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| Lithograph from 1888 showing the Krakatoa eruption, author unknown. (via Public Domain Review) |
The earliest volcanic art is generally religious in nature. Think Roman paintings and sculptures of Vulcan, the blacksmith god of fire, working inside the island Vulcano off the coast of southern Italy or miniature effigies of Popocatépetl, made by the Tetimpa people of Puebla, Mexico, for a volcano active between 50 B.C.E and 100 C.E. Sébastien Nomade and colleagues in fact argue that the earliest depictions of volcanoes are much, much earlier. They indentified 36,000 year old stone engravings of a spray shape from the Chauvet-Pont d’Arc Cave in France as depictions of a volcanic eruption, as there are volcanic rocks in the cave dating from 30,000 to 40,000 years ago. A 9,000 year old Turkish mosaic seems to likewise commemorate a nearby volcanic eruption. Some speculate myths and entire religions were inspired by experiences and observations of volcanoes.
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| Kircher’s diagram showing the interconnectedness of fire inside the earth, from Mundus Subterraneus. |
The infancy of science as we know it is reflected in speculative art of the proto-scientific illustrations of the source of volcanism, in 17th-century polymath Athanasius Kircher’s Mundus Subterraneus, 1665.
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| Vesuvius from Portici, Joseph Wright of Derby. Credit: ©courtesy of the Huntington Art Collections, San Marino, CA. |
The accuracy of English painter Joseph Wright of Derby's 30 odd paintings of Vesuvius erupting, made between 1774 and 1780, including the famed “Vesuvius from Portici,” are astonishing, considering he never actually saw the volcano erupt. He relied on his sketches of the volcano made while inactive, and his imagination.
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| JMW Turner The Eruption of the Soufriere Mountains in the Island of St. Vincent, 30th April 1812Oil on canvas© University of Liverpool Art Gallery & Collections, The Bridgeman Art Library |
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| “Chichester Canal,” by J.M.W. Turner has vivid skies from the Tambora eruption. CreditTate, London 2015 |
The massive and deadly 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora, the largest in recorded history, put so much debris into our atmosphere it triggered what has been known as "the year without summer" - the first of three years of cooling - leading to frigid weather, agriculture collapse, pandemics, vivid sunsets and one dark and stormy night which has gone down in the history of Gothic literature, as it saw the birth of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Lord Byron write the outline for “The Vampyre.” Byron wrote “Darkness,” later that year, likewise inspired by the frigid temperature and volcano-darkened skies.
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Japanese artist Hokusai (1760–1849) made his iconic series of ukiyo-e style woodblock prints "Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji" in the 1830s. These 46 prints are considered masterpieces made at the height of his carreer, highlight many views of the beloved, beautiful volcano from different perspectives and in different weather, including the most well-know The Great Wave off Kanagawa. He himself later returned to this subject again and again, as did other other printmakers like
Andō Hiroshige.
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| The Great Wave off Kanagawa, Katsushika Hokusai, c. 1829-1832 |
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| View of Mount Fuji from Satta Point in the Suruga Bay, Andō Hiroshige, 1859 |
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| One of the sketches carried out by William Ascroft in the winter of 1883/4 - used as the frontispiece of The Eruption of Krakatoa, and Subsequent Phenomena: Report of the Krakatoa committee of the Royal Society (1888), ed. by G.J. Simmons. (via Public Domain Review) |
After the spectacular and devastating 1883 eruption of Indonesian volcano Krakatoa, the debris spread around the global stratosphere and caused lurid sunsets even in Britain, where painter William Ascroft struggled to document the effect with evening pastel sketches. He exhibited more than 500 in the galleries of the Science Museum. In Oslo, painter Edvard Munch wrote, “it was as if a flaming sword of blood slashed open the vault of heaven ... the atmosphere turned to blood – with glaring tongues of fire – the hills became deep blue – the fjord shaded into cold blue – among the yellow and red colours – that garish blood-red – on the road – and the railing – my companions’ faces became yellow-white – I felt something like a great scream – and truly I heard a great scream.” (via Public Domain Review) Though debated, some researchers believe these vivid skies later inspired his famous series of works, The Scream (Olson et al., 2004).
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| Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893. Credit: public domain. |
The 1880s and 1890s even saw a romantic movement of non-indigenous artists in Hawai'i known as the Volcano School producing paintings of dramatic nocturnal eruptions. These artists did strive for accuracy making grueling multi-day hikes up the slopes of Kilauea.
Chemists have even looked to art history to see if sunsets depicted could be a measure of post-eruption aerosols in the atmosphere. Zerefos and colleagues first thought to see if the red to green ratio in painted sunsets from 1500 and 2000 accurately reflected how much sunsets were enhanced and made redder following 54 major volcanic eruptions (and whether it correlated with aerosol optical depth). They began with images of works from museum websites, but realized that these photos could be biased by differing, subjective, colour correction by photographers. So, they repeated their study with a subset of images from the Tate (mainly by Turner). They found that sunset paintings made the year of a major eruption and the three subsequent years did indeed skew red, accurately correlated with the expected tiny volcanic particles in the atmosphere. This effect persisted despite other influences on sunset colours including pigments available and styles in art.
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| Andy Warhol Vesuvius Naples, Museo di Capodimonte © Photo Scala, Florence/Courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali |
Volcanoes have continued to inspire even modern artists, though strict realism is no longer the goal in many instances. The movement and power is conveyed while colour has more to do with emotion and aesthetics than aerosol optical depth - for instance in Warhol's Vesuvius. As Vesuvius itself had been a stop on the typical European Grand Tour, Warhol recognized paintings of Vesuvius as a cliche and hence a great topic for him to explore. Though she made representative volcono prints, a more poetic and symbolic representation can be seen in Bertha Lum's woodblock print Spirit of the Volcano.
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| Bertha Lum, Spirit of the Volcano, Color Woodcut, 1933 |
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| Danny Osborne, A conquistador’s helmet cast from lava via Atlas Obscura |
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| Osborne and crew use a mold on long pole is inserted into flowing lava Volcano Pacaya, Guatemala. 2010. via Atlas Obscura |
Finally today, volcanoes themselves can become the medium as well as message. Contemporary sculptor Danny Osborne prefers to interact more directly with volcanoes and casts sculptures with molds plunged directly into flowing lava!
SOURCES
Richard Hamblyn, The Krakatoa Sunsets, Public Domain Review
Donald W. Olson, Russell L. Doescher and Marilynn S. Olson, "When The Sky Ran Red: The Story Behind The Scream," Sky & Telescope, February 2004.
Atmospheric effects of volcanic eruptions as seen by famous artists and depicted in their paintings
Volcano: Turner to Warhol, The Guardian, Sun 1 Aug 2010 00.05 BST
Sébastien Nomade, Dominique Genty, Romain Sasco, Vincent Scao, Valérie Féruglio, Dominique Baffier, and Hervé Guillou. A 36,000-Year-Old Volcanic Eruption Depicted in the Chauvet-Pont d’Arc Cave (Ardèche, France)? PLOS ON, 2016, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0146621
David Bressan, From Art To Myth, The Relationship Of Our Ancestors With Volcanoes, Forbes, Jan 19, 2017, 03:26pm
