File:The Great Comet of 1843 RMG BHC4148.tiff
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Captions
Summary edit
Charles Piazzi Smyth: The Great Comet of 1843 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Artist |
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Title | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Object type |
painting object_type QS:P31,Q3305213 |
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Genre | astronomical art | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Description |
English: The Great Comet of 1843 A night-time view showing an eyewitness account of the Great Comet of 1843, painted by the astronomer Charles Piazzi Smyth. The earliest observation occurred on the evening of 5 of February, 1843 and Smyth recorded its appearance at the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope, South Africa between 3 and 6 of March. When at its greatest brilliance, it was visible only from southern latitudes. The view in the painting is probably taken from the Observatory. It shows Table Bay with Table Mountain visible in the background on the left. A large sailing ship sits in the foreground on the right, with other shipping in the distance. Since the main purpose of the painting was to show the comet, the sky dominates the image. The comet formed a disk and Smyth described its nucleus as 'a planetary disk, from which rays emerged in the direction of the tail'. He observed that to the naked eye it appeared to have a double tail, with the two streamers proceeding from the head in perfectly straight lines. The tail of the comet holds the record for actual extent and the sighting was notable because of the intensity of light, apparently outshining any comet seen in the previous seven centuries, as well as for the length of its tail. The painting shows the dramatic affect of the phenomenon, and the brilliance of the stars, and red of the sunset continues the affect. A figure can be seen in the foreground, standing at the edge of the viewing platform to look at the comet with the range of mountains in the distance, glowing red. The relative scale of man to mountain emphasizes the magnititude of the incident. Smyth was an astronomer, geodesist, spectroscopist, meteorologist, pyramidologist, photographer, traveller and writer. He realized that cities were not the ideal place for astronomical observations and fought for the settlement of observatories on mountains. In 1856, he organised an expedition to the Canary Islands and also travelled to Russia, France, Madeira, Sicily and Egypt. As one of the great British astronomers, he was 42 years Astronomer Royal for Scotland.
The painting is signed 'C P S' and dated 1843 and is one of a pair with BHC4147. |
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Date |
1843 date QS:P571,+1843-00-00T00:00:00Z/9 |
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Medium | oil on canvas | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Dimensions | Frame: 1052 mm x 753 mm x 75 mm;Overall: 13.6 kg;Painting: 907 mm x 610 mm | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Collection |
institution QS:P195,Q7374509 |
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Current location | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Accession number |
BHC4148 |
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Notes |
Signed and dated 1843. See Carole Stott & David W. Hughes, 'Two Piazzi Smyth comet paintings', Annals of Science, Volume 46, Issue 2, pp165-172 (1989) |
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References | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Source/Photographer | http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/15561 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Permission (Reusing this file) |
The original artefact or artwork has been assessed as public domain by age, and faithful reproductions of the two dimensional work are also public domain. No permission is required for reuse for any purpose. The text of this image record has been derived from the Royal Museums Greenwich catalogue and image metadata. Individual data and facts such as date, author and title are not copyrightable, but reuse of longer descriptive text from the catalogue may not be considered fair use. Reuse of the text must be attributed to the "National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London" and a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-SA-3.0 license may apply if not rewritten. Refer to Royal Museums Greenwich copyright. |
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Identifier InfoField | Acquisition Number: OP1982-17 id number: BHC4148 |
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Collection InfoField | Oil paintings |
Licensing edit
This is a faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art. The work of art itself is in the public domain for the following reason:
The official position taken by the Wikimedia Foundation is that "faithful reproductions of two-dimensional public domain works of art are public domain".
This photographic reproduction is therefore also considered to be in the public domain in the United States. In other jurisdictions, re-use of this content may be restricted; see Reuse of PD-Art photographs for details. |
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Date/Time | Thumbnail | Dimensions | User | Comment | |
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current | 07:55, 19 September 2017 | 2,601 × 3,894 (28.98 MB) | Fæ (talk | contribs) | Royal Museums Greenwich Oil paintings (1843), http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/15561 #1017 |
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Data arrangement | chunky format |