Past Time: Geology in European and American Art

This is a beautifully illustrated, interdisciplinary volume which explores how European and American artists of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries revealed a compelling interest in dramatic geologic phenomena—caves and natural arches, boulders and rock formations, mountains, glaciers, volcanoes, and cliffs. From a topographical, often strata-focused means to a later mode that evoked nature’s great transformational powers over time, European and American artists pursued their cross-cultural travels in seeking geological wonders. The authors address the importance and history of geology, the most popular science of the 1800s.

Past Time features a combination of outstanding drawings, watercolours, and brilliant oil sketches and studies, with works by Asher B Durand, Frederic Church, John Singer Sargent, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, J. M. W. Turner, Joseph Wright of Derby, and Thomas Rowlandson, amongst many others. This volume is a great addition to the currently available publications on the relationship between the growth of natural science and the interest amongst artists in capturing and presenting scientific phenomena and an ever-changing earth.