Well, I first added this image to my collection of paintings that give an idea of how much light was available at night before the advent of electricity. Now it seems like an emblem of how most of us are handling the election: withdrawing from the darkness into what little light we can find in reading and the company of friends. For more about the artist and the painting, see Hanna Hirsch-Pauli: Friendship Goals and Feminism in the 19th-Century Stockholm.
Picturing a World
Dark and light
January 2, 2023
Blog post alert: For those of you who follow a traditional calendar, this is the ninth day of Christmas. You'll be pleased by a few last glimpses of a delicious interior from Amy Merrick at Dennis Severs' House. And for those of you who think about writing historical fiction, Lucinda Douglas Menzies' photographs of the house are lovely help to visualizing the chiaroscuro of a pre-20th C winter. No wonder ghost stories are a part of the season!
Cézanne, front and back
August 26, 2022
In Cézanne's Watercolors: Between Drawing and Painting by Matthew Simms, I was astonished to read that a single sheet has this gorgeous, limpid still life on one side and the beckoning woodland on the other. Can you imagine owning something like that?
Amazing sky at Geograph
January 11, 2021
Website alert: Geograph is a project that posts photographs of Great Britain and Ireland by Ordnance Survey grid squares. If you want to know what a place looks like or tour a region on line, it's a great resource. And some of the images from its more than 13,000 contributors might inspire you to take an imaginary journey into the unknown—like this amazing cloud formation from Derek Dye!
Raindrops on windshield
December 4, 2020
Blog post alert: I can't think of an equivalent exercise for writers, but I was fascinated by James Gurney's video demonstrating Painting Raindrops on a Windshield. If you like to watch a pro work magic, check it out!
Nocturnal Commedia
July 17, 2020
Companies of traveling players performed Commedia dell'arte outdoors, a topic that can be explored from many angles—at what venues? to what sized audience? in what legal or illicit circumstances? What interests me most in Watteau's depiction of a troupe is the lighting by torch and moonlight. Remember Snout's question in A Midsummer Night's Dream, III, i: "Doth the moon shine that night we play our play?"
How much could be seen by how many spectators would vary immensely by how full the moon was on a given night, and whether the sky was clear. Torches would illuminate in a small area and add glaring, smoky focal points. But, oh, but what else could be going on off in the darkness—that's for the writer to visualize!
Candles in moonlight
December 16, 2019
Lighting at night before electricity or even gas is hard for a 21st C westerner to imagine. That's something writers must keep in mind both in visualizing a scene and enabling their readers to do so. I read somewhere that, in Jane Austen's day, evening parties were scheduled for when the moon was full to make it easier for guests to get home. This painting by Petrus van Schendel implies that candlelight on the night of a full moon would make it possible for market stalls to extend the selling day into at least early evening. Glad I ran across it—and glad to find that the Athenaeum has 37 additional works by the artist, many of them night scenes.
Paris street light
December 8, 2017
The absence of the Luxor obelisk, which was erected at the Place de la Concorde and opened to the public in 1836, and the long coats and top hats of the men suggest that Vauzelle painted this picture, when? ca. 1830? Anyway, what really interests me is that lantern strung over the road, presumably an oil Read More
Life drawing, 1809
May 4, 2016
Website tip: Today's post of images from Thomas Rowlandson and Augustus Charles Pugin's Microcosm of London at the always interesting blog, Spitalsfield Life, is a dandy for historical fiction novelists and fans of Georgian England. And I love the way this plate shows early 19th C lighting for a life class. Read More
Light and composition
November 13, 2015
We are so used to evenly lit rooms at night that it requires a real act of imagination to visualize stories from the 19th C and earlier as their authors and first readers did. And what about writers of historical or fantasy? Is it pedantic to try to imagine authentic lighting or (pardon the pun) illuminating? How does one convey to a reader what the characters should take for granted? Read More