IF ANYONE could portray on canvas the awesome thrill of climbing, the sheer exposure of a rockface and the expressionless, unforgiving nature of fissured granite, it had to be the Lakeland painter and climber Julian Cooper.

Last year he was given the awesome brief from the Mountain Heritage Trust, organisers of the new British Mountaineering Exhibition at Rheged, to distil within one big painting the very essence of British mountaineering.

For Cooper, the picture's location had to be Scafell, the birthplace of British climbing.

"Scafell's face is saturated with climbing history, from Coleridge's first encounter with Broad Stand in 1802," recounted the painter.

"Central Buttress was climbed first by Herford in 1914.

He survived the climb, only to be killed in the first world war, and the rock itself has claimed several victims."

Due to National Lottery funding delays, Julian had just three months in which to complete what should have been a six-month assignment.

Then foot-and-mouth access restrictions forced him to work from a virtual Scafell, scanning-in his sketches and photos and enhancing the digitised images to squeeze out every possible piece of information.

But Cooper overcame the long summer days in his Ambleside studio, perched on ladders and scaffolding daubing at the mammoth 13ft by 10ft canvas by means of a brush with a 3ft handle.

To give a toothy, gritty feel to his rock he began by rubbing down the canvas with sand and earth, creating a pitted surface down which the oil paint would run in rivulets like rain down stone.

"The danger of painting rock is making it look like plastic, cardboard, or even cheesecake instead of sharp and slimy, slippery and greasy.," he said.

Considering the slowness of the process by which rock is formed, it was ironic that Cooper was forced to rush the work for the unveiling by premier Tony Blair.

The work is on permanent exhibition at Rheged.