Eris: the dwarf planet that demoted Pluto

Eris is a dwarf planet that, when discovered in 2005, was found to be larger than Pluto, which had been regarded as the Solar System’s ninth planet since its discovery in 1930. This posed huge question marks over Pluto’s right to that status, which has subsequently been removed.

Eris has an elliptical orbit that takes it from 38 AUs from the Sun at its closest to 97 AUs at its furthest point (AU stands for Astronomical Unit, one of which is the average distance of the Earth from the Sun). For comparison, Neptune is just over 30 AUs from the Sun and Pluto’s orbit varies from 30 AUs to 49 AUs.

Pluto’s orbit is almost wholly within the Kuiper Belt that consists of a vast number of small objects and is the source of most of the comets that visit the inner Solar System. However, Eris is considered to be a member of the “Scattered Disc” that extends beyond the Kuiper Belt as a diffuse outer halo. The orbit of Eris is not only highly elliptical but at an angle of 44 degrees from the plane of the Solar System within which the “regular” planets orbit. A complete orbit of the Sun by Eris takes around 560 years to complete.

Eris, which, at around 2390 kilometres, is believed to have a diameter about 200 kms larger than that of Pluto, is the second brightest object in the Solar System (the brightest is Enceladus, a moon of Saturn). This would appear to be because the surface is covered in frozen water and methane that are highly reflective of the Sun’s rays.

Eris has a moon of its own, named Dysnomia, which could be as large as 685 kms in diameter, which makes it a relatively large Scattered Disc / Kuiper Belt object in its own right. Calculations based on the orbit of Dysnomia around Eris enable a good estimate to be made of the mass of Eris, namely 27% greater than that of Pluto.

In Greek mythology Eris was the goddess of strife and discord, which seems appropriate given the upset caused to the status of Pluto from Eris’s discovery. Dysnomia was a daughter of Eris, her name meaning “lawlessness”.

© John Welford

Dining Room on the Garden, by Pierre Bonnard

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) qualified as a barrister in Paris in 1889 but his main interest was in art, having already enrolled in the Académie Julian in 1887. While there he was encouraged by Paul Sérusier to adopt a style of painting that used pure colour in flat areas with strong outlines, as developed by Paul Gauguin. Bonnard became a member of the “Nabis brotherhood” of painters (Nabi being Hebrew for “prophet”), led by Sérusier and which included Maurice Denis and Edouard Vuillard, that was devoted to this approach as an alternative to Impressionism.

Bonnard was also attracted to the simple formalism of Japanese art, which in turn led him to explore the possibilities of decorative art in media such as ceramics, furniture, fans, theatrical scenery and posters. It was Bonnard’s success in the last of these fields that inspired Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec to devote his energies in that direction.

The Nabis brotherhood split up in 1900, with Bonnard and Vuillard being less interested in the mystical and symbolist preoccupations of their fellow members. They preferred to concentrate on natural and domestic subjects for their art, and to incorporate Impressionist tendencies in their painting style. However, the Nabis use of areas of strong colour was a lasting legacy in their work.

Bonnard moved on to develop a style that made use of framing within his paintings, the frames being distinct vertical and horizontal lines that could be pieces of furniture, doors or window frames. He was very interested in the possibilities of photography, and the use of framing derived largely from that interest.

He moved to the south of France in 1910 and spent most of the rest of his life there. This move brought the importance of light and colour to his attention, with the greater intensity of the light in that region making the colours of all objects more vivid.

Bonnard painted “Dining Room on the Garden” in 1934-5, when he was a widely recognised and successful artist. It is a typical example of his mature style and his preferred subject matter, namely a domestic scene. In this case, the room is in a seaside villa where the artist and his family spent a summer.

Bonnard’s wife Marthe, who had formerly been his regular nude model, is pictured to the right of a window. She is dressed elegantly in dark brown clothes but her face is painted in a reddish-brown colour that is virtually identical to that of the wall behind her, so that she seems to fade into the background as being welded to the scene of domestic regularity. Her function is to form part of the frame in that she continues the upward line of a vase of red flowers, set on the table, which partially obscures her.

The focus of the painting is the window frame, with a thick central vertical division, through which can be seen part of the garden, two somewhat stylized trees, and the distant sea, above which is a bright blue Mediterranean sky.

Inside, the horizontal frame is provided by the table, with its pinkish-purple cloth, on which are various objects including a milk jug and fruit bowls.

The immediate impression given by the painting is of strong zones of colour that set each other in context. There is a vivid yellow patch, possibly of reflected sunlight, on the wall to the left of the window, which contrasts with the intense blue of the sky and the bright red of the table edge on the right-hand side. The early influence of Gauguin seems to have been maintained more than 30 years after the Nabis group members went their separate ways.

“Dining Room on the Garden”, with its strong lines and colours, speaks of order and stability. This is the work of an artist who is happy with his life and wants nothing more than to live out his days in the company of his devoted wife, in beautiful surroundings, and to have all the comforts of domestic life close to hand.

“Dining Room on the Garden” is in the Guggenheim Museum, New York.

© John Welford

Callisto: the outermost Galilean moon of Jupiter

Callisto is the outermost of Jupiter’s four “Galilean moons” – so called because they were first seen in 1610 by Galileo.

Callisto is the second largest of the four, having a diameter of 4800 kilometres (3000 miles), which makes it appreciably larger than our own Moon (3500 kilometres, 2200 miles) and about the same size as the planet Mercury. It orbits Jupiter at a distance of about 1.2 million miles and takes nearly 17 days to complete one orbit.

Callisto is different from its inner neighbours in that it has a dark surface that is scarred by a multitude of craters. It has not been subject to gravitational tides in the way that Io, Europa and Ganymede have, and the interior does not appear to be separated into distinct layers – although it is possible that there is a saltwater ocean deep beneath the surface. The bulk of Callisto appears to be a mixture of rock and ice.

The surface has not therefore been reshaped, and the moon has had a constant bombardment from meteorites that have formed impact craters that have remained as they were ever since they were created.

Particles from the solar wind have caused chemical reactions that have darkened the surface. There has also been weak radiation that has led ice to sublimate (i.e. turn directly from solid to gaseous form) and then refreeze on the crater walls, weathering them into jagged peaks.

There is also evidence that Callisto has a very thin atmosphere of carbon dioxide.

In Greek mythology, Callisto was a nymph who was seduced by Zeus (Jupiter) and later transformed into a bear by Hera. She can now be seen in the night sky as the Great Bear constellation.

© John Welford

Whistlejacket, by George Stubbs

George Stubbs (1724-1806) is renowned as the greatest of all painters of the horse, and other animals, although he was also a highly accomplished portrait painter of people. His skill at accurate portrayal derived not only from his talents as an artist but from his lifelong interest in anatomy, both of humans and horses.

Born in Liverpool on 25^th August 1724, George Stubbs followed his father’s trade as a currier (a worker in leather goods) while also teaching himself to draw and later to paint. He combined his painting with the study of human anatomy, which included dissection. From 1756 he was able to extend these studies to include horses, and he spent some 18 months dissecting horses, stripping away layer after layer of skin and muscle until he came to the skeleton, all the while drawing and making notes.

Stubbs applied his acquired knowledge to portraits of horses and their owners, riders and grooms, for which there was a regular demand from the aristocratic horse-racing and hunting fraternity. He died on 10^th July 1806 at the age of 81.

Whistlejacket

“Whistlejacket” is one his earliest horse portraits, dating from 1762. It was commissioned by Charles Watson-Wentworth, the 2^nd Marquess of Rockingham, who would later serve as Prime Minister for two short periods. A receipt dated 30^th December 1762, for 80 guineas, specifies two paintings, one of which was described as “a horse large as life”, which certainly describes the Whistlejacket picture.

Whistlejacket was clearly a favourite horse of the Marquess of Rockingham, whose main interests were horseracing and gambling and who was a noted patron of the turf. The horse was foaled in 1749 and raced between 1752 and 1759 when he was retired to stud, having been beaten only four times in his career. He featured in another 1762 painting by Stubbs, namely “Whistlejacket and Two Other Stallions with Simon Cobb”.

The painting is notable for being a lifesize portrait, the canvas measuring 115 by 97 inches (292 by 246.4 centimetres). Whistlejacket stands on his hind legs with the front feet raised off the ground. His head is turned towards the viewer with a wild expression in his eye. This is a horse with attitude!

There is a mystery about this painting in that it might originally have been intended to be an equestrian portrait of King George III, who had come to the throne in 1760, but that the Marquess of Rockingham, a Whig, changed his mind when the King favoured the Tories and took actions with which Rockingham profoundly disagreed. The picture therefore stayed as a portrait just of the horse. It is a good story, but there are problems with it, one being why it would have been thought suitable for a portrait of a king on horseback to feature him riding a famous racehorse!

Another good reason for leaving the horse without a rider was that the picture was a superb portrayal of the Marquess’s horse, showing his conformation perfectly with his coat shining and his unplaited mane and tail reflecting the light. A rider on his back would have obscured part of the horse and detracted from the portrait. It is noteworthy that most of Stubbs’s portraits of celebrated horses show them riderless and unsaddled, often held by a groom.

A further question is why the picture has no background. Stubbs was adept at painting landscapes and skies with clouds, and many of his paintings put the subjects in context with parkland scenery as a background. However, it may have been thought in this case that a background would detract from Whistlejacket himself. It does not appear that the picture is unfinished because there are shadows behind the horse’s hind feet, which Stubbs would not have painted had he intended to add a background. The same is true of the other painting of Whistlejacket referred to earlier.

As mentioned above, Whistlejacket was clearly a highly spirited horse who was full of life. He was not an easy subject to paint, and was described by Stubbs as being “remarkably unmanageable”. During his final “sitting” a stable-boy was leading Whistlejacket backwards and forwards in the stable yard when Stubbs placed the painting against a wall so that he could get a proper look at it. Whistlejacket caught sight of his portrait and, seeing a rival stallion, charged at it, dragging the stable-boy with him. Stubbs and the boy had a struggle to prevent Whistlejacket from attacking the “other horse” and destroying the picture.

“Whistlejacket” was acquired by the National Gallery (London) in 1997, and it is now a prominent feature of Room 34.

© John Welford

Can destroying a work of art be justified?

A work of art can offend for one reason or another, but is there ever a good reason for destroying one? The following example is a case in point.

Destroying works of art

There have been many cases down the centuries of works of art being deliberately destroyed for one reason or another. Sometimes it is for ideological reasons, such as when the Taliban in Afghanistan reduced the 6^th century Buddhas of Bamiyan to rubble in 2001; or it can be because someone simply abhors the work itself, an example being the burning of Graham Sutherland’s portrait of Sir Winston Churchill by Lady Churchill soon after its completion in 1954.

A more recent example of a desire to destroy a painting because of what it portrays, rather than its artistic merit, arose in Russia in 2013. Vasily Boiko-Veliky is a wealthy businessman who has the ear of senior members of the Russian Government. He is therefore the sort of man whose views tend to get taken seriously.

Ilya Repin’s portrayal of Ivan the Terrible

Vasily Boiko-Veliky has taken exception to a painting by Ilya Repin that dates from 1885. It depicts Tsar Ivan IV (“Ivan the Terrible”) in despair as he holds his dying son and heir, also called Ivan, after the older Ivan had attacked the younger in a rage and hit him on the head with a sceptre. The full title of the painting is: “Ivan the Terrible and his Son Ivan on November 16, 1581”.

Boiko-Veliky’s objection to the painting was that it cast a negative light on one of Russia’s greatest historical figures. He is quoted as saying that the painting “offends the patriotic feelings of Russian people who love and value their ancestors”. He wanted the painting either to be destroyed or, at the very least, removed from public display in Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery.

He claimed that the murder of one Ivan by the other is a myth that was invented by foreigners. However, the fact remains that Ivan Junior did pre-decease his father, which meant that the next tsar was Ivan the Terrible’s youngest son (the eldest had died in infancy), Fyodor, who was mentally unstable and unsuited to the role.

An interesting feature of attempts to deny that Ivan the Terrible killed his son is the fact that the event was apparently witnessed by Ivan’s chief minister Boris Godunov, who received blows from the sceptre when he tried to intervene. If the facts were incorrect, could it be that Godunov was part of a plot to hide the truth? Godunov acted as regent to Fyodor when he became tsar, and took the throne himself when Fyodor died in 1598.

Not the first time

Strange to tell, Vasily Boiko-Veliky is not the first person who has taken a profound dislike to the painting in question. The illustration here is of part of the painting after it was attacked by a vandal in 1913. A number of knife slashes were made and it took a great deal of careful work to restore the painting to its previous condition.

Surely there is no good reason to destroy the painting

The point at issue is surely not one of historical accuracy but the rightness or otherwise of censoring art because it does not convey the “correct” message. One can admire a work of art from many perspectives, even if one profoundly disagrees with what it “says”.

This principle applies to all the arts. For example, Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” is widely recognised as a classic 20^th century novel, despite the detestable nature of its theme. One can appreciate the music of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss even when one knows just what unpleasant people they were in terms of their anti-Semitism, which some people claim to have detected in their music.

When it comes to public art, such as paintings in a gallery, there is also the question of whether a powerful person has the right to censor what less powerful people can see. You may not like a painting, for whatever reason, but nothing can justify your seeking to prevent other people from making up their own minds.

In the case under discussion, the Russian Minister of Culture, Vladimir Medinsky, responded by saying that the painting will stay on display, whatever Vasily Boiko-Veliky says about it. This is particularly interesting in that Mr Medinsky has actually written a book in which he casts doubt on the Ivan the Terrible murder story. The two men agree with each other on the history but take a very different view when it comes to how that history is presented to people today.

There is also the complication that Ilya Repin is widely admired in Russia, being held in as much esteem as an artist as Tsar Ivan IV is as an historical character.

© John Welford

Constellations in the night sky

We are used to the names given to the star constellations by the Greeks and Romans, but other ancient civilizations had different ways of making sense of the patterns in the night sky.

The Mesopotamians were the first people to name the constellations, around 3000 BC, using names based either on animals or human occupations (such as “The Herdsman”).

The ancient Egyptians named the constellations after gods and goddesses. For example, they saw what we call Ursa Major (“The Great Bear”) as a jackal and named it after the jackal god Set.

The ancient Chinese divided the night sky into 28 “lunar mansions” which formed four groups, each with its assigned constellations. The groups were named the Red Bird of the south, the Black Tortoise of the north, the Blue Dragon of the east and the White Tiger of the west.

In ancient India there were 27 divisions, known as nakshratras. Each of these was centred on a particular planet or star that was in turn associated with a god or goddess.

The aborigines of central Australia were more interested in the spaces between the stars than the stars themselves. For them, it was the darkness that made the patterns.

However we name the patterns in the sky, it is worth remembering that they are all an illusion caused by our perception from Planet Earth. Just because a star may look close to another one does not mean that there is any relationship between them. For example, the three main stars of “Orion’s belt” are at huge distances from each other, with the central star (Alnilam) being 1340 light years away as opposed to the 916 and 800 light years of its “neighbours” Mintaka and Alnitak respectively.

© John Welford

Work, by Ford Madox Brown

Ford Madox Brown (1821-93) was born to British parents in Calais, France, his father being a retired ship’s purser. He gained his training as an artist in Belgium and France and only settled in London in 1844.

He was closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood led by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Brown’s use of bright colours and choice of romantic themes from English history and literature was a strong influence on his younger contemporaries. In return, their emphasis on objective realism, as opposed to Victorian sentimentality, influenced his own work. His 1865 painting “Work” is a good example, as it incorporates truthfulness to nature with a moral message, but whether it avoids the sentimentality curse is open to question.

On a superficial level, “Work” is a busy scene of workmen in a north London street, working on the installation of a new sewerage system while being watched by a motley collection of onlookers. However, it is also a moral message about the value of labour to the human condition and it embodies the basic Victorian theme that work is always preferable to idleness, although this message was applicable mainly to the “lower orders” who could thence be divided into the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor.

Brown began the painting in 1852, but laid it aside for several years as he was never well-to-do and needed to be assured of a buyer before he was willing to complete it. The patron who eventually came along was Thomas Plint, a wealthy stockbroker who bought many works by the Pre-Raphaelites but who was something of a double-edged sword in that, although he paid in advance instalments and therefore provided the artists with a regular income, he was also inclined to demand that changes be made to the paintings as they progressed.

In the case of “Work”, Plint wanted the moral message to come through more strongly than Brown had originally envisaged. The painting therefore includes a woman handing out temperance leaflets and has the writer and thinker Thomas Carlyle observing the scene. Unfortunately for Brown, Plint died in 1861 (aged only 38) and Brown was among the artists who ended up out of pocket before the painting could eventually be sold.

Brown went to great lengths to explain the painting in detail so that the message would not be lost, and these explanations might perhaps detract from the viewer’s experience of seeing the painting for the first time and working out the meaning for him/herself. However, Brown clearly admired the “honest worker”, two of whom are the central figures of his composition, and his comments, patronising though they are, are evidence of his hero-worship: “'Here are presented the young navvy in the pride of manly health and beauty; the strong fully developed navvy who does his work and loves his beer...'

Also portrayed are a workman who is drinking from a bottle, and a beer-seller. Brown’s comments suggest that the latter has suffered a black eye from a fight with a gin drinker, which is an interesting take on William Hogarth’s 18th century “Beer Lane” and “Gin Alley”. Beer was seen by both artists as a healthy drink, which it undoubtedly was by comparison with the water that was often unsafe to drink in cities like London, even in Brown’s time. The work on London’s sewers, pictured here, was part of the move towards providing safer water for the capital’s growing population.

Passing by the scene, or watching it, are a variety of north London residents, including a bare-footed flower seller (although the feet are remarkably clean!), a rich lady with a parasol, two wealthy people on horseback whose way is blocked by the hole in the road, the distributor of temperance leaflets mentioned above, and a girl who is trying to keep her younger brother in order while holding her baby sister.

On the right are two “brain workers”, in Brown’s words, “who seeming to be idle, work, and are the cause of well-ordained work and happiness in others”. These are the writer Thomas Carlyle and Rev F. D. Maurice who founded the Working Men’s College where Brown gave lectures in art. Maurice was painted from life but Brown used a photograph for the image of Carlyle.

Brown’s notes also make very clear his acceptance of the structure of Victorian society. His comments on the people on horseback read: 

“This gentleman is evidently very rich, probably a Colonel in the army, with a seat in Parliament, and fifteen thousand a year, and a pack of hounds. He is not an over-dressed man of the tailor's dummy sort - he does not put his fortune on his back, he is too rich for that; moreover, he looks to me an honest true hearted gentleman.”

The viewer is not therefore meant to draw any conclusion from the fact that rich people are able to be idle, or to conclude that their lack of work demeans them in any way. It is only the “working class” for whom work has a moral purpose. This is a typical Victorian attitude, as summed up in a verse from the children’s hymn “All Things Bright and Beautiful” (written by Cecil Frances Alexander in 1848): “The rich man in his castle, The poor man at his gate, God made them high and lowly, And ordered their estate.” This verse is usually omitted from modern hymn books but would not have seemed out of place to the people who first sang it, or to Ford Madox Brown.

As if to emphasise the class structure, and the correctness of it in Brown’s eyes, the top of the painting is domed, with the rich couple on horseback occupying the focal point of the dome. They are placed at a higher level than the workmen, with the poorest people being at the front and the lowest level. The very lowest level is occupied by three dogs, and even here there is social stratification from a whippet wearing a red coat to a rough mongrel which accompanies the group of poor children in the foreground.

Brown’s painting therefore seems to mimic the structure of many medieval religious paintings, often domed to fit a cathedral wall or reredos, in which God is at the top, saints in the middle and mere mortals at the bottom. “Work” can therefore be seen as reinforcement of the Protestant work ethic, in that the moral message is also a religious one.

Apart from Rev Maurice, Brown used real people (as opposed to models) for several of the figures, including the workmen. One of the latter was killed in an industrial accident before the painting was completed.

Modern attitudes to this painting will be very different from those of its first viewers, because people in 21st century Britain are not as wedded to the class system as were the Victorians, and the assumption that the “working class” must do hard physical work for the good of their souls, whereas middle class people need only use their brains and the upper classes are freed from either form of labour but are divinely ordained to rule over the rest, is one that is abhorrent to most people today.

“Work” is therefore an excellent portrayal of past social attitudes, and should be regarded in the context of the times when it was painted.

“Work” is quite a large canvas, at 54 by 78 inches (137 by 198 centimetres). It may be seen in the collection of the Manchester Art Gallery.

© John Welford