Historical physics and astronomy as .gifs

 

Galilei, Galileo, 1564-1642. Istoria e dimostrazioni intorno alle macchie solari e loro accidenti, 1613.

Put Galileo's 1612 drawings of sunspots together and what do you get (via Houghton Library, Harvard University)? 

Gifs taken from a 1929 film by Nobel laureate William Lawrence Bragg demonstrating his research into surface tension and spectroscopic analysis of light reflected from a soap film. (via the Royal Institution tumblr)

NASA imagery of Pioneer via the US National Archives on GIPHY

This work from the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology,  Celestial scenery, or, The Wonders of the planetary system displayed (1845) was written by Thomas Dick, a Scottish minister and science educator. (via the Smithsonian)

And of course Eadweard Muybridge:

Mildred Thompson and the Art of the Cosmos

Mildred Thompson 'Magnetic Fields' 1990, oil on canvas, 70.5 x 150” (triptych)

 

American artist Mildred Jean Thompson (March 12, 1936 – September 1, 2003) worked in many media, including printmaking, sculpture, painting, drawing and photography, as well as a writer. Critics see the influence of German Expressionism, West African textiles, Islamic architecture, spiritualism, metaphysics music and particularly jazz as her work grew increasingly abstract and improvisational. All these things are important, but her interest in physics and astronomy also shines through in the art about music and sound, to the later work specifically about mathematics, magnetic fields, radiation, particles and planetary systems. Thompson said, “My work in the visual arts is, and always has been, a continuous search for understanding. It is an expression of purpose and reflects a personal interpretation of the universe.” 

Mildred Thompsn, String Theory Series, 1999, acrylic on vinyl, 61.5 x 46”

Finding her ability to show as a Black woman in the US was hampered by racism and sexism, she spent a decade in Germany. She had studied at Art Academy of Hamburg and returned to live and work in the Rhineland town of Düren in the 60s. By the 70s her work had become completely abstract. From 1975 to 1986 she lived in Tampa, Washington D.C, Paris, before settling in Atlanta, where she wrote for the periodical Art Papers, taught at the Atlanta College of Art and worked as an artist for the rest of her life. Thompson explained, "My work has to do with the cosmos and how it affects us," to Essence magazine in 1990.

Mildred Thompson, Helio Centric III, 1993, intaglio vitreograph, 40" x 30" each
(image size 30" x 24")

 

For me the Helios Centric series evokes the swirling chaos of the nascent solar system, as masses spun in a disc around our sun, colliding and aggregating over time into a string of planets and smaller bodies. She did not make literal interpretations of sound, forces, space or any underlying physics of the universe but expressed these concepts imagination, emotion, colour and rhythm. There's a great deal of joy to be found in her work. She explored the universe from the smallest scales of her Wave Function, Radiation and String Theory series to the astronamical scale of our solar system and beyond and what she saw and expressed was quite beautiful.

Mildred Thompson
Radiation Explorations 8, 1994
Oil on canvas
87.5 x 110.1 inches (222.3 x 279.7 cm) overall

 

Wave Function III, 1993, intaglio vitreograph, 30" x 22.5" (image size 20" x 16")

References & Further Info

MildredThompson.org

Deanna Sirlin, Melissa Messina and the Mildred Thompson Legacy Project, interview on The Arts Section

Mildred Thompson, on Wikipedia.com 

Owl, Pussycat, Scientific Illustration and Other Nonsense by Edward Lear

owl illustration by Edward Lear

Edward Lear's illustration of a cat, Private collection promised to the Ashmolean Museum

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea 

In a beautiful pea-green boat, 

They took some honey, and plenty of money, 

Wrapped up in a five-pound note. 

The Owl looked up to the stars above, 

And sang to a small guitar, 

‘O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love, 

What a beautiful Pussy you are, 

You are, 

You are! 

What a beautiful Pussy you are!’

The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear

illustration of a lioness by Edward Lear

Poet Edward Lear (1812–1888), remembered affectionately for his delightful nonsense poems like 'The Owl and the Pussycat' or 'The Jumblies' is less well remembered for his exceptional, carefully observed scientific illustration but he was a talented and sought-after natural historian and illustrator. He believed in working from life, if not in the field, at least observing animals in zoos and menageries, rather than basing drawings of flora and fauna on museum collections of dead animals. He wrote “I am never pleased with a drawing unless I make it from life,” in 1831. He befriended zookepers to gain access and make measurements of animals; his work was praised by Charles Darwin and John James Audubon. He apprenticed with scientist Prideaux Selby, gaining confidence in his bird illustraions. His work shows a real understanding of how animals move and their 'personalities'which can be missing from work produced from drawing dead specimen. His first publication was a book about parrots, Illustrations of the Family Psittacidae or Parrots, published when he was only 19. It was the first book published about a family of birds. Then he worked for scientific illustrators John and Elizabeth Gould, helping him illustrate the birds of Europe and her illustrate birds for Darwin’s Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, as well as producing illustrations for William Buckland, Thomas Bell, and William Jardine. His careful observation and illustrations lead Lear to identify several new species and several are named after him like Lear's macaw (Anodorhynchus leari), a large blue Brazilian parrot.

Culminated Toucan, Ramphastos culminatus (mid 1830s).
Plate 1 in Lear's Monograph of the Family of Toucans.

 

A Stanley parakeet, one of 42 plates in Edward Lear's Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots. Biodiversity Heritage Library/CC BY 2.0

His nonsense poems came after, and in a sense, out of his scientific illustration. He was commissioned to illustrate the collection of parots in the menagerie of naturalist Edward Smith-Stanley, the 13th Earl of Derby at his home Knowsley Hall near Liverpool. He was treated like the help, and ate with the servants in the basement, but became a great hit with Lord Derby's grandchildren and began entertaining them with cartoons and limericks and this was how he began creating work for children. The Earl began inviting him to eat upstairs with guests and other nobles. He meanwhile gained a real reputation for his painting and even became the personal drawing instructor to Queen Victoria. So when he first began published Book of Nonsense, in 1846, he used a pen name to avoid tarnishing his reputation as a serious painter and scientific illustrator. He revealed his name only after his poems became a great success, a great surprise to him. This was a great boon to him as his ailing health and eyesight meant he could no longer work as a zoological draughtsman, and this new success came when he really needed it.

His scientific illustration and nonsense come together delightfully in his “Nonsense Botany” series, like this Piggiwiggia Pyramidalis! (Image courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University. MS Eng 797.1 [20])

Edward Lear's Cockatooca Superba from the Nonsense Botany series

Edward Lear's Crabbia Horrida from the Nonsense Botany series

References

Beth Marie Mole, Poetry and Pictures, circa 1830, The Scientist, November 2012.

GrrlScientist, Edward Lear featured at the Royal Society, The Guardian blog site, 2016 

Donna Ferguson, How Edward Lear's artistic genius led to the Owl and the Pussycat, The Guardian, Sunday, 31 January, 2021. 

Anna Lena Phillips, Serious Nonsense, American Scientist,.com

'Edward Lear', illusrtaion History resource from the Norman Rockwell Museum

Art, Nonsense and Science, The Biologist 64(6) p24-27