THE EARLIEST SURVIVING BONESTELL LUNAR LANDSCAPE

Created for George Pal’s 1950 film, Destination Moon, this study depicts the lunar crater Harpalus. The final painting, which was used as a backdrop in sಌeveral scenes,🦹 spanned fourteen feet in length! 

The painting had its own wall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Apollo’s Muse: The Moon in the Age of Photography exhibition from 1 July through 22 September 2019 in commemoration of the 50^th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing.  The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum’s recently renovated galleries relating to the space race and lunar landings are also titled Destiಞnation Moon, possibly a throwback to the historic film.

Destination Moon is regarded as the first US major science fiction film to grapple with the engineering challenges of reaching and living on the Moon. In the 1950 film, the financing and manufacture of lunar spacecraft are controlled by the private sector after government rocket research collapses. Two of the three heroes of the film are a rocket scientist and space enthusiast, who befriend an aircraft magnate to achieve their goal of getting to the Moon. The study in the present lot represents the lunar landscape ꦇonce the ℱheroes have reached the Moon. The timing and scale of the project suggest that the present lot is the earliest surviving lunar landscape painted by the famous space artist.

Bonestell (1888-1986), a San Francisco native, executed his first space painting in 1905 after seeing Saturn through the telescope at the Lick Observatory. This first painting was destroyed in 1906, in the fire caused by the great San Francisco earthquake. His career began in architecture, and many iconic US landmarks came to life from his designs, including the Art Deco façade and eagles of New York City's Chrysler building, the US Supreme Court building, the New York Central building, the Plymouth Rock Memorial, and the Golden Gate Bridge to name but a few. His work took on a whole new dimension when, at the age of fifty, he moved to Los Angeles, where he was to become the highest paid special effects artist in Hollywood (though his work went largely uncredited). The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), Citizen Kane (1941), and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) all received their distinctive looks from Bonestell's brush and pen, and the buildings designed by Ayn Rand's architect superhero Howard Roark in the 1949 film The Fountainhead were by Bonestell.

"Bonestell's paintings electrified a generation of teenage space enthusiasts: aspiring writers, astronomers, physicists, artists, and engineers... The late Carl Sagan said he didn't know what other worlds looked like until he saw Bonestell's paintings of the Solar System. Joseph Chamberlain, director of the Adler Planetarium, maintained that 'It might even be suggested that without Bonestell and his early space age artistry, the NASA era might have been delayed for many years, or it might not have happened at all.'" Sir Arthur C. Clarke, who collaborated with Bonestell on Beyond Jupiter (1972), said that 'Chesley is the original Kilroy — he's been there ahead of them all. Neil Armstrong? Well, Tranquility Base was established over Bonestell's tracks anꦯd discarded squeezed-out paint tubes. The man not only moves across space, but also across time. He was present at our world's birth and has also set up his easel to paint its death...' (Miller & Durant)

LITERATURE

Miller, Ron & Frederick C. Durant III. The Art of Chesley Bonestell, 2001.

EXHIBITION HISTORY

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Apollo’s Muse: The Moon in the Age of Photography. 1 July - 22 September, 2019.