Alchemy discussion forum > Alchemical Symbolism and Imagery > Alchemy Symbolism and Imagery > Nineteenth Century alchemist paintings
Alchemy discussion forum > Alchemical Symbolism and Imagery > Alchemy Symbolism and Imagery > Nineteenth Century alchemist paintings |
|
| Moderated by: alchemyd | ||
| Author | Post | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
adammclean Member 
|
Carl Lavoie recently alerted me to some images of alchemists in their laboratories by the Scottish artist James Nasmyth. He was the son of the well known artist Alexander Nasmyth 1758–1840. His son, though an accomplished artist turned instead to engineering and was one of the major figures in creating heavy industrial machinery in the mid 19th century in Scotland. Carl found three paintings. I also have some photographs I obtained some years ago of drawings, no doubt made in preparation for some similar themed paintings. Attached Image (viewed 7643 times): |
|||||||||
|
adammclean Member
|
Attached Image (viewed 4843 times): |
|||||||||
|
adammclean Member
|
Attached Image (viewed 3328 times): |
|||||||||
|
Alexander Guthrie Stewart Member
|
Those are nice, especially the way the light changes through the day or seasons. Although the last picture looks like it has been reversed into a mirror image. |
|||||||||
|
adammclean Member
|
Why do you think it reversed ? The alchemist seems to be holding up a candle in his right hand. I do not see this as a reversed image. |
|||||||||
|
Paul Ferguson Member 
|
There's an interesting reference to one of them in the Faraday correspondence, letter 2090: http://books.google.com/books?id=vKesSblgySgC&pg=PA699&lpg=PA699&dq=%22James+Nasmyth%22+alchemy&source=bl&ots=IDIm1wqUca&sig=ZGkAQst-ESMTxxIz96PmOKbMFZU&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=jtfRT6ydJsXa0QWn-9yqBA&ved=0CE8Q6AEwAjg8#v=onepage&q&f=false And here's a funny 'esoteric' one - what's all this about? http://www.flickr.com/photos/etchingsplus/4140238229/in/set-72157622397555882 "It is very detailed, there is a fight breaking out by the left hand leg of the table!" |
|||||||||
|
Carl Lavoie Member
|
. "James Naysmyth (1808 - 1890) [...] wrote is autobiography in 1883 ..." Maybe he alludes in it for his interest in the alchemical themes. |
|||||||||
|
Alexander Guthrie Stewart Member
|
Ach, never mind, looking closer it is a different laboratory compared to the first two. I saw the three in a line and then wondered why the bottom one seemed to be looking back the other way compared to the top two. |
|||||||||
|
Paul Ferguson Member
|
Carl Lavoie wrote:. Part of it is available on-line. He refers briefly to one of the alchemist drawings here: http://books.google.com/books?id=rGGeUibT7vUC&pg=PA266&dq=%22james+nasmyth%22+alchemist&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=4_7RT66JPK3Y0QWo5_SZBA&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false |
|||||||||
|
Paul Ferguson Member
|
Carl Lavoie wrote:. I wonder if the inspiration was Washington Irving, the early 19th century American writer and creator of Rip Van Winkle? Nasmyth seems to have greatly admired his writings. One of Irving's stories, The Student of Salamanca, features an alchemist: http://books.google.com/books?id=IJkHThIKcS0C&pg=PA384&dq=%22washington+irving%22+salamanca+student&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=OgjST7fHFIGm0QXDz42DBA&ved=0CEQQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false |
|||||||||
|
adammclean Member
|
Paul, you are such a great researcher. This is great story. I will try and get a copy which I can print out to read through. The Google Books windows I find a bit limiting. It does seem on a quick skim through that this resonates with the Nasmyth paintings. |
|||||||||
|
Paul Ferguson Member
|
adammclean wrote:Paul, you are such a great researcher. This is great story. I will try and get a copy which I can print out to read through. The Google Books windows I find a bit limiting. <blushes> I think you can download a free .pdf from here. It's part of the Bracebridge Hall volume: http://www.ebooks-library.com/author.cfm/AuthorID/179 |
|||||||||
|
adammclean Member
|
Great. I will reformat it for html and put it up on the alchemy website. |
|||||||||
|
Paul Ferguson Member
|
It's interesting to compare these with his purely 'industrial' paintings, like this one of a steamhammer. Attached Image (viewed 2361 times): |
|||||||||
|
Carl Lavoie Member
|
. Are the footnotes about the lampes perpétuelles really from W. Irving, or the editor ? http://www.telelib.com/authors/I/IrvingWashington/prose/bracebridgehallvol1/bracebridgehall026.html Last edited on Fri Jun 8th, 2012 07:23 pm by Carl Lavoie |
|||||||||
|
Carl Lavoie Member
|
. For once, Humidity overcomes Calidity ... . Attached Image (viewed 1691 times): |
|||||||||
|
Carl Lavoie Member
|
.
And I confess that I had never heard before of the play Gallathea (1585), by John Lilly, from which Irving use the above quote as the epigraph of his tale. . |
|||||||||
|
Paul Ferguson Member
|
Carl Lavoie wrote:. Seems to be the only one of his plays though that is still performed: "An experimental performance was staged by Peter Lichtenfels in November 2010 at the University of California, Davis. The show featured a bare set, audience participation, and video projection... Modern commentators have praised the play's "harmonious variety" and "allegorical dramaturgy"." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallathea Here's the Lego version for any 5-year-old infant prodigies on the forum: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugXDi692xUg And a trailer for the Pleasaunce production: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJMCgSgRi_U And here is the text: http://www.letrs.indiana.edu/cgi-bin/eprosed/eprosed-idx?coll=eprosed;idno=P1.0161 |
|||||||||
|
Paul Ferguson Member
|
Carl Lavoie wrote:. It seems to be in all the on-line editions, so I assume it must be the author's own. |
|||||||||
|
Paul Ferguson Member
|
adammclean wrote:Great. I will reformat it for html and put it up on the alchemy website. The story mentions the lead tablets called 'plomos', allegedly containing alchemical knowledge but now apparently debunked as forgeries. This dissertation mentions them and gives a reference in a footnote: http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=history_diss "Regrettably, Irving’s descriptions did not extend to one of the most interesting local aspects of Granada’s church traditions, the place of the plomos, a series of mysterious lead tablets, purporting to detail the history of the Christian underground during the years of Islamic rule, that had been discovered in the late sixteenth century. The same impulse that led Enlightenment-era Spanish antiquarians to begin the process of surveying the Moorish antiquities in the late eighteenth century had rekindled a close study of the plomos, now understood to be an early modern forgery. Irving must have known something of the lore of the plomos, because in his “Scholar of Salamanca,” from the 1820 Bracebridge Hall he describes “Arabian tablets of lead, which had recently been dug up in the neighborhood of Granada, which, it was confidently believed among adepts, contained the lost secrets of [alchemy].” "For Spanish Enlightenment-era research on the plomos, see A. Katie Harris, From Muslim to Christian Granada: Inventing a City’s Past in Early Modern Spain (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 149-152." Attached Image (viewed 820 times): |
|||||||||
|
Carl Lavoie Member
|
. In an exhibition held in 1842, the Scottish painter Alexander Christie (1807-1860), a contemporary of James Nasmyth (b.1808), had his painting “An Alchemist visited by a Familiar of the Inquisition” displayed to the public. http://archive.org/stream/royalscottishaca00royarich#page/74/mode/2up Only the nineteenth century could have generated such a theme. Anyway, as anyone seen that painting ? . |
|||||||||
|
Paul Ferguson Member
|
Carl Lavoie wrote:. I've had a good root around on the Internet and elsewhere and cannot find anything about it, except that it was priced at £60, quite a substantial sum, at the 8th AGM of the Scottish Art Union: http://books.google.com/books?id=trTlAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA167&lpg=PA167&dq=%22visited+by+a+familiar+of+the+inquisition%22&source=bl&ots=rPU24s6Nif&sig=ICyqBJhLl88MVI31b6-bth3quNA&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=G5bVT5_rLYfE0QWA0_DzAw&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22visited%20by%20a%20familiar%20of%20the%20inquisition%22&f=false Judging by some of the sardonic comments about his other paintings I imagine it may have ended up as firewood. But surely it also was inspired by the same Washington Irving story? See page 133 here: http://books.google.com/books?id=HDcZBfBTRNYC&pg=PA133&lpg=PA133&dq=%22familiars%22+%22the+inquisition%22+alchemists&source=bl&ots=aSF5UqGuvi&sig=AgHiYK1y5ZdBhJAvWwuD_gou_54&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=SJXVT__aO-G50QXwktiTBA&ved=0CEsQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22familiars%22%20%22the%20inquisition%22%20alchemists&f=false I imagine he moved in the same circles as David Scott, who painted the famous picture of Paracelsus lecturing: http://www.levity.com/alchemy/dscott.html Last edited on Mon Jun 11th, 2012 07:59 am by Paul Ferguson |
|||||||||
|
Carl Lavoie Member
|
. Regarding alchemical laboratories and the XIXth century, is there a review of this exhibition? Huysmans n’aimait guère les médecins; (...) http://huysmans.org/bibliophiletexts/jacquinot2.htm . |
|||||||||
|
Paul Ferguson Member
|
Carl Lavoie wrote:. The Marquis wrote a book about his friendship with Huysmans under an abbreviated name, but I haven't found a complete copy online. http://tinyurl.com/nppkj3h S/hand copy here: http://tinyurl.com/nmrbwb6 Last edited on Sat Oct 19th, 2013 05:10 pm by Paul Ferguson |
|||||||||
|
Carl Lavoie Member
|
.S/hand copy here: Exept that this very copy from W&B has been mailed Wednesday. But Abebooks still have five or six available. http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=michel&tn=avec+huysmans The 'cabinet d'alchimie' at the Exposition of 1889 (talk about alchemy going mainstream) might have create some vocations. But I would be curious to read even a description of it. . |
|||||||||
|
Paul Ferguson Member
|
Carl Lavoie wrote:. Other copies available here: http://tinyurl.com/nglep6r |
|||||||||
|
Paul Ferguson Member
|
Another 'piste'? "Théodore Tiffereau adressa plusieurs mémoires à l'Académie des Sciences. Et dans une autre lettre, d'ajouter : " L'or obtenu par moi à Guadalajara constitue un fait palpable que j'ai tenu toujours à la disposition des savants et dont l'existence réelle n'a pas pu être niée. Il a été analysé et reconnu comme un or vrai par M. Silva, ancien président de la Société chimique et professeur à l'Ecole Centrale. Cette analyse a été confirmée par celles d'autres chimistes, entre autres par celle de M. Itasse. " " /.../ Cet or a figuré à la grande Exposition de 1889, soumis aux membres de la Commission." http://60gp.ovh.net/~alchymie/articles/rayonnement.htm There was also an article in Mercure de France in 1926: http://gallica.bnf.fr/searchInPeriodique?spe=Michel+de+L%C3%A9zinier+et+l%27alchimie&arkPress=cb34427363f%2Fdate&lang=EN Last edited on Sat Oct 19th, 2013 05:34 pm by Paul Ferguson |
|||||||||
|
Carl Lavoie Member
|
. Yes, page 458: "Leurs relations commencèrent en 1889, lors de l’ouverture de l’Exposition Universelle de Paris. M. de Lézinier y avait reconstitué un laboratoire d’alchimie qui « intéressa extrêmement Huysmans ». Cet intérêt fonda une grande amitié entre les deux hommes." . |
|||||||||
|
Carl Lavoie Member
|
 http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/weltausstellung1889a/0128/image?sid=7cba955a6cf47f8700f0dd69de477322 ........................................ And we learn here that the alchemist at work is Maier! « M. Délézinier avait minutieusement reproduit l’aspect d’un laboratoire d’alchimiste au commencement du XVIIe siècle en y plaçant la figure du fameux alchimiste Michael Maier, fondateur de la véritable théorie de l’ébullition [?!]» http://books.google.ca/books?id=raci5pxMeiEC&pg=PA304&lpg=PA304&dq=exposition+universelle+1889+laboratoire+alchimiste&source=bl&ots=yd8azWtmrm&sig=a-SC3UyLdXxM113IykMhP3dx_Oc&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=3D9jUsfRNbGyygHYpYFI&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=exposition%20universelle%201889%20laboratoire%20alchimiste&f=false Last edited on Sun Oct 20th, 2013 03:49 am by Carl Lavoie |
|||||||||
|
Carl Lavoie Member
|
. Following up on Lézinier’s Avec Huysmans (1928). On chapter IV, thinks that he deciphered the alchemical treatises of Maier by positing that ‘Mercure’ stands for Hg and ‘Soufre’ for S :  Makes one wonder what could be found in the pages of his other book published the same year as the Exposition : - Michael Maïer et la vulgarisation scientifique,(!) Paris, Chamuel, 1889. Beside his positivist/contemptuous views on alchemy, he also, on a few occasions, throws the blame for the national woes on "les empoisonneurs judéo-germaniques"(p. 161), and on freemasonry for his own setbacks; as in chapter XI, when he gets fired, but finds out later that his lab director was “un haut gradé de la Maçonnerie — il était chevalier kadosch” (p.196). Yep, that kind of guy. . Last edited on Tue Oct 29th, 2013 07:22 am by Carl Lavoie |
|||||||||