MOONLIGHT ONE: OIL PAINTINGS The preoccupation with moonlight in eighteenth and nineteenth century English painting appears to originate with Monamy. There was great contemporary interest in celestial dynamics, sparked off by the published works of Newton, and reinforced by several other writers. Jean-Theophilus Desaguliers, a major figure among the founders of English 18th century Freemasonry, who escaped from France to Guernsey as an infant in 1685, hidden in a barrel by his father, gave public lectures on these and other scientific topics in Westminster from about 1715 onwards. The moon's motion was of particular interest to mariners, from hopes that problems of navigation would be solved. These pages are organized under (1) oils by Monamy, (2) prints after his paintings, (3) later moonlight prints after other painters, and (4) subsequent exponents of the motif. Monamy's interest in this theme seems to have been awakened sometime before about 1729, as suggested by the conversation piece and the painting dated 1730. one (a): more moonlight oils © Charles Harrison Wallace 2001 |
