Agog at the smog
I think the news media may have got a little carried away with a scientific study of Claude Monet’s paintings of the British Houses of Parliament, the the preliminary results of which were published last month.
So far, environmental scientists are merely hoping that the pictures might be read as a pollution chart. I’m not really sure why they want to do this, but I suppose having a big name like Monet at the top of your research proposal makes it a hell of a lot easier to get funding.
His series of depictions of the scene on the Thames between 1899 and 1901 have always enthralled because of the scintillating impressionistic style, which helped open the door to the relative fireworks of pointillism.
But now researchers Jacob Baker and John Thornes at the University of Birmingham are wondering if the paintings were in fact faithful depictions of the Victorian weather. See the rest.
