Pining for the Fjords with Hans Dahl

Born in 1849 in Granvin, Norway, on Hardanger Fjord, Hans Dahl served in the military before becoming one of the most renowned Norwegian romantic landscape painters. Throughout his career he lived in Düsseldorf and Berlin, but maintained a summer home on Sogn Fjord, Norway's largest and deepest fjord. After 1919, Dahl moved to Sogn Fjord full time and he passed away in 1937.  

Dahl largely resisted the transition from Romanticism to Modernism in art from the 1890's onward. He was also largely criticized for this among the artistic elites, as is wont to happen, but his depictions of Norwegian girls in folk dress engaged in rustic activities still spoke to the general public. Even Kaiser Wilhelm II became one of Dahl's patrons and conferred a professorship on him in 1910. 

Gruß aus Salzburg im Jahre 2000 sendet

Following on the theme of Germany in the year 2000, the following lithograph purports to show the city of Salzburg 100 years after its date of publication. Once more we see the preoccupation with air travel especially, and the colonization of the future with the aesthetics of the present. Click on the picture for a larger version. 

Dinotopia: A Land Apart From Time

Really good dinosaur books are few and far between. Despite the best efforts of pretty well every Science Fiction author at one time or another, one could likely count the most memorable attempts on one hand. Jurassic Park would enter most people's minds these days, though more by reputation of the film series than from having read Michael Crichton's novel for themselves. The unparalleled classic is, of course, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, published in 1912. His copious literary talent and careful attention to detail made this relatively late entry into the field of Scientific Romances a genre archetype of its own: the "lost world" story. More recently than The Lost World is another lost world story of a type, taking place in the Victorian Era and standing towards the head of the list of great dinosaur stories. This is Dinotopia: A Land Apart From Time by James Gurney, published in 1992.

Image: James Gurney.

The irony behind Dinotopia's success is that Gurney is no Science Fiction author. Asked in interview about how deep an influence Jules Verne, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir H. Rider Haggard exerted on his series, he said that they didn't really. His main influences were the journals of actual explorers and scientists like Darwin, Wallace, and Burton. It's not altogether uncommon that truly excellent examples of modern Scientific Romances come from people completely outside of any "scene" or "fandom" dedicated to it. Its success no doubt owes as much or more to the dinosaur fever of the early Nineties - Jurassic Park would be released to theatres the following year, in 1993 - as its Victorian Scientific Romance setting.   

Rather than a Science Fiction author, Gurney is a painter. The origins of Dinotopia find themselves in a collection of unique paintings by Gurney, showing dinosaurs and humans living alongside each other. Unlike countless scenes of antagonism between dinosaurs and cavemen, these paintings depicted idyllic scenes of parades processing past Greco-Roman columns. The idea of elevating these paintings to a narrative, to tell the story behind them and the kind of world they take place in, came to Gurney and the result is a work capturing the very essence of Scientific Romances.

Image: James Gurney.

Or, if we are to believe the prologue, Gurney was merely the recipient of a sketchbook once belonging to Arthur Denison, a naturalist who set sail on an exploratory voyage in 1862. His ship encountered a ferocious storm and was destroyed, pitching himself and his son Will on the shores of an uncharted island teeming with living dinosaurs. More astonishing than this, as though it could get more astonishing, is that these dinosaurs are highly intelligent, rational and wise beings who have taught generations of humans to live in harmony with them and with one another.

Image: James Gurney.

La Sortie de L'Opera en L'An 2000 by Albert Robida

The following 1902 lithograph comes from the pen of Albert Robida, the preeminent French visual futurist. This excursion to the opera in the year 2000 builds on the concepts of his famed trio of books: Le Vingtième Siècle (The Twentieth Century, 1883), La Guerre au vingtième siècle (War in the Twentieth Century, 1887), and Le Vingtième siècle. La vie électrique (The Twentieth Century. The Age of Electricty, 1890). He would return to questions of the future many times in his career, with varying degrees of success. Simply by being a more conservative cynic, he could accurately predict many of the awful and stupid applications of technology that people would find. Unfortunately, his famously piscine flying cars never did come true. Click on the image below for a larger version.

The Domestic World of Knut Ekwall

Familjelycka

Born in Säby, Sweden in 1843, Knut Ekwall eventually came to study at the prestigious Academy of Arts in Stockholm from 1860 to 1866. His speciality was drawing and woodcut printing blocks, and through his career it was such magazine illustration work that largely kept him going. But during his tenure in Germany - Berlin, Munich, and Leipzig - during the late 1860's to early 1880's, and again in Sweden until his death in 1912, he also attained a reputation as a painter. His favourite subject matter seems to have been domestic life of the upper classes, and especially the stages and complications of romance. One could almost piece together his paintings to form a complete story from courtship and proposal to eventual widowhood, all against the opulent, tchotchke-laden background of wealthy homes.    

New York Sky Harbor in 1950

The following vision of New York's "Sky Harbor" in 1950 by Arthur T. Merrick appeared in the November 1907 issue of St. Nicholas Magazine. Click on the image for a larger version.

The Narrative Paintings of Thomas Cole

In the decades prior to the creation of film, the unveiling of large-scale paintings took the place of mass entertainment media events. Landscape subjects were the most popular, so when someone like Frederic Edwin Church premiered a new painting of South America, it was with the requisite fanfare in salons fully bedecked in potted palms, velvet drapes, complimentary artifacts, live musical performances and special effects lighting, all to provide a sense of a window into a world far away from that of attendees. Church was a member of the Hudson River School of painters and only student of school founder Thomas Cole. Born in England, Cole moved to the United States and was further moved by the beauty of the Hudson River. In response he formed an artistic collective based in representational naturalism, Romanticism and luminism, or the manipulation of lighting effects.

The Heart of the Andes by Frederic Edwin Church (1859)

Cole did revel in landscape work, but he also sought to combine these epic paintings with narrative and metaphorical themes. The foremost of these is a five-painting series entitled The Course of Empire. Created between 1833 and 1836, these masterworks chart the course of a classical civilization from it's birth to its decay, reflecting the philosophical ideals of the Hudson River School, Romanticism, and the still-young American nation.

Santa in 2007

The following illustration by E.B. Bird comes from an issue of St. Nicholas Magazine published in 1907 and is entitled Santa in 2007. So that's how he does it these days! Click on the image for a larger version. And Merry Christmas to all!

Paintings of Paris by Jean Béraud

Jeune femme traversant le boulevard

Born in Saint Petersburg in 1846 to an artistic family, Jean Béraud originally set about to study law when the occupation of Paris in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War forced him onto a different track. Discovering his love of painting, he first exhibited in the famed Salon of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1872. Over the following decades, Béraud became known for detailed, glamorous, often humorous, scenes of Parisian life during the Belle Époque. His works remain today as a feast for the eyes of anyone fascinated with the turn of the previous century.