TAUPO VOLCANO AND LAKE PAINTED BY CHARLES BLOMFIELD

 

 

CHARLES BLOMFIELD (1848-1926)
Volcano and lake Taupo (356m- 1,167ft)
New Zealand (North Island)

In Orakei Korako on the Waikato, oil on canvas 1885, Museum of New Zeland /Te Papa Tongarewa

The volcano and the caldera lake
Lake Taupō is a lake in the North Island of New Zealand. It is in the caldera of the Taupō Volcano.
This huge volcano has produced two of the world’s most violent eruptions in geologically recent times. The Taupō Volcano forms part of the Taupō Volcanic Zone, a region of volcanic activity that extends from Ruapehu in the South, through the Taupō and Rotorua districts, to Whakaari/White Island, in the Bay of Plenty region. Taupō began erupting about 300,000 years ago, but the main eruptions that still affect the surrounding landscape are the Oruanui eruption, about 26,500 years ago, which is responsible for the shape of the modern caldera, and the Hatepe eruption, dated 232 ± 5 CE. However, there have been many more eruptions, with major ones every thousand years or so (see timeline of last 10,000 years of eruptions). Considering recent history alone, the volcano has been inactive for an unusually long period of time, but considering its long-term activity, it was inactive for much longer between 8100 and 5100 BCE (3,000 year inactivity, compared to the current 1,800 years). Some volcanoes within the Taupō Volcanic Zone have erupted far more recently, however, notably a violent VEI-5 eruption of Mount Tarawera in 1886, and frequent activity of Whakaari/White Island, which erupted most recently in December 2019.

The painter
Charles Blomfield was a New Zealand decorator, artist and music teacher born in London, England.
A widow, Blomfield's mother brought her family to New Zealand in the 1860's intending to settle in Northland as part of a settlement called Albertland. On arrival in Auckland they decided not to proceed on Northland to become farmers but to pursue urban trades in Auckland. The family remained in Auckland after that and many of the descendants of the various children still reside in the Auckland area.
More about the painter

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

BLUE MOUNTAIN PEAK PAINTED BY FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH

 

 

FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH (1826-1900)
Blue Mountain Peak (2,256 m - 7,402 ft)
Jamaica

In Jamaica landscape, West Indies, August 1868, watercolor, Smithsonian/ Cooper Hewitt,  Smithsonian Design Museum

The mountain
Blue Mountain Peak (2,256m - 7401ft) is the highest mountain peak in the Blues mountains, occupying the eastern third of Jamaica. It is also the highest peak in Jamaica.
In May 1655, a British expedition led by Admiral William Penn and General Robert Venables seized the island, still sparsely populated, after having failed to take Santo Domingo. The Spaniards flee after having freed their slaves. Scattered in the jungle, they create dozens of secret villages on the northern slope of the Blue Mountains with its peculiar recrystallized and dolomitic limestone soil, and in the "Cockpit country", pierced by bowl-shaped depressions and watered by heavy rainfall. For a century and a half, these two areas will serve, for their many caches, a rear base with numerous revolts of slaves.
The Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee, which is grown on the mountain slopes of the same name, is one of the most expensive and one of the best in the world.

The painter
Frederic Edwin Church was an American landscape painter born in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a central figure in the Hudson River School of American landscape painters, perhaps best known for painting large panoramic landscapes, often depicting mountains, waterfalls, and sunsets, but also sometimes depicting dramatic natural phenomena that he saw during his travels to the Arctic and Central and South America. Church's paintings put an emphasis on light and a romantic respect for natural detail. In his later years, Church painted classical Mediterranean and Middle Eastern scenes and cityscapes. Church was the product of the second generation of the Hudson River School and the pupil of Thomas Cole, the school’s founder. The Hudson River School was established by the British Thomas Cole when he moved to America and started painting landscapes, mostly of mountains and other traditional American scenes. Both Cole and Church were devout Protestants and the latter's beliefs played a role in his paintings especially his early canvases. Church did differ from Cole in the topics of his paintings: he preferred natural and often majestic scenes over Cole's propensity towards allegory.
Church, like most second generation Hudson River School painters, used extraordinary detail, romanticism, and luminism in his paintings. Romanticism was prominent in Britain and France in the early 1800s as a counter-movement to the Enlightenment virtues of order and logic. Artists of the Romantic period often depicted nature in idealized scenes that depicted the richness and beauty of nature, sometimes also with emphasis on the grand scale of nature.
This tradition carries on in the works of Frederic Church, who idealizes an uninterrupted nature, highlighted by creating excruciatingly detailed art. The emphasis on nature is encouraged by the low horizontal lines, and preponderance of sky to enhance the wilderness; humanity, if it is represented, is depicted as small in comparison with the greater natural reality. The technical skill comes in the form of Luminism, a Hudson River School innovation particularly present in Church's works. Luminism is also cited as encompassing several technical aspects, which can be seen in Church’s works. One example is the attempt to “hide brushstrokes” which makes the scene seem more realistic and lessen the artist’s presence in the work. Most importantly is the emphasis on light (hence luminism) in these scenes. The several sources of light create contrast in the pictures that highlights the beauty and detailed imagery in the painting.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE TORRIDON HILLS SKETCHED BY WILLIAM TURNER OF OXFORD

 

WILLIAM TURNER OF OXFORD (1789-1862)
The Torridon Hills:
Beinn Alligin (986 m -3,235 ft)
Liathach (1, 055 m- 3,461 ft)
Beinn Eighe (1,010m -3,310 ft)
United Kingdom (Scotland)

In Before Sunrise, Loch Torridon, Rossshire,watercolor, 44,5 x 89 cm, 1856,
Courtesy John Mitchell Gallery, London

About this watercolor
At nearly three feet across this is one of William Turner’s largest known paintings, and belongs to the series of Scottish views which formed the major part of his output after his tour of Scotland undertaken in 1838. His expedition that year took him north from Inverness as far as Loch Inver, and then via Loch Torridon to Skye, whose hills and coast he explored thoroughly. The dramatic effect of the sun’s rays at dawn and the noble stag in the foreground combine with the grandiose scenery to conjure up all the appeal of Scotland which so captivated the popular spirit of the time; indeed, in studying this fresh and imposing watercolour, it is hard to escape the romantic overtones of Sir Walter Scott’s vision of the Highlands.
(From John Mitchell Gallery notice)

The painter
William Turner (1789-1862) was sent to London at the age of fifteen to take up an apprenticeship under John Varley, and was elected a full member of the Old Watercolour Society in 1808. It was in this period that J.M.W.Turner rose to fame, and as a result the younger artist became known as ‘Turner of Oxford’. His own reputation firmly established, he returned to his uncle’s estate at Shipton-under-Cherwell in 1812 and began to build up his practice as a drawing master in Oxford. His range of subject matter was vast, and he travelled throughout the British Isles in search of subjects – from the Wye Valley to the Lake District, from Wales and the Hebrides to the Isle of Wight, and he was a loyal exhibitor at the Society of Painters in Watercolour, submitting a total of 455 pictures, including this one. Turner of Oxford was described as follows: ‘Worthy and dignified, looking like a parson of the old school, dressed in black and wearing a white tie, he lived a hum-drum life at his house, 16 John Street, near Worcester College, where he resided from 1833 till his death on 7th August 1862’ (quoted in Martin Hardie, ‘William Turner of Oxford’, Old Watercolour Society’s Club, Vol. IX (1931-32). It is worth noting that in signing this present painting on the reverse, Turner includes his Oxford address.
(From John Mitchell Gallery notice)

The mountains
The Torridon Hills. The loch Torridon is surrounded by various mountains to the north, including Liathach, Beinn Alligin and Beinn Eighe, all of which are over 3,000 feet (910 m) in height. The Torridon Hills exhibit dramatic mountain scenery. The rocks of which they are made are known as Torridonian sandstone, some of which are crowned by white Cambrian quartzite. They are amongst the oldest rocks in Britain, and sit on yet older rocks, Lewisian gneiss.

Beinn Alligin (986 m -3,235 ft) on left , is one of the classic mountains of the Torridon region of Scotland, lying to the north of LochTorridon, in the Highlands. The name Beinn Alligin is from the Scottish Gaelic, meaning Jewelled Hill. The mountain has two peaks of Munro status: Tom na Gruagaich (922 metres -3,025 ft)) to the south, and Sgùrr Mhòr at 986 metres -3,235 ft) to the north. One of the most prominent features of Beinn Alligin is a great cleft known as Eag Dhubh na h-Eigheachd (black gash of the wailing) or Leum na Caillich, which cuts into the ridge south of the summit. It is the scar of the most spectacular rockslide or rock avalanche in Britain, which runs out into the corrie of Toll a' Mhadaidh Mor. It occurred around 3750 years ago and is around 3.5 million cubic metres in volume. According to local folklore shepherds on the mountain would hear cries from the gash; those who investigated the source of these cries would inevitably fall to their deaths. Beinn Alligin lies on the National Trust for Scotland's Torridon Estate, which has been owned by the charity since 1967, and forms part of both a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and a Special Area of Conservation (SAC). 

Liathach  (1,055 m- 3,461 ft) in the center of the waterolor is a mountain in the Torridon Hills. It lies to the north of the A896 road, in the Northwest Highlands of Scotland, and has two peaks of Munro status: Spidean a' Choire Lèith at the east of the main ridge, and Mullach an Rathain at the western end of the mountain. The name Liathach is pronounced in Scottish Gaelic, and means 'The grey one'. When seen from the roadside below, its slopes appear to rise up in a series of near vertical rocky terraces. 

Beinn Eighe (1,010m -3,310 ft)  on right is a complex mountain massif in the Torridon area of Wester Ross in the Highlands of Scotland. Lying to the south of Loch Maree, it forms a long ridge with many spurs and summits, two of which are classified as Munros. The name Beinn Eighe comes from the Scottish Gaelic meaning file mountain.[ Unlike most other hills in the area it has a cap of Cambrian basal quartzite which gives the peaks of Beinn Eighe a distinctive light colour. Its complex topography has made it popular with both hillwalkers and climbers and the national nature reserve on its northern side makes it an accessible mountain for all visitors.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE MONT VENTOUX PAINTED BY PAUL SURTEL

 

PAUL SURTEL (1893-1985)

 The mont Ventoux (1, 911m - 6, 270ft)

 France (Provence-Alpe-Côte-d'Azur)  

In The mont Ventoux from west , oil on cardboard, (not signed), Private collection, France

 

One can notice that there is not a single tree on those paintings of the Mont Ventoux, which is no longer the case today. This is the result of an intensive reforestation policy carried out by the French State services on this mountain which had been devastated by the forestry exploitation in the late 19th and the early 20th century.

The mountain 

Mont Ventoux  (1, 911m - 6, 270ft), Ventor in Latin, is located in the French department of Vaucluse (Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur). It is about 25 kilometers long on an east-west for 15 kilometers wide on a north-south axis. Nicknamed the Giant of Provence, it is the culmination of the Monts du Vaucluse, the ultimate link of the Southern Alps and the highest peak of Vaucluse. Its geographical isolation makes it visible over great distances.

The painter 

Paul Surtel is a French painter and epistolier, the son of a family of coffee makers and restaurateurs living in the Paris region. Fernand Maillaud, the "good master",  a landscape painter, very good friend of Paul's father, introduced him very early to painting. In1904, Paul Surtel went up to Paris,at the Lycée Charlemagne and the Arts Décoratifs, but especially at the "l'école buissonnière", visiting  museums and exhibitions in the galleries of Paris instead to go to school ! He then became passionate for Rembrandt and especially Corot (who greatly influenced him).
At the end of the First World War, he was enlisted as an artilleryman (at the beginning of 1917). From Seine and Marne in Lorraine, Belgium, Somme, he went from offensive to cantonments. Then he allows himself to be taken back by nature, draws, leaves emotion to guide his hand, the craft acquiring itself by dint of attention and work.
Demobilized in Hyères, Paul found a forestry foreman occupation in the Var, and discovered the Provençal nature that would become the source of his work and would make him known as a "regionalist painter", a rather pejorative label to carry in France until very recently.  In 1937, during one of his first exhibitions in Oran (Algeria, at that time French department) Paul Surtel meets Elia Duc, a young teacher in a small the algerian city. They married in 1939. After that follows 48 years of passionate creation and happiness, especially in Peipin, a tiny village in the Alpes of Haute Provence where the couple settled. His paintings radiate tenderness, lightness, effusion, through impalpable matter. After two years in Quercy, then three in Orange, the family settles in Carpentras (Vaucluse), in 1951, where Elia is named professor.
From the 60s, Paul Surtel added landscapes, still-lifes and portraits.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

NOSHAQ PEAKS PHOTOGRAPHED BY ANONYMUS IN AUTOCHROME LUMIÈRE

 

AUTOCHROME LUMIERE (ANONYMUS)

Noshaq peaks or Nowshak (7, 492 m-  24, 580 ft) 

Afghanistan - Pakistan border 

In Summer in Hindu Kush - Noshaq peak in the distance, c.1922., autochrome Lumière process

©wanderingvertexescollection - no copy allowed without permission

  Already published in this blog 20th January 2017

 
About the "Autochrome Lumière" Photos
The autochrome is a photographic reproduction of process colors patented December 17, 1903 by Auguste and Louis Lumière french brothers. This is the first industrial technique of photography colors, it produces positive images on glass plates. It was used between 1907 and 1932 approximately an particularly in many pictures of the World War I. A important number of photographs of mountains and landscapes around the world was made with this technique, particularly in the for the Project "The archives of the planet" by Albert Kahn.

 

The mountain

 Noshaq peaks (7, 492 m-  24, 580 ft), also called Nowshak or Nōshākh (in Urdu/Persian/Pashto: نوشاخ‎) is the second highest independent peak of the Hindu Kush Range after Tirich Mir (7,706 m -25,289 ft) and lies on the border between Badakhshan Province in Afghanistan and Chitral District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Noshaq peaks, the 4th highest peak of the Hindu Kush Range, is an independent mountain on the Pakistani border with Afghanistan, with its 4 summits which are :

Noshaq Main (7,492m),  Noshaq East (7,480m), Noshaq Central (7,400m), Noshaq West (7,250 m)
From Pakistan:
Only Noshaq West (7,250 m) stands on the Pak-Afghan border, being natural water shed. Noshaq Main (7,492m) and the rest of the peaks of this massif lie well within Pakistan territory and easily accessible from Chitral-Pakistan which is 64 km away. Chital airport is linked with Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, with a daily flight of one hour duration and Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa province of Pakistan with a daily flight of 40 minutes duration.
Noshaq Main (7,492m) was first ascent by Japanese expedition in 1960. The expedition was led by Professor Sakato. Other members of the expedition were Goro Iwatsabo and Toshiaki Sakai. The route was followed from the South East Ridge of the peak, Nowadays; the normal route is by southeast face through Terich valley of Chitral-Pakistan. The second highest peak in this range is Noshaq East (7,480m) climbed in 1963 by Dr. Gerald Gruber and Rudolf Pischenger from Austria. The 3rd highest peak of the massif Noshaq Central (7,400m) and the 4th peak is Noshaq West (7,250m). These peaks were also climbed by the same Austrian expedition of 1963. The first winter ascent was in 1973 by Tadeusz Piotrowski and Andrzej Zawada, member of a Polish expedition, via the north face. It was the world’s first winter climb above any 7,000m peak.
From Afghanistan:
The North and the west sides of the mountain are in Afghanistan where as the South and Eastern sided are in Pakistan. In Afghanistan's Noshaq is considered it's the highest mountain and is located in the northeastern corner of the country along the Durand line which marks the border with Pakistan. It's 28 km away from Qazi Deh village, an expedition of 5 days journey. Qazi Deh is 280 km away from Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, a perilous journey. However, the Easiest access to Noshaq is from Chitral, Pakistan. Nowadays, the normal route on Afghanistan side is by the West ridge.
The first Afghan ascent of the mountain was in July 2009. Two members of a team of four Afghans from the Wakhan Corridor made the summit on July 19.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau  

MOUNT SINAÏ -JABAL MUSA PAINTED BY GIOTTO

GIOTTO (1266-1337)
Mount Sinaï or Jabal Musa (2,285 m - 7,496ft)
Egypt

In The flight into Egypt, fresco, Basilica inferiore di Assisi, 1308-10

 

About this work
The right transept of the Lower Basilica of Assisi has numerous frescoes by important fourteenth-century authors. On the large barrel vault there are the Stories of Christ's Childhood and the Crucifixion with Franciscan Saints by Giotto and collaborators, dated 1308-1311. The image depicts the scene of the Flight into Egypt already apunted by Giotto few years before in the interior frescoes of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, also known as the Arena Chapel. Inetrestirng to have a look at the differencies.

The mountain
Mount Sinaï (2,285 m - 7,496ft) or Jabal Mūsā or Gabal Mūsā (in arab : "Moses' Mountain" or "Mount Moses"), also known as Mount Horeb or Jebel Musa (a similarly named mountain in Morocco), is a mountain in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt that is a possible location of the biblical Mount Sinaï.
The latter is mentioned many times in the Book of Exodus (and other books of the Bible) and in the Quran. According to Jewish, Christian, and Islamic tradition, the biblical Mount Sinai was the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments (depicted in the Jean-Léon Gérôme painting above).
Mount Sinai is a moderately high mountain near the city of Saint Katherine in the Sinai region. It is next to Mount Katherine (2,629m - 8,625 ft), the highest peak in Egypt.
Mount Sinai's rocks were formed in the late stage of the Arabian-Nubian Shield's (ANS) evolution. Mount Sinai displays a ring complex that consists of alkaline granites intruded into diverse rock types, including volcanics. The granites range in composition from syenogranite to alkali feldspar granite. The volcanic rocks are alkaline to peralkaline and they are represented by subaerial flows and eruptions and subvolcanic porphyry. Generally, the nature of the exposed rocks in Mount Sinai indicates that they originated from differing depths.
There are two principal routes to the summit. The longer and shallower route, Siket El Bashait, takes about 2.5 hours on foot, though camels can be used. The steeper, more direct route (Siket Sayidna Musa) is up the 3,750 "steps of penitence" in the ravine behind the monastery.
The summit of the mountain has a mosque that is still used by Muslims. It also has a Greek Orthodox chapel, constructed in 1934 on the ruins of a 16th-century church, that is not open to the public. The chapel encloses the rock which is considered to be the source for the biblical Tablets of Stone. At the summit also is "Moses' cave", where Moses was said to have waited to receive the Ten Commandments.

The painter
Giotto di Bondone known mononymously as Giotto was an Italian painter and architect from Florence during the Late Middle Ages. He worked during the "Gothic or Proto-Renaissance" period.
Giotto's contemporary, the banker and chronicler Giovanni Villani, wrote that Giotto was "the most sovereign master of painting in his time, who drew all his figures and their postures according to nature" and of his publicly recognized "talent and excellence".
In his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, Giorgio Vasari described Giotto as making a decisive break with the prevalent Byzantine style and as initiating "the great art of painting as we know it today, introducing the technique of drawing accurately from life, which had been neglected for more than two hundred years".
That Giotto painted the Arena Chapel and that he was chosen by the Commune of Florence in 1334 to design the new campanile (bell tower) of the Florence Cathedral are among the few certainties about his life. Almost every other aspect of it is subject to controversy: his birth date, his birth place, his appearance, his apprenticeship, the order in which he created his works, whether or not he painted the famous frescoes in the Upper Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi and his burial place.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MOUNT CATALFANO PAINTED BY FRANCESCO LOJACONO

FRANCESCO LOJACONO (1838-1915)
Mount Catalfano (376m -1, 233ft)
Italy (Sicily)

In View of Mount Catalfano, 1865-1870, oil on canvas, 45x109 cm,
Villa Malfitano - Gallery of Modern Art in Palermo

The mountain
Monte Catalfano (376m -1,233ft)   is a mountain in western Sicily, in the province of Palermo.
The etymology, of Arabic origin, is uncertain: the first part goes back to the Arabic qal'at, while the second element could derive from ḥalfān, "oath" [1]. Attested in 1573 as Ialfano by the geographer Tommaso Fazello, in the 17th century the toponym is in the current form of Catalfano.
The limestone mountain extends into the Tyrrhenian Sea with the promontory of Capo Zafferano. In the rocky body there are a few deep cavities (the zubbi) which host large entomological populations. Among these, the Zubbio di San Pietro Cozzo, the Hermit Cave and the Cala dell'Osta Cave.
Typical Mediterranean flora includes Chamaerops humilis, mastic tree, tree spurge, Artemisia arborescens and many species of orchids (Ophrys Bombyx, Ophrys mirabilis, Ophrys lunulata, Ophrys oxyrrhynchos, Ophrys explanata, switched Neotinea and orchis brancifortii).
The avifauna includes, among others, the peregrine falcon, the kestrel, the hawk, the wild pigeon, the collared dove and the goldfinch.

The painter
Francesco Lojacono was an Italian painter, considered the most important landscape painter of the 19th century Sicilian. He was among the first painters to use photography as a reference to create his works.
In search of a pictorial rendering closer to reality, he was among the first painters to be interested in photography.
Most of his paintings are kept in Villa Malfitano, the Gallery of Modern Art in Palermo and in the Civic Museum of Agrigento as part of the Sinatra collection. Some of his works are exhibited at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome, at the Galleries of Italy in Milan, the Capodimonte Museum in Naples and at the Villa Zito museum of the Sicily Foundation in Palermo.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MONTAGNE SAINTE-VICTOIRE ( 2) SKETCHED BY JEAN-BAPTISTE NÉE

 

JEAN-BAPTISTE NÉE (b.1986)
The Montagne Sainte Victoire (1, 011m - 2, 216 ft)
France (Provence Alpes Côte d'azur)

 In  La Sainte-Victoire (2), Fusain, 29, 7 x 42 cm,  2008

About this drawing
Jean Baptiste Née made several charcoal drawings of the Sainte Victoire of which a first one has already been published in this blog. 

 
The artist
Jean-Baptiste Née, born in 1986. is a french painter, scenographer and visual artist, graduated from Arts-Décoratifs of Paris in 2012. Jean-Baptiste Née works in the mountains and high mountains, always in situ, in direct confrontation with the movements of the earth and water and wind. He gives a growing place for the action of the elements on the work in progress (rain, snow, frost, etc.). He established his "large workshop" in the Swiss Alps or in the Vercors massif - especially in winter -, as well as during long hikes in the Italian Alps. In the winter of 2018, he worked in the massifs of Wudangshan and Lushan, in China, and became interested in the Taoist notion of "Sky". Since 2016, Jean-Baptiste Née exhibits regularly in galleries in France and Switzerland. His workshop is in Montreuil, France. Exhibited in Galerie Camera
Obscura in Paris. A book was recently published about his work "Le monde nu" Éditions Hartpon.
Contact @jeanbaptiste.nee.
Jean Basptiste Née website

The mountain
Mont Sainte-Victoire (1,011 m-3,316ft) also called Mont Venturi is a limestone massif in the South of France, in the region Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. Located east of Aix-en-Provence, it has experienced international fame, due to the more than 80 works Paul Cézanne did on it. It hosts many hikers, climbers and nature lovers, and is a major element of Aix landscape.
The range of the Sainte-Victoire is 18 kilometers long and 5 kilometers from large, following a strict east-west orientation. It is located on the Bouches-du-Rhône and Var, and in the towns of Puyloubier, Saint-Antonin-sur-Bayon, Rousset, Châteauneuf-le-Rouge, Beaurecueil, Le Tholonet Vauvenargues, Saint-Marc-Jaumegarde, Pourrières, Artigues and Rians.
D 10 and D 17 (Route Cézanne) are the main roads to skirt the mountains. On the northern side, the D10 crosses the Col de Claps (530 m) and the Col des Portes (631 m). On the southern side, the D 17 walks on the Plateau de Cengle and crossed the Collet blanc de Subéroque (505 m).
The southern side is characterized by the presence of significant high limestone cliffs 500 to 700 m with the white appearance added to the sun gives the appearance of a high muraille. At the foot of the cliffs, there is more massive brush, oak, kermes oak, Aleppo pine (population greatly reduced after the fire of 1989) but also cultures (olive trees).
On the northern side among the many species present, the Crocus is fairly well represented in the hills and the wild iris and daffodil. One can also see various varieties and boxwood shrubs.
The massif rises to the Pic des Mouches (Peak of the Flies) (1011 m) near the eastern end of the chain, and not at the Croix de Provence (946 m) near the west end and visible from Aix. The Pic des Mouches is one of the highest peaks of the department of Bouches-du-Rhône, behind the peak Bertagne which reached an altitude of 1042 mètres and which is located on the massif of Sainte-Baume.
Sainte-Victoire, as the range of the Sainte Baume, can be considered a special case among the Alpine ranges for the various stages of the formation of its relief associated geological history as well as that of the old Pyrenean-Provençal chain than that of the Western Alps (which have succeeded it).
Indeed, from the former Sainte-Victoire mountain, contemporary of the dinosaurs of the Cretaceous, it remains today only the fold Bimont, said Chaînon des Costes Chaudes, the last vestige resulting from tectonic movements and characteristics of the stacks of Pyreneo-Provençal phase during the Eocene. Later during the Oligocene, breaking of the anticlinal fold of Sainte-Victoire, which resulted from the uplift of the first great Alpine reliefs, is causing a surge that help explain the current form of the mountain, which appeared 15 million years BCE.
Sainte-Victoire, whose calcareous sediments date back to the Jurassic, thus consists of both a Pyrenean-Provencal vestige and of an alpine geology. This singularity and this ambivalence help explain why, although a massive western Alps, the problem of this connection remains complexe.
According to a recent study, the Sainte-Victoire is still growing ! The company ME2i has indeed conducted a satellite survey between 1993 and 2003 providing evidence that during this period the western end of the Sainte-Victoire was uplift of 7 mm per year.
The massif is a ensemble of 6525 ha classified since 1983.
The massive hosts several world-famous dinosaur eggs deposits including the Roques-Hautes / Les Grands-Creux on the town Beaurecueil.
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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

COFRE DE PEROTE / NAUPA-TECVUTÉPTL SKETCHED BY ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT

 

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT (1769-1859),
Cofre de Perote/ Naupa-Tecutépetl (4,282 m (14,049 ft)
Mexico

 The mountain
Cofre de Perote, also known by its Nahuatl names Naupa-Tecutépetl ,  meaning something like "Place of Four Mountain" or "Mountain of the Lord of Four Places", is an inactive volcano located in the Mexican state of Veracruz, at the point where the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, home to all of Mexico's highest peaks, joins the Sierra Madre Oriental. Cofre de Perote is Mexico's eighth highest mountain summit.
Cofre de Perote is a shield volcano, shaped very differently from the stratovolcanic Pico de Orizaba, which lies about 50 km (31 mi) to the southeast. A cofre is a coffer, and the name alludes to a volcanic outcropping on the shield which constitutes the peak of the mountain. To the north is the town of Perote, Veracruz, after which the mountain is named. The area surrounding the volcano was protected by the Mexican government as a national park, known as Cofre de Perote National Park (Parque Nacional Cofre de Perote), in 1937.

The artist
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt was a Prussian geographer, naturalist, explorer, and influential proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography. Humboldt's advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement laid the foundation for modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring.
Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in Latin America, exploring and describing it for the first time from a modern scientific point of view. His description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. Humboldt was one of the first people to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined (South America and Africa in particular). Humboldt resurrected the use of the word cosmos from the ancient Greek and assigned it to his multi-volume treatise, Kosmos, in which he sought to unify diverse branches of scientific knowledge and culture. This important work also motivated a holistic perception of the universe as one interacting entity.
On their way back to Europe from Mexico on their way to the United States, Humboldt and his fellow scientist Aimé Bonpland stopped in Cuba for a while. After their first stay in Cuba of three months they returned the mainland at Cartagena de Indias (now in Colombia), a major center of trade in northern South America. Ascending the swollen stream of the Magdalena River to Honda and arrived in Bogotá on July 6, 1801 where they met Spanish botanist José Celestino Mutis, the head of the Royal Botanical Expedition to New Granada, staying there until September 8, 1801. Mutis was generous with his time and gave Humboldt access to the huge pictorial record he had compiled since 1783. Humboldt had hopes of connecting with the French sailing expedition of Baudin, now finally underway, so Bonpland and Humboldt hurried to Ecuador. They crossed the frozen ridges of the Cordillera Real, they reached Quito on 6 January 1802, after a tedious and difficult journey.
Their stay in Ecuador was marked by the ascent of Pichincha and their climb of Chimborazo, where Humboldt and his party reached an altitude of 19,286 feet (5,878 m). This was a world record at the time, but a thousand feet short of the summit. Humboldt's journey concluded with an expedition to the sources of the Amazon en route for Lima, Peru.
At Callao, the main port for Peru, Humboldt observed the transit of Mercury. On 9 November and studied the fertilizing properties of guano, rich in nitrogen, the subsequent introduction of which into Europe was due mainly to his writings.
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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

SOUTHERN ANDES (2) PAINTED BY RHOD WULFARS

 

 

RHOD WULFARS (bn. 1979)
Southern Andes (6,991 m - 22, 838ft)
Argentina

In Somewhere in Andes, acrylic on hardboard, 2018, Private collection @rhodwulfars

About this painting
The painter wrote: “It is not a real mountain. Most of my paintings are born from the combination of the imagination and the hours spent looking, walking and smelling them. I call them "Twins" because they are similar to those reliefs of the Argentinian Andean Coridilla called "acarreos", which are long slopes of very popular loose rock that can be easily viewed. very frequently observed. This painting is therefore that of an unknown mountain, dreamt up which sums up several, and which came out of my unconscious one afternoon when the brush gave it life in a mysterious way without my being able to explain it. "
And indeed this mountain that looks a lot like the Alpamayo in Peru is not the Alpamayo (even if it could be the most famous South West face to be published very soon in this blog) !), any more than it is not the Cerro Poincenot, the Fitz Roy, the Cerro Torre or the Aconcagua, the highest peak in the Andes. These Twins imagined, encompassed, summarized and illustrated all these mountains at the same time. The most amazing being that they do it with a single stroke of the brushes as powerful and definitive as the rocky uplift itself.

The artist
Rhod Wulfars is a contemporary mountain painter using mainly acrylic technique for his paintings.
He was born in 1979 in Mendoza (Argentina). In his website he wrote: "I have spent my whole life by the mountains. On day I started to paint them". Using, in the manner of Nicolas de Staël, a style always beetween abstract and figurative, his very strong and very moving paintings described perfectly the majesty and the spectacular contents of the peaks he paints. Rhod Wulfars makes a surprising use of acrylic medium, in thick paste as one could do with oil paint. He used to named his works only bu numbers, and series letters, but sometime he writes the name of the peaks ans makes it more easy to identify. Other works by this artist on his website : rhodwulfars.wixsite.com/rhodwulfars/

The mountains
The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (Cordillera de los Andes in Spanish ) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is 7,000 km (4,350 mi) long, 200 to 700 km (124 to 435 mi) wide (widest between 18°S - 20°S latitude), and has an average height of about 4,000 m (13,123 ft). The Andes extend from north to south through seven South American countries: Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina.
The Andes Mountains are the highest mountain range outside Asia. The highest mountain outside Asia, Argentina's Mount Aconcagua, rises to an elevation of about 6,961 m (22,838 ft) above sea level. The peak of Chimborazo in the Ecuadorian Andes is farther from the Earth's center than any other location on the Earth's surface, due to the equatorial bulge resulting from the Earth's rotation. The world's highest volcanoes are in the Andes, including Ojos del Salado on the Chile-Argentina border, which rises to 6,893 m (22,615 ft).
The Andes are also part of the American Cordillera, a chain of mountain ranges (cordillera) that consists of an almost continuous sequence of mountain ranges that form the western "backbone" of North America, Central America, South America and Antarctica.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

TORRES DEL PAINE (4) PAINTED BY JAMES HART DYKE

 

JAMES HART DYKE (bn.1966)

Torres del Paine (2,500 m - 8,200 ft) 

Chile

In Torres del Paine first lights, study 2017, Courtesy John Mitchell Gallery London  

The mountains
The Torres del Paine (2,500 metres - 8,200 ft) are the distinctive three granite peaks of the Paine mountain range or Paine Massif. They are known as Torres d'Agostini, Torres Central and Torres Monzino. They are joined by the Cuernos del Paine. The area also boasts valleys, rivers such as the Paine, lakes, and glaciers. The well-known lakes include Grey, Pehoé, Nordenskiöld, and Sarmiento. The glaciers, including Grey, Pingo and Tyndall, belong to the Southern Patagonia Ice Field.
he landscape of the park is dominated by the Paine massif, which is an eastern spur of the Andes located on the east side of the Grey Glacier, rising dramatically above the Patagonian steppe. Small valleys separate the spectacular granite spires and mountains of the massif. These are: Valle del Francés (French Valley), Valle Bader, Valle Ascencio, and Valle del Silencio (Silence Valley).The Southern Patagonian Ice Field mantles a great portion of the park.


The painter
James Hart Dyke’s work is centred on landscape painting, from the domesticity of paintings of country houses to paintings generated from physically demanding expeditions over remote mountains. James has also undertaken a series of projects including accompanying HRH The Prince of Wales as the official artist on royal tours, working as ‘artist in residence’ for The British Secret Intelligence Service, working as an artist embedded with the British Forces in war zones, working for the producers of the James Bond films and working as ‘artist in residence’ for Aston Martin. These projects required him to respond in many different ways and have allowed him to experiment with more graphic forms of painting influenced by his studies as an architect at the Royal College of Art. His portraits have been shown at the National Portrait Gallery and at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters exhibitions.

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2020 - Wandering Vertexes
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

ILLINIZAS VOLCANOES SKETCHED BY FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH (1826-1900)

FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH (1826-1900),

Illiniza Sur  (5,248 m-17, 218ft)

Illiniza Norte 5,126 m-16, 818ft)
Ecuador

 In Mount Iliniza, Ecuador, July 3, 1857,  Graphite, brush and white gouache on green paper, 31.1 x 43.2 cm, Smithsonian / Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum 

The volcanoes
The Illinizas are a pair of volcanic mountains that are located to the south of Quito, Ecuador. They are located in the Illinizas Ecological Reserve (Reserva Ecológica Los Illinizas). These twin mountains are separated by a saddle that is about a kilometer long. The peaks are among the highest in Ecuador, with Illiniza Sur (5248 m-17, 218ft) standing slightly taller than Illiniza Norte 5126 m- 16, 818ft) its northern counterpart.
Most guidebooks (for example, Lonely Planet Ecuador, Ecuador: A Climbing Guide) spell the mountain with only one "l" as in Iliniza. The name Illinizas is derived from the Kunza words for "masculine hill."
Whilst Illiniza Sur (the southern peak) is a more difficult climb due to its glacial nature, Illiniza Norte requires little or no climbing expertise, and may be climbed as a trekking peak. A guide is still recommended, however, as the path becomes hard to navigate as it approaches the summit.
The Illinizas are excellent mountains for acclimatization to altitude, and are frequently used as a preparatory climb to higher peaks such as Cotopaxi, Chimborazo and Cayambe.
There is a rustic refuge located between the north and south peaks. It can be reached in one hour by car from El Chaupi, followed by a three-hour climb. The refuge has gas stoves, pots and pans and bunk beds. It is necessary to bring warm sleeping bags and food, but water is available to be boiled. The Englishman Edward Whymper tried and failed twice to make the first ascent of Iliniza Sur. It was climbed for the first time in 1880 by his two Italian guides Jean-Antoine Carrel and Louis Carrel. The first ascent of Iliniza Norte was made in 1912 by the Ecuadorians Nicolás Martínez and Alejandro Villavicencio.

The painter
Frederic Edwin Church was an American landscape painter born in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a central figure in the Hudson River School of American landscape painters, perhaps best known for painting large panoramic landscapes, often depicting mountains, waterfalls, and sunsets, but also sometimes depicting dramatic natural phenomena that he saw during his travels to the Arctic and Central and South America. Church's paintings put an emphasis on light and a romantic respect for natural detail. In his later years, Church painted classical Mediterranean and Middle Eastern scenes and cityscapes.
Church was the product of the second generation of the Hudson River School and the pupil of Thomas Cole, the school’s founder. The Hudson River School was established by the British Thomas Cole when he moved to America and started painting landscapes, mostly of mountains and other traditional American scenes. Both Cole and Church were devout Protestants and the latter's beliefs played a role in his paintings especially his early canvases. Church did differ from Cole in the topics of his paintings: he preferred natural and often majestic scenes over Cole's propensity towards allegory.
Church, like most second generation Hudson River School painters, used extraordinary detail, romanticism, and luminism in his paintings. Romanticism was prominent in Britain and France in the early 1800s as a counter-movement to the Enlightenment virtues of order and logic. Artists of the Romantic period often depicted nature in idealized scenes that depicted the richness and beauty of nature, sometimes also with emphasis on the grand scale of nature.
This tradition carries on in the works of Frederic Church, who idealizes an uninterrupted nature, highlighted by creating excruciatingly detailed art. The emphasis on nature is encouraged by the low horizontal lines, and preponderance of sky to enhance the wilderness; humanity, if it is represented, is depicted as small in comparison with the greater natural reality. The technical skill comes in the form of luminism, a Hudson River School innovation particularly present in Church's works. Luminism is also cited as encompassing several technical aspects, which can be seen in Church’s works. One example is the attempt to “hide brushstrokes,” which makes the scene seem more realistic and lessen the artist’s presence in the work. Most importantly is the emphasis on light (hence luminism) in these scenes. The several sources of light create contrast in the pictures that highlights the beauty and detailed imagery in the painting.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MONTE CIVETTA PAINTED BY ELIJAH WALTON

 

ELIJAH WALTON (1832-1880)
Monte Civetta (3,220 m - 10, 580 ft)
Italy

In Dolomites - in Spring. Civetta from Forcella Staulanza (North East), 1875 oil on canvas, 38 x 183 cm.

The mountain
Monte Civetta (3,220 m - 10, 580 ft) is a prominent and major mountain of the Dolomites, in the Province of Belluno in northern Italy. Its north-west face can be viewed from the Taibon Agordino valley, and is classed as one of the symbols of the Dolomites. The mountain is thought to have been first climbed by Simeone di Silvestro in 1855, which, if true, makes it the first major Dolomite peak to be climbed. The north-western face, with its 1,000-metre-high cliff, was first climbed in 1925 by Emil Solleder and Gustl Lettenbauer. It is historically considered the first "sixth grade" in six-tier scale of alpinistic difficulties proposed by Willo Welzenbach (corresponding to 5.9). Thirty years later UIAA used this as a basis for its grading system. The famed Svan mountain climber Mikhail Khergiani died in a climbing accident on Monte Civetta in 1969.

The artist
The British landscapist, Elijah Walton is best known for his landscapes of mountains in the Alps. Due to the poorness of his family, without the help of one or two friends he would have been unable to study art, for which his talent was soon exhibited. After passing some years at the art academy in Birmingham, he became at the age of eighteen a student at the Royal Academy Schools in London, where he had already exhibited a picture. There he worked assiduously, drawing from the antique and from life. Nearly ten years later an accidental circumstance revealed to a friend his capabilities in mountain landscape, and in 1860, immediately after his marriage, he went to Switzerland. Thence he proceeded to Egypt, where unhappily his wife died of dysentery near the second cataract. He remained in the east, spending some time in Syria and at Constantinople, till the spring of 1862, when he returned for a short time to London. But for the next five years he was much abroad, working either in the Alps or in Egypt. His sketching tours then became rarer and shorter, though he visited Greece, Norway, and the Alps. At first he resided at Staines, then removed to the neighbourhood of Bromsgrove, living most of the time at the Forelands, near that town. In 1872 his wife died, and the loss permanently affected his health. He died on 25 August 1880 at his residence Beacon Farm, Lickey near Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, leaving three sons. Walton's life was bound up in his art. He worked both in oils and in watercolours, but was more successful with the latter. Most thorough and conscientious in the study both of form and of colour, he delighted especially in mountain scenery and in atmospheric effects, such as an Alpine peak breaking through the mists, or a sunset on the Nile. Few men have equalled him in the truthful rendering of rock structure and mountain form. His pictures were much appreciated by lovers of nature; but as those of small size sold better than larger and more highly finished works, this fostered a tendency to mannerisms.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

PIZ BALZET, PUNTA DE L'ALBIGNA, SPAZZACALDEIRA BY GIOVANNI GIACOMETTI

GIOVANNI GIACOMETTI (1868-1933)
Piz Balzet (2, 869 m - 9,413 ft)
Punta de l'Albigna (2,825 m - 9,268 ft)
Spazzacaldeira (2,487 m- 8,159 ft)
Switzerland
 In  Albigna Valley, oil on canvas,  1932

The Mountains 

The Piz Balzet  (2, 869 m - 9,413 ft)  is a  tall granite mountain located in Bergell, Switzerland. Standing just on the eastern edge of the Albigna reservoir it is clearly visible when driving down from the Maloja-pass to the north and from the campsite at Vicosoprano. Seen from this (its western) side the Balzet is an imposing picture; very steep slabs fall off into the valley and several ridges make their way to the well defined summit. A different picture entirely is presented when the mountain is viewed from its southern side; from this side there are no steep drops to valley floors far below. Instead, it is 'merely' a summit in the ridge leading up to the Piz Bacun (3,244m).
The Punta da l'Albigna  (2,825 m - 9,268 ft) is an easily recognizable summit on the eastern side of the Albigna lake in the Bergell, an area in south-eastern Switzerland famous for its multitude of alpine rock climbs on excellent granite. Along with the Spazzacaldeira and the Piz Balzet, the Punta da l'Albigna ranks among the most popular climbing hotspots in the Albigna area. It hosts numerous routes from 4a to 5c and varying in length between 8 and 12 ropelengths. Most of the routes are bolted, though some rather sparingly
Spazzacaldeira (2,487 m- 8,159 ft) is the name of the ridge directly west of the Albigna reservoir, just to the north of the Al Gal. It offers a multitude of alpine-sport routes across its eastern face and the north-east ridge is a well known classic in the area. Because of the generally well bolted nature of the routes and the incredibly easy access via the nearby cable car station, Spazzacaldeira can attract a large number of climbers. Most of them will be aiming for the summit pinnacle, the famous Fiamma, a striking summit spire seen on many local postcards.

The painter
Giovanni Giacometti was a Swiss painter, the father of the famous painter and sculptor Alberto Giacometti, and of Diego Giacometti, the furniture designer as well as the father of the architect Bruno Giacometti ! In 1886, he studied painting at the School of Decorative Arts in Munich, where he met Cuno Amiet the following year. Both decide to pursue their studies in Paris, in October stood at the Académie Julian, where Giacometti remains until 1891.
In 1893, shortly after his return to Switzerland, to Bergell, he became friends with Giovanni Segantini, his eldest ten years, which has great influence on his work by opening it to the beauty of the mountain scenery and the rules of divisionism. After his sudden death in 1899, Giacometti met Ferdinand Hodler, who teaches him to create a rigorous and ornamental composition by appropriate use of shapes and colors.
He sees regularly Cuno Amiet, who after a year spent in Pont-Aven, shared his experience with him. In 1900 he exhibited in the Swiss Pavillon of the Universal Exhibition in Paris. From 1905, Giacometti works again in a great complicity with Amiet and begins to break free from the influence of Segantini. In 1906, held an exhibition of his work at Kunstlerhaus Zurich. In 1907 he went to Paris with Amiet to the Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne. They copy all the works of Van Gogh. In 1908, he exhibited with the French Fauves at the Richter Gallery in Dresden.
In 1909, the Tannhauser Gallery presents his works in Munich. He meets Alexi von Jawlensky, and in 1911 participates in the Berlin Secession. In 1912, Giacometti has a solo show at the Kunsthaus Zurich presents two works in the Sonderbund of Cologne. In 1918 after Hodler' s death, he began to be involved into the Swiss political world paying an important part as a committed artist, following int that way friend Amiet.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MONT GAUSSIER (5) AND LES ALPILLES ¨PAINTED BY VINCENT VAN GOGH

VINCENT VAN GOGH (1853-1890)
Mont Gaussier (306 m -1,004 ft)
France

In   Les Alpilles vers le plateau de la Caume, 1889, oil on canvas, 73x83cm,  Guggenheim Museum NYC, Justin K. Thannhauser Collection

About the painting
During his internment in the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Van Gogh seized the surroundings to nourish his artistic geography. He tirelessly paints and draws new Provencal motifs: cypress trees, olive groves and hills. With the Alpilles chain and the Mont Gaussier rising behind the asylum buildings, the painter has the opportunity to represent this mountain range as well as the farms (Mas in french) nearby. I this one the Mont Gaussier is in the background of the farm, probably situated on theVia Aurelia, the antique roman road going from St Rémy de Provence to Arles...


The mountain
The Mont Gaussier (306 m -1,004 ft) is a summit of the Alpilles located south of the city of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France. Today, the place of passage of many hikers who cross it by the GR6, Mount Gaussier was very early used as habitat by protohistoric populations, before having at its summit a medieval castle, nowadays disappeared. Mount Gaussier is made of crystalline limestone, white and hard. One finds in the soil the trace of many fossils. This type of summit is characteristic of the Alpilles range of mountains, especially on the north face.
The first traces of habitation on Mount Gaussier are ancient. In 1996, three sites dating from Protohistory were discovered at the summit and on the slopes. This is what emerges from the study of stones, tiles, ceramics and shards of amphora found on the premises. Moreover, the foundation of a wall was identified at the top during the same prospecting.
Most of the human activity of antiquity at Mount Gaussier nevertheless concentrated at the foot of it, since it was there that was built the Salyan city of Glanum (today Saint-Remy de Provence). Research carried out in 1996 and 1997 revealed that the well-preserved remains of a protohistoric rampart with towers have been cleared in several places, particularly on the ridges which dominate to the north-east and south-west the Saint-Clerg and at the foot of Mount Gaussier. The system of rampart which encircled the city in the 1st and 2nd centuries BC. J.-C. leaned on the cliffs of the mount Gaussier which border it on a hundred meters. It is also believed that Mount Gaussier, by its situation, could be used as an acropolis because of its plateau surrounded by cliffs and that its access from Glanum was made possible by a narrow corridor.
If, according to the archaeologist Henri Rolland, some families occupied the Alpilles range, on the slopes of Mount Gaussier, between the first Iron Age and the end of Antiquity, but also in the High Middle Ages, only the foot and the summit of the mountain were occupied in the following centuries, especially in the 5th and 6th centuries. It was here that a part of the inhabitants of Glanum took up residence after the ruin of the ancient city in the alluvial deposits of the mountain.
Mount Gaussier, like Glanum, then in ruins, and Saint-Remy-de-Provence, became property of the church of Avignon at the end of the 9th century in a county of Provence powered by Count Thibert.
It is possible to reach the Mount Gaussier from the ruins of Glanum or from La Caume by the GR6 climbing previously metal ladders.

The painter
Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade he created about 2100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterized by bold, symbolic colours, and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. He died by suicide at 37, following years of mental illness and poverty.
Born into an upper-middle-class family, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet and thoughtful. As a young man he worked as an art dealer, often travelling, but became depressed after he was transferred to London. He turned to religion, and spent time as a missionary in southern Belgium. Later he drifted in ill health and solitude. He took up painting in 1881 having moved back home with his parents. His younger brother Theo supported him financially, and the two kept up a long correspondence by letter.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

THE MONT BLANC & THE MER DE GLACE BY JOHN RUSKIN

JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900),
The Mont Blanc (4,808.13 m - 15,776.7 ft)
France - Italy border

In Mer de Glace Chamonix, watercolor on paper, 1849, Ruskin Foundation

The painter  

John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, as well as an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy. His writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. Ruskin also penned essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded by a preference for plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, and architectural structures and ornamentation. He was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century, and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability and craft.
Ruskin first came to widespread attention with the first volume of Modern Painters (1843), an extended essay in defence of the work of J. M. W. Turner in which he argued that the principal role of the artist is "truth to nature". From the 1850s he championed the Pre-Raphaelites who were influenced by his ideas. His work increasingly focused on social and political issues. Unto This Last (1860, 1862) marked the shift in emphasis. In 1869, Ruskin became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, where he established the Ruskin School of Drawing. In 1871, he began his monthly "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain", published under the title Fors Clavigera (1871–1884). In the course of this complex and deeply personal work, he developed the principles underlying his ideal society. As a result, he founded the Guild of St George, an organisation that endures today.

The mountain
Mont Blanc (in French) or Monte Bianco (in Italian), both meaning "White Mountain", is the highest mountain in the Alps and the highest in Europe after the Caucasus peaks. It rises 4,808.73 m (15,777 ft) above sea level and 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 Glacier
The Mer de Glace  ( Sea of Ice) is an alpine valley glacier located on the northern slope of the Mont-Blanc massif, in the French department of Haute-Savoie. It is formed by the confluence of the Tacul glacier and the Leschaux glacier and flows into the Arve valley, on the territory of the municipality of Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, giving rise to the Arveyron. The glacier is seven kilometers long, its supply basin has a maximum length of twelve kilometers and an area of ​​40 km2, while its thickness reaches 300 meters.
In the seventeenth century, the glacier, which descends into the valley and threatens homes, is feared by the population, so that only its terminal tongue is known, under the name of Glacier des Bois. Then finished by a natural cave, it is the subject of numerous paintings. Its current name was given to it in 1741 by William Windham during the exploration he carried out with his British compatriot Richard Pococke. Two decades later, Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, the future instigator of the first ascent of Mont Blanc, made several observations of the glacier and asked Marc-Théodore Bourrit to promote it. It thus contributes to the development of alpine tourism and to the visit of numerous personalities of letters as well as of the aristocracy; scientists carried out experiments there in the 19th century. To shelter them, three increasingly large and comfortable shelters were successively built in Montenvers. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Montenvers railway, leaving from Chamonix, was created. In the middle of the century, an ice cave was pierced for the first time in the Mer de Glace. Due to the attraction's success, a cable car was put into service in 1961 to access it, then replaced by a cable car in 1988. Since 1973, an underground hydroelectric power station has been using the meltwater from the glacier.
Almost a million visitors go to Montenvers every year to contemplate the Mer de Glace. During peak periods, half of them visit the ice cave. Three museums are also located on the site. Skiing is possible from the Aiguille du Midi in winter. However, the retreat of the glacier, measured since 1860-1870, causes a loss of thickness of 120 meters in a century in its terminal part. It causes difficulties at the level of the ice cave, where more and more steps are necessary to reach the gondola, and requires considering its upstream movement, like the catchment of the hydroelectric power station in 2011.
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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

MONT AGEL PAINTED BY CLAUDE MONET

CLAUDE MONET  (1840-1926)
Mont Agel  (1,151m - 3,776 ft)
France - Monaco border

In Cap Martin près de Menton, Huile sur toile, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 

The mountain
Mont Agel (1,151m - 3,776 ft) is a summit of the Alps located in the South of France, overlooking part of the French Riviera, Monaco, Beausoleil, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin... exactly as shwon in the Monet's painting above !
It has held a historic strategic position since Antiquity and still houses military aerial detection installations today. Mount Agel is precisely located in the French commune of Peille, ( Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region). It rises in the Prealps of Nice and constitutes the highest point of the Monegasque watershed. The highest point of the principality, of Monaco, on the slopes of this mountain, can be reached by the Chemin des Révoires. A massive summit, Mount Agel is visible from a great distance: from certain districts of Nice as well as from a large part of the French Riviera between Cannes, Antibes, Nice, Antibes, and the Principality of Monaco and likewise from the Italian Riviera to around Vintimiglia and Bordighiera.
The history of Mount Agel begins with the Celto-Ligurian tribes who occupied the site and some of whose members were involved in the boarding and looting of boats engaged in cabotage. They are submitted from 23 to 13 BC. BC by the Romans who restored the old coastal route passing through the slopes of Mount Agel to link Ventimiglia to Narbonne Gaul and forming part of the Via Aurelia.
From 1931, new elements of fortification were built within the framework of the Maginot line.
Mount Agel now houses a large work of artillery equipped with turrets, linked together by deeply buried galleries. During the fighting of June 1940, his shots participated in the defense of Menton and supported the outpost of Pont-Saint-Louis and the work of Cap-Martin.
Until 2012, the 943 Capitaine Auber air base of the French Air Force was located there.
Today, only radars remain, which continue their watch in automatic mode, the information being transmitted and used by the Detection and Control Center at 942 Lyon-Mont Verdun air base.
Mount Agel also shelters on its slopes, the Monte-Carlo Golf Club, a very selective club. A little to the east of the golf course is the transmitter center of Fontbonne. Until its recent redevelopment, there were various protohistoric constructions.
Close to Mount Agel and the golf course is also the summer residence of Princes of Monaco (Rocagel site).

The painter
The painter Oscar-Claude Monet better known as Claude Monet was a founder of French Impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. The term "Impressionism" is derived from the title of his painting « Impression, soleil levant » (Impression, Sunrise), which was exhibited in 1874 in the first of the independent exhibitions mounted by Monet and his associates as an alternative to the Salon de Paris.
Monet's ambition of documenting the French countryside led him to adopt a method of painting the same scene many times in order to capture the changing of light and the passing of the seasons exactly like the japanese artist Hokusai (1760-1849) did with his 36 views of Mount Fuji.
Monet repeated this kinf of "exercise de stylee with his series on Les Petites Dalles. and Kolsass mountain.
Monet has been described as "the driving force behind Impressionism". Crucial to the art of the Impressionist painters was the understanding of the effects of light on the local colour of objects, and the effects of the juxtaposition of colours with each other. Monet's long career as a painter was spent in the pursuit of this aim.
In 1856, his chance meeting with Eugene Boudin, a painter of small beach scenes, opened his eyes to the possibility of plein-air painting. From that time, with a short interruption for military service, he dedicated himself to searching for new and improved methods of painterly expression. To this end, as a young man, he visited the Paris Salon and familiarised himself with the works of older painters, and made friends with other young artists.[54] The five years that he spent at Argenteuil, spending much time on the River Seine in a little floating studio, were formative in his study of the effects of light and reflections. He began to think in terms of colours and shapes rather than scenes and objects. He used bright colours in dabs and dashes and squiggles of paint. Having rejected the academic teachings of Gleyre's studio, he freed himself from theory, saying "I like to paint as a bird sings."
In 1877 a series of paintings at Gare St-Lazare had Monet looking at smoke and steam and the way that they affected colour and visibility, being sometimes opaque and sometimes translucent. He was to further use this study in the painting of the effects of mist and rain on the landscape. The study of the effects of atmosphere were to evolve into a number of series of paintings in which Monet repeatedly painted the same subject in different lights, at different hours of the day, and through the changes of weather and season. This process began in the 1880s and continued until the end of his life in 1926.
His first series exhibited as such was of Haystacks, painted from different points of view and at different times of the day. Fifteen of the paintings were exhibited at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in 1891. In 1892 he produced what is probably his best-known series, Twenty-six views of Rouen Cathedral. In these paintings Monet broke with painterly traditions by cropping the subject so that only a portion of the facade is seen on the canvas. The paintings do not focus on the grand Medieval building, but on the play of light and shade across its surface, transforming the solid masonry.
Other series include Peupliers, Matins sur la Seine, and the Nenuphars that were painted on his property at Giverny. Between 1883 and 1908, Monet traveled to the Mediterranean, where he painted landmarks, landscapes, and seascapes, including a series of paintings in Antibes (above) and Venice. In London he painted four series: the Houses of Parliament, London ; Charing Cross Bridge ; Waterloo Bridge, and Views of Westminster Bridge. Helen Gardner writes: "Monet, with a scientific precision, has given us an unparalleled and unexcelled record of the passing of time as seen in the movement of light over identical forms."
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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

FUJIYAMA / 富士山 BY TSUCHIYA KOITSU /土屋光逸

TSUCHIYA KOITSU / 土屋光逸 (1870-1949)
Fujiyama / 富士山 (3, 776 m -12,389 ft)
Japan

In Fuji from Lake Motosu, woodblock print, 1934

The artist
Tsuchiya Koitsu (土屋光逸) was an important artist in the Shin-hanga movement. He trained under the ukiyo-e master Kobayashi Kiyochika for 19 years, and initially focused on works depicting scenes from the First Sino-Japanese War. In 1931, at the age of 60, he began work for Shōzaburō Watanabe and his art publishing establishment which also published the work of artists like Kawase Hasui and Yoshida Hiroshi. His later work incorporated light effects to increase the emotional impact of his art.
Born on September 23, 1870, in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Japan. His birth name was either Koichi or Sahei. He moved to Tokyo at age 15. He first had an apprenticeship for the woodblock carver Matsuzaki, but soon became a student of ukiyo-e master Kiyochika Kobayashi. He worked for Kiyochika for 19 years and lived in his house.
He initially published prints made during the First Sino-Japanese War, before developing his skill with dramatic light effects, learned from Kiyochika. Koitsu published through the Watanabe publishing house after Watanabe and Koitsu met at an exhibition commemorating the 17th anniversary of Kiyochika's death. He also produced prints for publishers Doi Sadaichi, Kawaguchi, Baba Nobuhiko, Tanaka Shobido, and Takemura.

The mountain
This is the legendary Mount Fuji or Fujiyama (富士山).
It is located on Honshu Island and is the highest mountain peak in Japan at 3,776.24 m (12,389 ft). Several names are attributed to it: "Fuji-san", "Fujiyama" or, redundantly, "Mt. Fujiyama". Usually Japanese speakers refer to the mountain as "Fuji-san". The other Japanese names for Mount Fuji, have become obsolete or poetic like: Fuji-no-Yama (ふじの山 - The Mountain of Fuji), Fuji-no-Takane (ふじの高嶺- The High Peak of Fuji), Fuyō-hō (芙蓉峰 - The Lotus Peak), and Fugaku (富岳／富嶽), created by combining the first character of 富士, Fuji, and 岳, mountain.
Mount Fuji is an active stratovolcano that last erupted in 1707–08. Mount Fuji lies about 100 kilometres (60 mi) south-west of Tokyo, and can be seen from there on a clear day.
Mount Fuji's exceptionally symmetrical cone, which is snow-capped several months a year, is a well-known symbol of Japan and it is frequently depicted in art and photographs, as well as visited by sightseers and climbers.
Mount Fuji is one of Japan's Three Holy Mountains (三霊山) along with Mount Tate and Mount Haku. It is also a Special Place of Scenic Beauty and one of Japan's Historic Sites.
It was added to the World Heritage List as a Cultural Site on June 22, 2013. As per UNESCO, Mount Fuji has “inspired artists and poets and been the object of pilgrimage for centuries”. UNESCO recognizes 25 sites of cultural interest within the Mt. Fuji locality. These 25 locations include the mountain itself, Fujisan Hongū Sengen Shrine and six other Sengen shrines, two lodging houses, Lake Yamanaka, Lake Kawaguchi, the eight Oshino Hakkai hot springs, two lava tree molds, the remains of the Fuji-kō cult in the Hitoana cave, Shiraito Falls, and Miho no Matsubara pine tree grove; while on the low alps of Mount Fuji lies the Taisekiji temple complex, where the central base headquarters of Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism is located.
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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau