The Heavenly Scientific Art of Astronomer E. L. Trouvelot

Even before photography, astronomy yielded beautiful images. At the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, I popped into the library to see the universe. The exhibition is titled Radiant Beauty:  E.L. Trouvelot’s Astronomical Drawings. They were published in 1881 and 1882.

The title is from Trouvelot’s own words:  “No human skill can reproduce upon paper the majestic beauty and radiance of the celestial objects.”

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“Mare Humorum,” above, shows the surface of the moon, both in sunlight and the darkness of the lunar night.

Trouvelot was a self-taught astronomer. He immigrated from France to Massachusetts as a young man and established a silk-producing farm. He made astronomical drawings, often in pastel, with the aid of telescopes at Harvard and the U.S. Naval Observatory, the latter the world’s largest telescope at twenty-six inches.

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He travelled to see total eclipses of the sun, one in Wyoming Territory (shown above, with solar storms), and another in the South Pacific.

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There is a lunar eclipse this week! This is one drawn by Trouvelot.

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I love his drawing of Jupiter, above. Two white moons on the left cast shadows, one on the Great Red Spot.

These are from a published set of fifteen lithographs of his drawings. The Huntington displayed their complete set. There’s a reason it is very rare, and that’s only one thing covered in the following four-minute video, also available on YouTube:

Click here to see all fifteen lithographs in the set.

That’s the New York Public Library website. Click on each image to enlarge.

The lunar eclipse is July 27-28, 2018. Tell us about it, if you like.

I travelled halfway across the country to see the Great American Eclipse of 2017. It was amazing! I wrote a description of what I saw and heard on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PastAndPresentWithPamela/

 

 

 

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