Women in the Garden, by Claude Monet

Claude Monet (1840-1926) was the leader of the Impressionist group of painters, which took its name from one of his paintings (“Impression, Sunrise” painted in 1872). His “Women in the Garden” is of an earlier date, 1866-7, but it is notable for displaying Monet’s lifelong fascination with the effects of light and the way that it changes the colours of what one sees. That is the essence of Impressionism, which Monet and his fellow artists were to develop in the years ahead.

Monet spent the summer of 1866 at Ville d’Avray near Paris, renting a house with his mistress Camille Doncieux, and it was in the garden of that house that he conceived and painted most of “Women in the Garden”. All the four women in the painting are Camille, in different poses and wearing differently coloured and patterned dresses. However, the faces of the women are not well defined, as they are not intended to be portraits.

Monet preferred to paint in the open air as much as possible, which is how he was able to observe the effects of light and shade so accurately, but the painting in question was completed in his studio over the winter.

It is a huge canvas, measuring some eight and a half feet by six and a half feet, and this posed a problem for the artist when at work in the garden. He solved the difficulty of gaining access to all parts of the canvas by digging a trench in the ground, into which the canvas was lowered, and rigging it to a pulley system so that it could be raised and lowered to a convenient height as required.

The scene is a study of the effect of sunlight as it filters through the leaves of trees. The women’s dresses are light and summery, full-length and voluminous. There is therefore plenty of surface area to catch the light or be thrown into shade. There is extra detail in the roses that grow on a bush in the background or are held in bouquets by two of the women.

The woman nearest to the viewer is sat (presumably on a chair), shielding her face with a parasol. The shaded tone of her skin and the top of her dress contrasts with the bright light on the rest of her dress (except where its folds produce shadows) and the flowers she is holding and looking at.

Two women, dressed in green and brown, stand to the left. They are mostly in shade, but a few rays of sunlight have clearly penetrated the foliage of the tree that reaches up through the centre of the painting and these dapple the dresses with small patches of lighter colour. The fourth woman, slightly further back and to the right, has her back to the full sun, which shines brightly off her mostly white dress and brings out the brilliant red colour of her hair as she reaches out to the roses on the bush.

The sun also picks out some of the tree leaves in brighter green, as well as casting a shadow that falls over part of the pathway, the lower portion of the dress of the woman seated in the foreground, and the longish grass on which she is sitting.

In all these instances, Monet has captured perfectly the effects of light and shade, because he has painted precisely what he saw, no more and no less. Despite what some people might think, there is nothing slapdash or careless about Impressionism, even though it is common to place the words “vague” and “impression” side by side. The Impressionist ideal is one of precision and accuracy, as what the artist places on the canvas is exactly what he sees and not some conventional image of what people might suppose that they see.

At the time that Monet painted “Women in the Garden” he was extremely hard up, which was one reason why he could not afford to employ any models other than Camille, who came from an impoverished background herself. One reason why he finished the work indoors is that the details of the dresses were taken from magazine illustrations, because neither he nor Camille could have afforded anything as luxurious.

The painting was turned down for exhibition at the 1867 Salon partly because of the visible brushstrokes that it contains, which were considered to demonstrate its unfinished nature. One member of the jury was determined that art of this nature was to be deplored, declaring: “Too many young people think of nothing but continuing in this abominable direction. It is high time to protect them and save art!"

The painting was bought by Monet’s friend and fellow artist Frédéric Bazille, to help Monet financially. It is now in the collection of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

© John Welford

Dawn After the Wreck, by J M W Turner

“Dawn After the Wreck”, which is also known as “The Baying Hound” is a watercolour incorporating red chalk over a pencil base, and it measures 25.1 x 36.8 centimetres. It was painted in about 1841 by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) and is therefore a work of his maturity. It is a scene of a beach, sea and sky with only one object being visible, namely the “baying hound” of the alternative title.

Given the date of the painting, the beach in question is almost certainly at Margate, Kent, where Turner spent much of his time in the 1840s.

The mention of a wreck in the title clearly implies that this painting has some sort of story to tell. There is no sign of a wrecked ship to be seen, only the three elements of land, sea and sky, plus the lone dog. The story is there for the viewer to deduce for themselves, or they can accept the version advanced by John Ruskin (1819-1900), who was Turner’s greatest near-contemporary champion:

“Some little vessel – a collier probably – has gone down in the night, all hands lost; a single dog has come ashore. Utterly exhausted it stands howling and shivering. The dawn clouds have the first scarlet upon them, a feeble tinge only, reflected with the same feeble bloodstain on the sand”. (in “Modern Painters”, vol 5, 1860)

Maybe Ruskin read more into the painting than the artist intended, but that really does not matter because Ruskin’s story is as valid as any other, including Turner’s. It was Turner’s genius to paint only what he saw, and if he saw a suggestion of colour on a wet beach, and the imperceptible melding of the colours of sea and sky, then it was that suggestion that he transferred to the canvas (or, as in this case, paper) and it is the viewer’s task to take from that vision what he or she will. It has sometimes been said that Turner was the first impressionist, but that is not really true, because Turner did not offer an impression as much as the truth of a scene, and it was up to the viewer to make his or her own impression based on what they saw. That is why an infinite number of stories can be told by the painting, each one being personal to the individual viewer, and it can change between viewings, just as the scene itself would change every time one looked at it.

The sort of scene offered here, if one omits the dog, would be one that an amateur photographer would consider too boring to waste an exposure on. The sea is doing nothing exceptional, with just an average breaker coming ashore. The sky is mostly a bland yellow with lowish cloud and a hint of red as noted by Ruskin. Only a corner of the sun can be seen as it breaks through the cloud, but it is enough to send a weak beam that reflects on the wet sand. The colours of the sky are also reflected on the sand, such that there is a patch of red there as well. Ruskin’s mention of this as “a feeble bloodstain” is significant, because he understood Turner to believe that scarlet red symbolised destruction and death. This patch, at the top and bottom of the picture, therefore forms a framework with the sea in between. The sea now looks innocent enough but it harbours a deadly secret. Only the dog remains, its body and head pointing (and indeed barking) at the red in the sky as if to tell the viewer his story of the tragedy out at sea.

There is therefore much more going on here than might appear at first sight. Although Turner always created his paintings from perception rather than emotion, the viewer can respond to the atmosphere created by Turner’s masterly orchestration of light, colour and composition to add whatever emotion they choose, based on the story they want to assume.

“Dawn After the Wreck” is held by London’s Courtauld Gallery, having been bequeathed, along with some other Turner watercolours, by Sir Stephen Courtauld in 1974.

© John Welford

Europa

Europa is the smallest of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter – so called because they were discovered by Galileo in 1610. With a diameter of 3138 km (1950 miles) it is the only one of the four that is smaller than Earth’s Moon. Europa orbits Jupiter at a distance of 671,000 km (417,000 miles) and a complete orbit takes 3.55 Earth days. This orbital distance is nearly twice as great as that of our own Moon, but Europa is moving very much more quickly – not only does our Moon take 27.32 days to orbit Earth, the planets being orbited are vastly different in size, Jupiter being 11 times larger than Earth.

From a distance Europa appears to be a smooth, white ball of ice, but a closer view reveals pale markings that criss-cross its surface, and very few impact craters. This suggests that there is a constant renewal process at work.

Europa is subject to tidal pressures caused by the gravitational pulls of Jupiter and the neighbouring moons of Io and Ganymede. This leads to flexing that produces heat, which in turn leads to the presence of liquid water that is trapped between a rocky core and a crust of ice.

Where the crust fractures, jets of water escape in high arcs that freeze when they hit the surface.

It is quite possible that undersea volcanoes pump chemicals into the oceans and this could lead to the creation of the building blocks of life, which is how many scientists think life began on Earth.

There is therefore the intriguing possibility that Europa harbours living organisms of some kind. Should this be so, the fact that two bodies in our Solar System are life-bearing must make it almost certain that there is life on planets that orbit other stars that are relatively close to our Sun.

In Greek mythology Europa was a high-born woman who was abducted by Zeus in the form of a white bull. She then gave birth to King Minos of Crete. The continent of Europe takes its name from her.

© John Welford

Blue Poles, by Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock (1912-56) grew up in Arizona and California, studying at the Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles from 1928. As well as learning about art he was also introduced to various spiritual and psychological concepts including Theosophy, Jung’s analytical psychology and Surrealist automatism.

He led a hand-to-mouth existence for many years and became involved in the Federal Arts Project which was introduced as part of President Roosevelt’s New Deal. While undergoing treatment for alcoholism in 1938 he discovered the therapeutic benefits of drawing and its value in exploring the unconscious through the revelation of symbols. This gradually developed into a form of Abstract Expressionism, in which the pouring of paint directly onto canvas releases the artist’s inner tensions.

Pollock produced many such works between 1947 and 1952, “Blue Poles” being an excellent late example. Pollock was not keen on giving names to paintings, and “Blue Poles” was originally known as “Number 11, 1952”.

Pollock’s technique was to spread a length of unprimed canvas on the studio floor and tack it down. The canvas could be very large, although it was sometimes trimmed down after the paint had been applied. The finished “Blue Poles” measures 4.87 by 2.1 metres (16 by 7 feet).

Paint was then applied by being poured or splashed directly on to the canvas from above, but he always maintained that he was in control of how the paint flowed and that the result was no accident.

Pollock believed that, by using this method, he became part of the painting, with nothing coming between him and the colours on the canvas.

In “Blue Poles” there are countless streaks of orange, yellow, blue, brown, black and cream paint. The story of how the painting was made is an interesting one, with suggestions that Pollock had some help with it, at least in the initial stages, and that, when some of the glass paint tubes would not release their contents, the tubes were broken and some of the glass was incorporated in the final result.

Pollock used various tools to move the paint around and produce the lines and shapes. These included sticks, old brushes and basting syringes. He worked on the canvas for weeks, returning every so often to add a new layer of paint. Sometimes the canvas would be moved from the floor and hung on a wall, so that liquid paint could drip downwards.

The “poles” were a late addition, being added when the lower layers of paint were completely dry. These are broad lines that cross the canvas at various angles to the vertical, some of them reaching the edge of the canvas and others not. They were painted against a straight piece of timber and later blurred so that they seem to emerge from the underlying swirls and streaks. They therefore give an element of form and structure to what is otherwise chaotic. The impression has been likened to that of ships’ masts being swayed in a stormy sea.

What can the viewer make of this painting? That all depends on the viewer. He or she must make of this huge canvas, with its half-inch (or more) thick layers of paint, what they will, and they will no doubt see something different every time they look at it. The viewer may of course dismiss it as meaningless nonsense, or may relate to it in their own particular way. It is, however, difficult to ignore its energy and vitality.

“Blue Poles” was bought for the Australian National Gallery of Art in Canberra in 1973 for the record (at the time) sum of two million US dollars. This caused a huge controversy over whether the government of Gough Whitlam had either taken leave of its senses or made a bold statement of faith in modern art. Whatever the rights and wrongs of that decision, it would appear that the NGA got a bargain based on the prices that works by Jackson Pollock have attracted in recent years. The highest price ever paid for a work of art, by any artist, was $140 million, in 2006, for “No 5, 1948”.

© John Welford

Mercury: closest planet to the Sun

Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun and is also the smallest of the currently recognised planets, now that Pluto has been demoted from planetary status. It is therefore difficult to see, and attempts to do so should be made with the greatest care, as training a telescope in the direction of the Sun is a very unwise thing to do. It is best observed at dawn or dusk, but only if you really know what you are doing. If it’s any consolation, Copernicus never managed to see it, although its existence had been known about since classical times.

Mercury orbits the Sun at an average distance of 58 million kilometres (36 million miles). It completes an orbit every 88 days at a speed of 50Km a second, which is the fastest of any of the planets. This is why Mercury has the name that it does, Mercury being the swift-winged messenger of the gods in Roman mythology.

Mercury revolves on its axis three times for every two orbits round the Sun. This means that a day on Mercury is not much shorter than a Mercury year, and lasts for 59 Earth days.

The surface of Mercury is deeply cratered but it also has some smooth plains. This suggests that the planet was volcanically active at one time, but that this activity ceased a long time ago and meteor impacts have pockmarked most of the surface. Mercury appears to have cooled down and may have shrunk in size as it has done so. The fact that a magnetic field has been detected suggests that it still has a molten core.

Daytime temperatures on Mercury are extremely high, at around 350 degrees Celsius, due to the planet’s proximity to the Sun and the fact that it only has a very thin atmosphere. However, the nights are long enough for the temperature to drop as low as minus 170 degrees Celsius. Mercury does not have a tilted axis, unlike Earth, and therefore has no seasons. This also leaves open the possibility that there could be water on Mercury, existing as ice deep within polar craters into which the Sun never shines.

The atmosphere mentioned above is only as dense as the very outer reaches of Earth’s atmosphere. It comprises mainly helium, hydrogen and oxygen, but traces of potassium and sodium have also been discovered. Although atoms of these elements are constantly being lost into space, they are replaced by the action of Mercury’s magnetosphere in capturing ions from the solar wind that batters the planet.

© John Welford