Scenic Painter (Historical Dictionary of Cultural and Queyras) The picturesque is not only the alliance of wood, rocks and water, as defined by Henri Ferrand is also and above all, as indicated by the etymology (word, borrowed from Italian, is formed on a verb, meaning "paint"), the spectacle of nature before our eyes on us and makes a strong impression that we feel the urge to paint, to represent, reproduce, either by drawing, either by painting or by photographing. In fact, the main sites of Queyras, at least those who were considered quaint, have often been represented since the early nineteenth-s, has developed a taste for traveling and hiking tours. These sites are the Combe, the hamlet of Chapelue located at the entrance to the parade Crupies, Fort Queyras built on a rock, and, of course, the village of Saint-Veran.
analyze these charts, known to all Queyrassins, dating from the early nineteenth century and representing the Fort-Queyras. The authors first two (Sabatier and Cassian, reproduced in Fort-Queyras, A and O Golaz, p 13 and p 51) were placed beyond the village of Chateau-Queyras, upstream from Fort, towards Old Town. They are lower than the rocky outcrop that they draw, in cons-diving, we say if we analyzed the terms of a film, so that the peak and the fortress stand out against a background of high mountains , one form of the tooth Ratier Furfande and needles, also called because of their serrations, saws Furfande. Thus, the elevation of the site is marked and, in the tables, it seems much higher than it is in reality. The peak and Fortress, located at 1300 m altitude, stand upright, almost at the height of the tooth Ratier which culminates at 2400 m. The effect is stunning, the terrain is forced, the impression of verticality is emphasized steep. The horizon is relegated to the top of the table: it is a dark sky, gray, loaded with heavy clouds threatening. Paradoxically, the horizon is vertical. The fortress rises towards the sky, it almost seems to reach.
In these tables, the picturesque is not reducible to one accident. It is the extreme of extremes. The horizon blocked in the vertical scale, as in this description of a traveler: "Here, the smallest crevices of the walls gave the roots of jack pine, and here the white wall rises to heaven."
look at these other prints of the fortress (Fort-Queyras, A and O Golaz, p 41 and p 65, Lord Monson and Louis Haghe, in Travels in the Alps in 1838, reproduced on the cover of the book of General Guillaume) . The designers are held below the village on the banks of the Guil. Again, the horizon has been relegated to the top of the drawing. The space is occupied by three quarters the hill, huge vertical cliff at the foot of which flow the waters of Guil. The topography appears steeper than it is, through the accentuation of the effect of Angle cons. One wonders how they managed to reach the summit to build the fortress, which appears as a challenge to the skies nearby. Nature is dark, wild, wild colors are almost black, the sky, covered with heavy gray clouds. It was almost dark. Queyras is shown dark, without light, cold and naked in his savage isolation: the picturesque paroxysmal.
a few decades, the picturesque and romantic dark Queyras designers French or English, Cassian, Sabatier, Bartlett, Monson, Haghe, etc.. has changed, more accurately, it sold its place in what I call the color photogenic as the contemporary photographers have exploited, J Lapeyre and P. Putelat in their albums or their postcards. Queyras is the hikers, lovers of physical exertion at high altitudes. Another Queyras arises, the holiday, sun, bright light, a bright and serene Queyras, a Mediterranean Queyras, green and welcoming. It is over the picturesque dark and tragic, wild and rough, gorges, defiles, ravines, craggy rocks. What are modern tourists, are the alpine meadows, passes, trails winding through meadows, beautiful colors Nature, larch forests, villages laughing that exhibit their fountains, sundials, their beautiful stones, their chapels and churches, their crosses. A burning was succeeded by the dark color photo taken on glossy paper, and the nature fierce, dark, disturbing, pure light, which breaks out, who sings happiness, a light without shadows, a light blue sky, vacation , reckless.
In a century and a half, the Queyras has led to two sets of images, if not almost contradictory, at least located opposite one another, and successive in time, never overlap from the misery to happiness index probably economic and social changes that have affected the Queyras depth.
