PAINTING REVEALS POLLUTION CLUES

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Paintings reveal pollution clues
Monet’s paintings could shed light on pollution in London at the turn of the 20th Century, say scientists.
University
of Birmingham researchers have pinpointed the dates and times of
depicted scenes by analysing the position of the Sun in the sky.The
research also revealed the French painter’s vantage point: a second
floor terrace at St Thomas’s Hospital.The paintings give an accurate
record of Victorian London’s urban atmosphere, they write in a Royal
Society journal.Dr John Thornes, from the School of Geography, Earth
and Environmental Sciences, said they had demonstrated that Monet’s
paintings contain accurate quantitative information.”We are confident
that these paintings show an accurate visual record of the urban
atmosphere of Victorian London,” he said.

Great fogs
Monet
is known for his series of impressionist paintings showing the London
skyline obscured by smog.London’s “great fogs” reached a peak in the
late 1880s, then gradually declined, but very little is known about the
nature and causes of air pollution at the time.
The great French
painter made three trips to London in the autumn of 1899 and the early
months of 1900 and 1901 to paint his London series.They were finished
at his studio in Giverny, France, after his final trip, but it is not
known whether the canvasses brought back from London were almost or
partially complete and whether they were based on real-life
observations.The scientists studied the position of the Sun in Monet’s
series of paintings of the Houses of Parliament begun on his second
visit in 1900.The towers and spires of the Parliament skyline provided
markers for working out the position of the Sun in the paintings,
giving accurate dates and times.These were then compared to historical
records of the dates Monet was in London.

Atmospheric clues
“Monet’s
letters state that he observed the Sun on at least four separate
occasions and these coincide with the main dates we have attributed to
the paintings,” said Dr Jacob Baker.”We know that it would have been
quite difficult to see the Sun due to cloud and pollution so Monet had
to be very patient for the sun to appear.”Using the information we have
gleaned in this study, we can now go on to assess the information that
Monet’s paintings may provide on the atmospheric state and pollution of
Victorian London.”They hope further detective work on Monet’s famous
paintings might yield clues to the scattering of light in the
atmosphere and the particles that made up the fogs.The research by the
University of Birmingham pair is published in the Proceedings of the
Royal Society A.The Thames Below Westminster 1871 can be seen in the
National Gallery’s “Manet to Picasso” free exhibition, on display 22
Sept 2006 – 20 May 2007.

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August 9, 2006 at 11:50 AM