Fields of Influence

The distinction between 'Artist' and 'Scientist', so plain to our twenty-first-century eyes, had not fully evolved in the early and middle nineteenth century. In fact, it can be argued that there was barely a division at all, but a community of interchange and understanding, and palpable, constructive friendships between artists and 'natural philosophers', as scientists were called in the early nineteenth century.A central purpose of this book is to show something of the pattern of interchange between artists and scientists. From this starting point the contributors have tackled a fascinating range of subjects - the roots of Humphry Davy's visions and visionary writing; the strong scientific undertow in the paintings of John Martin; John Constable's knowledge of the Beaufort Scale at the time he painted his sky studies; the genesis of the portrait collections of learned societies in nineteenth-century London; and the work of Harriet Jane Moore, a shadowy figure in the worlds of art and science, but the painter of a unique series of watercolour interiors of Michael Faraday's laboratory at the Royal Institution.