VITTORIO SELLA. Panorama of Nepalese Ranges, from Chunjerma., 1899 Sella numbers HS 136-139. 14.3x72" 4 collodion prints, printed 1901, mounted on 16.5x74.5" heavy brown board. Inscribed in pencil on mount recto HS 136: Mt Everest/ 29009/ 136-139. Inscribed in pencil on mount verso HS 136: 136/ From Everest to Kanchenjunga. Embossed with Vittorio Sella stamp in print lower right of HS 139. Paper label attached to mount recto HS 137 with clear tape typed in black ink: North-West. Inscribed in black in on mount recto HS 137: The range of Mts. from Everest to Kanchenjunga. Inscribed in pencil on mount verso HS 137: 137. Inscribed in pencil on mount verso HS 138: 138. Inscribed in pencil on mount verso HS 139: 139.

This panorama captures in dramatic fashion the Greater Himalayan range from Mt. Everest, the planet's highest mountain east to Kangchenjunga the planet's third highest mountain peak. Sella was legendary for his panoramas, having made his first ones in the 1880s in the Alps. Sella's technique was unsurpassed during his lifetime both in sublime image making and the incredible sophistication of making high altitude images and printing them on thoroughly modern papers. Only Ansel Adams mountain pictures from the 1920s and 1930s rival these in terms of emotion, vision and technical prowess.

Here the view was made at the top of Senon La (Chunjerma)14,853 feet.

In 1899 Vittorio Sella joined Douglas Freshfield on an expedition to Kangchenjunga the third highest peak on planet earth and the most conspicuous of the Himalayan Peaks... Freshfield wrote about this in 1903: "[This is] the first Tour of Kangchenjunga made by Europeans...For almost all my illustrations I have to thank Signor Vittorio Sella, who also accompanied me. He has proved his skill as a mountain photographer in the Alps, in the Caucasus, and in Alaska. But he has never found a nobler or more varied field, or worked with more uniform success, than under the shadow of the highest Himalaya...The Himalayan chain is one thousand five hundred miles long... My object, as I have already said, was to make the tour - to use an Alpine phrase, ' the High-level Tour' - of Kangchenjunga, passing as near the great mountain as might prove to be possible. This circuit had never been accomplished by any European. Sir Joseph Hooker came nearest to it fifty years ago (p. 20)...To get round Kangchenjunga was not, therefore, the only object I set before me. I hoped also to be able to obtain, what the Indian Survey had been too fully employed elsewhere to be able to give geographers, a fairly accurate general delineation of the main glacial features of the group, and some material for comparing them with those of the Alps and the Caucasus. I trusted to be able to ascertain the number and length of the trunk ice- streams, to form an approximate estimate of the amount of ground covered by snow and ice, and to recognize any peculiarities that might distinguish the glaciers of Sikhim [sic] from those of more temperate regions." (p. 29) Round Kangchenjunga: A Narrative of Mountain Travel and Exploration, by Douglas Freshfield, London, Edward Arnold 1903

In the far east of Nepal, the Himalayas rise to the Kangchenjunga massif on the border with India, the third highest mountain in the world, the most easterly 8,000m (26,000 ft) summit and the highest point of India. The eastern side of Kangchenjunga is in the Indian state of Sikkim, formerly an independent Kingdom, it lies on the main route from India to Lhasa Tibet, which passes over the Nathu La pass into the Tibet. East of Sikkim lies the ancient Buddhist Kingdom of Bhutan.

Overall Good. Edges where prints join are abraded and lifting, vertical abrasions left are of panel 1 from being folded on other panels abrasions and moderate wear. Mount has corner and edge wear, tape marks mount recto.