Volcano Observatory run by the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.

Mount Erebus was discovered on January 27, 1841 (and observed to be in eruption) by polar explorer Sir James Clark Ross who named it and its companion, Mount Terror, after his ships, Erebus and Terror (which were later used by Sir John Franklin on his disastrous Arctic expedition). Erebus is a dark region in Hades in Greek mythology. Present with Ross on the Erebus was the young Joseph Hooker, future president of the Royal Society and close friend of Charles Darwin. Erebus was an Ancient Greek primordial deity of darkness, the son of Chaos.

The mountain was surveyed in December 1912 by a science party from Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition who also collected geological samples. Two of the camp sites they used have been recognised for their historic significance:

- Upper “Summit Camp” site (HSM 89) consists of part of a circle of rocks, which were probably used to weight the tent valances.

- Lower “Camp E” site (HSM 90) consists of a slightly elevated area of gravel as well as some aligned rocks, which may have been used to weight the tent valances.

They have been designated Historic Sites or Monuments following a proposal by the United Kingdom, New Zealand and the United States to the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting.

Mount Erebus is classified as a polygenetic stratovolcano. The bottom half of the volcano is a shield and the top half is a stratocone. The composition of the current eruptive products of Erebus is anorthoclase-porphyritic tephritic phonolite and phonolite, which are the bulk of exposed lava flow on the volcano.  Erebus is the world's only presently erupting phonolite volcano.

Researchers spent more than three months during the 2007–08 field season installing an unusually dense array of seismometers around Mount Erebus to listen to waves of energy generated by small, controlled blasts from explosives they buried along its flanks and perimeter and to record scattered seismic signals generated by lava lake eruptions and local ice quakes. By studying the refracted and scattered seismic waves, the scientists produced an image of the uppermost (top few km) of the volcano to understand the geometry of its "plumbing" and how the magma rises to the lava lake. These results demonstrated a complex upper-volcano conduit system with appreciable upper-volcano magma storage to the northwest of the lava lake at depths hundreds of meters below the surface.

Mount Erebus' summit crater rim was first achieved by members of Sir Ernest Shackleton's party; Professor Edgeworth David, Sir Douglas Mawson, Dr Alister Mackay, Jameson Adams, Dr Eric Marshall and Phillip Brocklehurst (who did not reach the summit), in 1908.

Its first known solo ascent and the first winter ascent was accomplished by British mountaineer Roger Mear on 7 June 1985, a member of the "In the Footsteps of Scott" expedition.

On January 19–20, 1991, Charles J. Blackmer, an iron-worker for many years at McMurdo Station and the South Pole, accomplished a solo ascent in approximately seventeen hours completely unassisted via snow mobile and on foot.

In 1992 the inside of the volcano was explored by Dante I, an eight legged tethered robotic explorer. Dante was designed to acquire gas samples from the magma lake inside the inner crater of Mount Erebus.  Unfortunately, Dante I had not yet reached the bottom of the crater and so no data of volcanic significance was recorded.

EL TUNGURAHUA & EL COTOPAXI PAINTED BY FREDERIC-EDWIN CHURCH

FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH  (1826-1900) 

Cotopaxi  (5, 897 m - 19, 347 ft)

Tungurahua (5, 023 m - 16, 460 ft)  

Ecuador

In The Andes of Ecuador, oil on canvas, c.1855, Reynolda House, Winston Salem (North Carolina)

About this painting 

“Painted after Frederic Edwin Church’s first trip to Ecuador in 1853, The Andes of Ecuador combines the scientific and religious concerns of Church’s time in one grand panorama. The infinite botanical detail, the terrifying depths of the abyss, and the overwhelming sense of unlimited space combine to communicate a powerful sense of the sublime.”  The painting encourages both distanced and close viewing through a dramatic sweeping vista that contains several small vignettes and seemingly endless details. Two figures in the left foreground pray in front of an archaic stone cross, colorful birds flocking in a palm tree above them. This scene is balanced on the right by cascades of water and a small lake. Snow-capped peaks in the background—Tungurahua on the  right and the cone of Cotopaxi in the mist on the left—frame the distant view. The white-hot light of a centrally placed sun permeates a warm palette of sienna browns and lush greens.

Church depicted various plant and animal species with exactness while imbuing the painting with an explicit Christian iconography, mirroring contemporary thinking about science and religion. Through his overt allusions to Christianity within the Ecuadorian landscape, “Church was intimating that Americans inhabited a new Eden, a new promised land, and in standing before this sublime grandeur one enjoyed the metaphoric presence of Genesis.”  From the llamas grazing in the center foreground to the distant snowy peaks, the multiple ecosystems correspond to Alexander Von Humboldt’s belief in the harmony of nature in which biology, botany, and geology coalesce to determine vegetation. His theories were popular with artists of the nineteenth century, who saw in them a way to reconcile God’s divinity with scientific advancements. In the Cotopaxi region of Ecuador both Humboldt and Church found in one locale perennial summers—the tropics—juxtaposed with ice-covered volcanic mountains.

A critic writing for The Crayon in 1855 acclaimed the canvas Church’s “most important work yet,” and a student recalled how he painted “with a rapidity and precision which were simply inconceivable by one who had not seen him at work.”  In addition, The Andes of Ecuador is an early masterpiece of Luminism, a style prevalent in the late nineteenth century that consisted of radiant, light-filled quiet vistas.

 *Description note  from the  Reynolda House, Museum of American Art 

The mountains 

Cotopaxi  (5, 897 m - 19, 347 ft) (on left in the mist in this painting) is an active stratovolcano in the Andes Mountains. It  is located in the Latacunga canton of Cotopaxi Province, about 50 km (31 mi) south of Quito, and 33 km (21 mi) northeast of the city of Latacunga, Ecuador, in South America.  It is the second highest summit in Ecuador. It is one of the world's highest volcanoes. Many sources claim that Cotopaxi means "Neck of the Moon" in an indigenous language, but this is unproven. The mountain was honored as a "Sacred Mountain" by local Andean people, even prior to the Inca invasion in the 15th century. Most of the time, Cotopaxi is clearly visible on the skyline from Quito and is part of the chain of volcanoes around the Pacific plate known as the Pacific Ring of Fire. 

Tungurahua (5, 023 m - 16, 460 ft)   meaning "Throat of Fire" from Panzaleo, is an active stratovolcano located in the Cordillera Oriental of Ecuador. The volcano gives its name to the province of Tungurahua. Volcanic activity restarted on August 19, 1999, and is ongoing as of 2013, with several major eruptions since then, the last starting on 1 February 2014. It is located 140 kilometres (87 mi) south of the capital Quito. Nearby notable mountains are Chimborazo (6,310 m - 20,700 ft) and El Altar (5,319 m -17,451 ft). It rises above the small thermal springs town of Baños de Agua Santa (1,800 m -5,900 ft) which is located at its foot 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) to the north. Tungurahua is part of the Sangay National Park. Tungurahua's top is snow-covered and did feature a small summit glacier which melted away after the increase of volcanic activity in 1999.

During their seven-year-long South America expedition (1868 to 1876), the German volcanologists Alphons Stübel and Wilhelm Reiss climbed Cotopaxi (Reiss with Angel Escobar; 28 November 1872) and Tungurahua (Stübel with Eusebio Rodríguez; 9 February 1873).

The Painter 

The second generation of the Hudson River School took landscape painting to a new level. Foremost among them was Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), who expanded the size and grandeur of his canvases and broadened their scope by traveling far afield. His adventurous spirit led him from the high peaks of the Andes to the icebergs of Newfoundland. His skills as an artist and showman complemented his dramatic compositions and spectacular use of light and color. The resulting paintings appealed to the expansionist, scientific, and religious sensibilities at mid-century and remain nationalistic icons of America and her art.

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, to a well-off family, Church’s artistic prowess was nurtured at an early age. From 1844–1846 he was a student of Thomas Cole, the premier painter of American landscape, in Catskill, New York. During his time with Cole, Church honed his painting skills through close observation of nature, sketching the quintessential American landscape, the Hudson River Valley.

 In his Book of the Artists, Henry Tuckerman said of Church: “His great attribute is skill; he goes to nature, not so much with the tenderness of a lover or the awe of a worshipper, as with the determination, the intelligence, the patient intrepidity of a student; he is keenly on the watch for facts, and resolute in their transfer to art.” 

After Cole’s sudden death in 1848, Church assumed his mentor’s place as a leading figure of the Hudson River School. That same year he was elected the youngest associate of the National Academy of Design, and the following year he earned the rank of academician.

As important as Cole was to Church’s technical development, the work of scientist-explorer Alexander Von Humboldt (1769–1859) was equally influential in Church’s evolution as a painter. Humboldt published the two-volume text Cosmos in the 1840s, in which he identified unifying principles within the incredible complexity of the world’s environments. His theories lent themselves to romantic interpretation and became popular with artists of the mid-nineteenth century as they grappled with the confluence of divinity and science.

Church answered Humboldt’s call to artists to depict the grand and diverse beauty of nature; he traced the explorer’s steps through Ecuador on two separate trips in 1853 and 1857. The artist sketched the complex ecosystems he encountered and his final canvases merged scientific precisionism with Judeo-Christian themes. Church painted his South American canvases on a large scale in his studio and then exploited the spectacular subject matter through elaborate displays.  His Heart of the Andes, 1859, Metropolitan Museum of Art, was hung behind a red velvet curtain and capped by portraits of great American presidents. For twenty-five cents each, the public was admitted entry to Church’s premises in the Tenth Street Studio Building to view the exhibit. The painting created a sensation and that same year sold for the record-breaking price of $10,000. During his career Church painted sixteen major works derived from his travels in South America.

While Church found success with these subjects, still the majority of his works explored the majesty of American terrain. Niagara Falls, 1857, Corcoran Gallery of Art, and Twilight in the Wilderness, 1860, Cleveland Museum of Art, celebrate the glories of America at a time of growing sectional strife. His dramatic The Icebergs, 1861, Dallas Museum of Art, was inspired by an unsuccessful expedition to find the Northwest Passage. When it was unveiled it failed to find a buyer, an early indication, perhaps, of a shift of taste away from grandiose conceptions.

Church and his work influenced subsequent painters of American landscape; he taught Louis Rémy Mignot who traveled with him to Ecuador, and his radiant treatment of light inspired the luminist painters of the later nineteenth century.  Following an extended trip abroad, Church commissioned the architect Calvert Vaux to build Olana, a Persian-inspired villa located on a high bluff overlooking the Hudson River. Church designed stencils, selected wall colors, and furnished Olana with an eclectic array of objets d’art and furniture. Toward the end of his life, Church retired to Olana, just as enthusiasm for his kind of grand statement was fading.

 * Bio note  from the  Reynolda House, Museum of American Art 

THE POPOCATEPETL BY JOSE MARIA VELASCO

JOSE MARIA VELASCO (1840-1912)

The Popocatépetl (5, 426 m -17, 802 ft)  

Mexico

In The Metlac Ravine, oil on canvas, 1893, Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico   

The mountain 
Popocatépetl  (5,426 m (17,802 ft) is an active volcano, located in the states of Puebla, Mexico, and Morelos, in Central Mexico, and lies in the eastern half of the Trans-Mexican volcanic belt.  The name Popocatépetl comes from the Nahuatl words popōca  (it smokes) and tepētl  (mountain), meaning Smoking Mountain. It is the second highest peak in Mexico, after Citlaltépetl (Pico de Orizaba) at 5,636 m (18,491 ft).
It is linked to the Iztaccihuatl volcano to the north by the high saddle known as the Paso de Cortés.
Popocatépetl is 70 km (43 mi) southeast of Mexico City, from where it can be seen regularly, depending on atmospheric conditions. Until recently, the volcano was one of three tall peaks in Mexico to contain glaciers, the others being Iztaccihuatl and Pico de Orizaba. In the 1990s, the glaciers such as Glaciar Norte (North Glacier) greatly decreased in size, partly due to warmer temperatures but largely due to increased volcanic activity. By early 2001, Popocatépetl's glaciers were gone; ice remained on the volcano, but no longer displayed the characteristic features of glaciers such as crevasses.
Magma erupting from Popocatépetl has historically been predominantly andesitic, but it has also erupted large volumes of dacite. Magma produced in the current cycle of activity tends to be a mixture of the two.

The Painter 
José Maria Tranquilino Francisco de Jesus Velasco Gomez Obregуn, generally known as José Marнa Velasco, was a 19th-century Mexican polymath, most famous as a painter who made Mexican geography a symbol of national identity through his paintings. He was both one of the most popular artists of the time and internationally renowned. He received many distinctions such as the gold medal of the Mexican National Expositions of Bellas Artes in 1874 and 1876; the gold medal of the Philadelphia International Exposition in 1876, on the centenary of U.S. independence; and the medal of the Paris Universal Exposition in 1889, on the centenary of the outbreak of the French Revolution. His painting El valle de Mexico is considered Velasco's masterpiece, of which he created seven different renditions. Of all the nineteenth-century painters, Velasco was the "first to be elevated in the post-Revolutionary period as an exemplar of nationalism."

Velasco's long career elevated Mexican landscape painting to international standing. One of his landscapes of the Valley of Mexico is in the Vatican Museum, a gift to Pope Leo XIII. His scenes of the Mexican landscape are a visual source for environmental historians, since they show the Valley of Mexico before its degradation in the twentieth century, with air pollution and urban sprawl. His landscape art has a wide appeal, since it is more accessible than history paintings that require the viewer to understand a particular event.

Today the Government of the State of Mexico, where Velasco was from, presents an award for artistic merit in his name to painters born in that state. Among the most outstanding winners are Luis Nishizawa, Leopoldo Flores, Ignacio Barrios and Héctor Cruz.

The José María Velasco Museum was opened in 1992 in Toluca City with the task of preserving and promoting his paintings.

_______________________________

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

MONS BLANC (ON THE MOON) BY NASA LUNAR ORBITER 4

NASA LUNAR ORBITER 4,  1967

Mons Blanc  (3, 600 to 3,700m/3,6 to3,7km -11, 811 to  12,139 ft/2,24 to 2, 30 mi) 

The Moon

The mountain 

Mons Blanc  (3, 600 to 3,700m/3,6 to3,7km -11, 811 to  12,139 ft/2,24 to 2, 30 mi)  also named Mont Blanc is a mountain on the Moon, part of the Montes Alpes Range. It is located on the western edge of the range, near the shore of Mare Imbrium, at 45.48°N 0.42°E. Its width is about 25 kilometers; the height is 3.7–3.8 km above adjacent plains of Mare Imbrium and 1.12 km above lunar level of zero elevation (a sphere with radius 1737.4 km).

The name of Mons Blanc or Mont Blanc, like the highest mountain of terrestrial Alps, was proposed for this mountain by Johann Hieronymus Schrцter.  It was approved by International Astronomical Union in 1935.  It is the only summit of Montes Alpes with proper name and the only extraterrestrial mountain, whose international name contains French word "Mont" instead of Latin "Mons".

Despite statements that lunar Mont Blanc, like terrestrial one, is a highest mountain of its Alps, measurements of Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter show that it is only third, being 600 meters lower than the highest one and about 100 m lower than the second.

The mission 

Lunar Orbiter 4 was an unmanned US spacecraft, part of the Lunar Orbiter Program, designed to orbit the Moon, after the three previous orbiters had completed the required needs for Apollo mapping and site selection. It was given a more general objective, to "perform a broad systematic photographic survey of lunar surface features in order to increase the scientific knowledge of their nature, origin, and processes, and to serve as a basis for selecting sites for more detailed scientific study by subsequent orbital and landing missions". It was also equipped to collect selenodetic, radiation intensity, and micrometeoroid impact data. The spacecraft was placed in a cislunar trajectory and injected into an elliptical near polar high lunar orbit for data acquisition. The orbit was 2,706 by 6,111 kilometres (1,681 mi Ч 3,797 mi) with an inclination of 85.5 degrees and a period of 12 hours.

After initial photography on May 11, 1967 problems started occurring with the camera's thermal door, which was not responding well to commands to open and close. Fear that the door could become stuck in the closed position covering the camera lenses led to a decision to leave the door open. This required extra attitude control maneuvers on each orbit to prevent light leakage into the camera which would ruin the film. On May 13 it was discovered that light leakage was damaging some of the film, and the door was tested and partially closed. Some fogging of the lens was then suspected due to condensation resulting from the lower temperatures. Changes in the attitude raised the temperature of the camera and generally eliminated the fogging. Continuing problems with the readout drive mechanism starting and stopping beginning on May 20 resulted in a decision to terminate the photographic portion of the mission on May 26. Despite problems with the readout drive the entire film was read and transmitted. The spacecraft acquired photographic data from May 11 to 26, 1967, and readout occurred through June 1, 1967. The orbit was then lowered to gather orbital data for the upcoming Lunar Orbiter 5 mission.

A total of 419 high-resolution and 127 medium-resolution frames were acquired, covering 99% of the Moon's near side at resolutions from 58 to 134 metres (190 to 440 ft). Accurate data was acquired from all other experiments throughout the mission. Radiation data showed increased dosages due to solar particle events producing low energy protons. The spacecraft was used for tracking until it struck the lunar surface due to the natural decay of the orbit no later than October 31, 1967, between 22–30 degrees W longitude.

AITXURI PAINTED BY VALENTIN DE ZUBIAURRE

VALENTIN DE ZUBIAURRE (1879-1963)

Aitxuri (1, 551m- 5, 088 ft)

Spain (Basque country) 

The mountain 

The Aitxuri, Atxuri or Aitz txuri (1, 551m- 5,088 ft) is a mountain belonging to the Basque Mountains range  It is located in the province of Guipuscoa, Basque Country (Spain).

Located in the Aizkorri massif, it is the highest peak of the latter. By the mid-1980s, its neighbor Aketegi was considered the highest point of the massif, but measurements at that time revealed that the Aitxuri was about 3 meters higher.

The altitude of 1,551 m is the highest of all the Cantabrian Basque Cordillera, from the foothills of the Cantabrian mountain range to the Pyrenees. The importance of this summit comes from its prominence1 which is 943 m and the class as the 36th of the peninsular mountains. If it is not the highest mountain in the whole Basque Country, it is the one with the most prominent prominence.

Etymologically Aitxuri means "white rock", and comes from the Basque words Aitz ("rock") and txuri ("white").

Like the rest of the summits that form the Aitzkorri massif, the Aitxuri is made up of limestone rocks, and it rises on the territories of Urbia in its southern part, and on Goierri by the north. At its feet is the town of Zegama, whose roads and railroad tracks stand out perfectly.

The summits that surround it are of almost equivalent heights, with the peculiarity that the one that gives its name to the mountain is the smallest of them.

The routes are numerous for the ascent of this mountain, and almost all common to Aizkorri and Aketegi.

The artist

Valentin de Zubiaurre  Spanish painter,  born deaf and dumb, as was his brother Ramуn de Zubiaurre, also a painter, three years younger than him. Both were children of the musical composer Valentin de Zubiaurre Urionabarrenechea. Originally from the Basque town of Garay, the Zubiaurre family lived in the capital of Spain, where the father had come to occupy the position obtained as musical teacher in the chapel of the Royal Palace. In spite of the great paternal desire that some of his children continue with the musical vocation, the fatality they both wanted to be born deaf.

Valentin began his studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in 1894, continuing later with the painters Muсoz Degrain and Alejandro Ferrant and Carlos de Haes. In 1898 he made a trip through the Netherlands  France and Italy to complete his training.

Valentin de Zubiaurre cultivated a painting, in which the Basque and Castilian themes proliferated, where the solidity of the figures was interpenetrated with a deep sense of color. It was not easy for him to get official recognition. At a time when naturalism and impressionism were the dominant trends, Zubiaurre made a more intellectual painting, combining on the one hand the mastery of his art with the intellectual elaboration of the idea. He was also blamed for having fallen into the vice of repetitive repetition of certain types and compositions once he gained a certain popularity, elaborating again and again the same formulas.

For years, the erroneous belief that the Zubiaurre brothers shared the making of their paintings, both working on the same work, was maintained. Nothing of this is true; It is true that they started from a similar aesthetic norm and that they dealt with a similar variety of subjects, but the results of both brothers were substantially different. In Valentin's painting there is predominating a certain melancholy that is not present in the paintings of Ramуn. In the words of José Ortega y Gasset , his work is "a lyrical inventory of Basque existence". 

His work is found in several Spanish museums, such as the Carmen Thyssen Museum Malaga, where the Basque Coast at sunset (1949) and Landscape at sunset with dantzaris (undated) are exhibited, an example of Basque regionalist painting, resolved through a flat composition and the use of cold colors, characteristics of Zubiaurre's style. 

In  Euskal mendiak (Las montañas vascas), 1950, Oil on canvas, Bilab aFine art Musueul, Spain 

MOUNT ARARAT PAINTED BY ILYA ZANKOVSKY

ILYA NIKOLAEVITCH ZANKOVSKY (1832-1919)

Mount Ararat (5,137 m- 16,854ft)

Turkey (since 1921)

1. In View of Mount Ararat, oil on canvas, 1880, National Museum of Fine Arts Erevan (Armenia)

The mountain
There are two mountains in the world called Mont Ararat, One in Turkey, one in United States of America (Pennsylvania). The one we are talking about is Mount Ararat in Turkey, which has a very long and complex political, religious, sacred and mythical history.
Mount Ararat  (5,137 m- 16,854ft)  (Turkish: Ağrı Dağı; Armenian: Մասիս, Masis) is a snow-capped and dormant stratovolcano in the eastern extremity of Turkey.  It consists of two major volcanic cones: Greater Ararat, the highest peak in Turkey and the Armenian plateau with an elevation of 5,137 m (16,854 ft); and Little Ararat, with an elevation of 3,896 m (12,782 ft). The Ararat massif is about 40 km (25 mi) in diameter and  is part of  the range of Armenian Highlands.
Mountains of Ararat  have been perceived as the traditional resting place of Noah's Ark since the 11th century. It is the principal national symbol of Armenia and has been considered a sacred mountain by Armenians. It is featured prominently in Armenian literature and art and is an icon for Armenian irredentism. Along with Noah's Ark, it is depicted on the coat of arms of Armenia.
Mount Ararat forms a near-quadripoint between Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Iran. Its summit is located some 16 km (10 mi) west of both the Iranian border and the border of the Nakhchivan exclave of Azerbaijan, and 32 km (20 mi) south of the Armenian border. The Turkish–Armenian–Azerbaijani and Turkish–Iranian–Azerbaijani tripoints are some 8 km apart, separated by a narrow strip of Turkish territory containing the E99 road which enters Nakhchivan at 39.6553°N 44.8034°E.
From the 16th century until 1828 Great Ararat's summit and the northern slopes, along with the eastern slopes of Little Ararat were part of Persia, while the range was part of the Ottoman-Persian border. Following the 1826–28 Russo-Persian War and the Treaty of Turkmenchay, the Persian controlled territory was ceded to the Russian Empire. Little Ararat became the point where the Turkish, Persian, and Russian imperial frontiers converged.
The current international boundaries were formed throughout the 20th century. The mountain came under Turkish control during the 1920 Turkish–Armenian War.  It formally became part of Turkey according to the 1921 Treaty of Moscow and Treaty of Kars.  By the Tehran Convention of 1932, a border change was made in Turkey's favor, allowing it to occupy the eastern flank of Lesser Ararat.The Iran-Turkey boundary skirts east of Lesser Ararat, the lower peak of the Ararat massif.
The nationalist Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) party claims eastern Turkey (Western Armenia) as part of what it considers United Armenia.  The Armenian government has not made official claims to any Turkish territory,however the Armenian government has avoided "an explicit and formal recognition of the existing Turkish-Armenian border." According to Turkish political scientist Bayram Balci, regular references to the Armenian Genocide and Mount Ararat "clearly indicates" that the border with Turkey in contested in Armenia.
In a 2010 interview with Der Spiegel, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan was asked: "You can see Mount Ararat, Armenia's national symbol, from the windows of your residence. Today, the mountain is inaccessible, on the other side of the Turkish border. Turkey fears demands for land and compensation. Do you want Mount Ararat back?" Sargsyan, in response, said: "No one can take Mount Ararat from us; we keep it in our hearts. Wherever Armenians live in the world today, you will find a picture of Mount Ararat in their homes. And I feel certain that a time will come when Mount Ararat is no longer a symbol of the separation between our peoples, but an emblem of understanding. But let me make this clear: Never has a representative of Armenia made territorial demands. Turkey alleges this—perhaps out of its own bad conscience? 

The painter 
Ilya Zankovsky was a russian  painter and graphic artist  who studied as a noncredit student in the Imperial Academy of Arts (IAKh, 1862–1863) and who did not finish the course. Zankovsky lived in Tiflis, served in the Military topographic department of the Caucasus military region. He painted landscapes of the Caucasus (Mount Elbrus,) Georgian military road, The Darial Gorge, From the main mountain range, Mount Ushba. Hunters halt). He worked a lot in watercolor. His works were shown at the exhibitions of the Caucasian Society for Encouragement of Fine Arts, the Society for mutual aid of Caucasian artists, the Society of Russian Watercolorists, and at the Autumn exhibitions in the halls of the IAKh. Zankovsky taught in the Drawing School under the Caucasian Society for Encouragement of Fine Arts in 1880s–1910s.
In 2009 an exhibition of Zankovsky’s works was held in Moscow. Works by Ilya Zankovsky are in many museum collections, including the State Russian Museum, Odessa Fine Arts Museum, Omsk Regional Museum of Fine Arts named after M. A. Vrubel, and Dagestan Museum of Local History.

2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau