Hotspur🏳️🌈🇺🇦 on Nostr: "Aurora Borealis," Étienne Léopold Trouvelot, 1881-82. Trouvelot (1827-95) has a ...
"Aurora Borealis," Étienne Léopold Trouvelot, 1881-82.
Trouvelot (1827-95) has a mixed legacy. Born in France, he and his family fled to the US after a coup by Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte in 1851. He was earning a living as an artist and illustrator, but also had an interest in entomology. He was studying moths and had imported eggs of the spongy moth to his home...which proceeded to escape and devastate the hardwood forests here. Spongy moths (formerly called gypsy moths) are still a problem today and the story is an early example of how invasive species get introduced.
After that debacle, he switched to astronomy, and soon joined the staff of Harvard as their resident astronomical illustrator, and worked at the US Naval Observatory, making early observations of sunspots. He returned to France in '82, where he spent the rest of his life.
His illustrations are still well regarded today and have a decorative power of their own; I had a few masks with his illustrations during COVID.
From the collection of the New York Public Library.
#Art #ScientificArt #scientific_illustrators #AuroraBorealis #EtienneLeopoldTrouvelot #Astronomy
Trouvelot (1827-95) has a mixed legacy. Born in France, he and his family fled to the US after a coup by Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte in 1851. He was earning a living as an artist and illustrator, but also had an interest in entomology. He was studying moths and had imported eggs of the spongy moth to his home...which proceeded to escape and devastate the hardwood forests here. Spongy moths (formerly called gypsy moths) are still a problem today and the story is an early example of how invasive species get introduced.
After that debacle, he switched to astronomy, and soon joined the staff of Harvard as their resident astronomical illustrator, and worked at the US Naval Observatory, making early observations of sunspots. He returned to France in '82, where he spent the rest of his life.
His illustrations are still well regarded today and have a decorative power of their own; I had a few masks with his illustrations during COVID.
From the collection of the New York Public Library.
#Art #ScientificArt #scientific_illustrators #AuroraBorealis #EtienneLeopoldTrouvelot #Astronomy