Art of Science

The weekly newsletter from the National Gallery of Victoria reminds us that this week is National Science Week. The article looks at what goes on ‘Behind the Scenes’ in the Conservation Department and is an insight into the ‘Science of Art’. See: http://tracking.wordfly.com/view/?sid=NTYzXzIzNzg3XzY2Nzg4XzcwOTY&l=b03480ee-afdb-ea11-a824-0050569d715d&utm_source=wordfly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Tony%27semail-August16&utm_content=version_A&promo=12762

Another aspect of ‘Science and Art’ is to look at how science and scientists are depicted in the NGV Collection. Sadly, searching the collection for the generic word ‘science’ provides only a handful of useful results.

There are a couple of curious comical pen and ink drawings by Charles Samuel Keene (see the post about Keene on 28 May). Both of these appear to show people grappling with ‘objects of interest’. In Pursuit of Science the well-dressed young woman and the lower-class workers seem to be checking each other out in a ‘field experiment’. Similarly, in ‘Science’ two men are actively exploring the barely visible (and yet to be inked in) women from a range of angles. The contemporary meaning of these drawings is lost to us but the notion of ‘scientific observation and enquiry’ in relation to class and gender is certainly possible.

The Australian cartoonist, Will Dyson, also has two entries. In Farm Labourer from 1927 a metallically-muscled robot, crowned with the word ‘science’ and reminiscent of the superheroes in the X-Men series is aiding an old farmer with his ploughing.  Subtitled: ‘By Gum the Best Farm hand I ever had! / He works harder every year!’ we see the embracing of increased mechanisation in the agricultural world.

Dyson’s other work, Science, from the following year explores this theme further. A well-dressed, well-fed and well-heeled plutocrat is dwarfed by the virile and compliant servant ‘science’ who he has summoned to do his bidding. The advantages that ‘science’ confers are part of the lives of those who can afford it.

This leads into the notion of industrialisation and an especially interesting work about science in the NGV collection – the late 19^th century painting of James Watt’s workshop by Jonathan Pratt.

James Watt (1736-1819) was a Scottish chemist, mechanical engineer and inventor who is best remembered as the perfecter (not inventor) of the steam engine which ‘powered’ the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. Many of us remember the (probably apocryphal) story of Watt seeing the steam issuing from a kettle and having his ‘eureka moment’.

Watt created his workshop on the second floor of Heathfield Hall, the home he built in Birmingham, in 1790. Originally a garret storeroom, it was gradually equipped with a workbench, lathe, stove, chests of drawers and cupboards. There was even a shelf where servants could leave food for the inventor if he was occupied.

As well as being a workshop, it was also a personal museum for Watt – containing remnants of his early experiments and investigations. In the painting we can see tools, instruments, levers, wheels and shelves of chemical compounds. Visitors noted a trunk containing schoolbooks, drawings, paintings and writings by his son Gregory, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 27 in 1804. 

However, what draws our attention are some impressive plaster portrait busts. As well as his interest in steam engines, Watt designed devices to help artists create perspective drawings, to copy documents, and to copy sculptures. The machine to copy sculptures was a retirement project and in some ways an early version of a 3D printer. One of the objects that Watts copied on this machine was a death-mask of Matthew Boulton, his business partner, who died in 1809. More about Watt’s machine can be found at: https://maas.museum/inside-the-collection/2019/08/21/james-watts-bicentenary-the-man-and-his-machines/

The items in the workshop provide a picture of the ‘inventor’ in the 18^th century. Unlike the specialisation of today, Watt was typical of the ‘polymath inventor’ whose interests and ideas were broad enough to encompass chemistry, physics, philosophy and even theology. Sir Humphry Davy, a distinguished chemist, inventor and peer of Watt, said of him: “Those who consider James Watt only as a great practical mechanic form a very erroneous idea of his character; he was equally distinguished as a natural philosopher and a chemist, and his inventions demonstrate his profound knowledge of those sciences, and that peculiar characteristic of genius, the union of them for practical application”.

Watt was an important and greatly respected participant in the Industrial Revolution. As well as being an excellent draughtsman, he was also a prolific letter writer, a much sought-after conversationalist, and a congenial companion. Sadly, he was not a good businessman and hated bargaining and negotiating terms. In a letter to his friend, William Small, a Scottish physician and professor of natural philosophy, he wrote that he: “he would rather face a loaded cannon than settle an account or make a bargain.” The eclectic collection of objects in his workshop highlights his many interests and connections in the world – and the nostalgia and sadness at the deaths of those close to him.

After Watt’s death, his workshop was kept intact by his son, James Watt Junior, creating a ‘time capsule’ of around 8,500 objects. The room was locked up and left untouched until he died 30 years later. After that date, occasional visitors were allowed entry but the workshop fell into disrepair due to the ravages of weather and time. In the 1920s, Heathfield Hall and its grounds were sold for redevelopment, and in 1924 Watt’s workshop was acquired by the Science Museum in London.

The painting by Jonathan Pratt is dated 1886 and is believed to have been painted for the Tangye brothers. Richard and George Tangye were British manufacturers of engines, hydraulic appliances and particularly lifting jacks. Starting modestly in Birmingham in the late 1850s, by the early 1870s the business was flourishing and there were offices in Johannesburg and Sydney. Richard travelled extensively to promote his business interests and visited Australia several times. The brothers were also founding benefactors of the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery in 1885. Given their interest in science and art it is not surprising that they would commission a painting of Watt’s workshop.

Jonathan Pratt (1835-1911) is one of those well-regarded, but now obscure, regional painters of the Victorian era whose life and times don’t even rate a Wikipedia page. Born in Northampton, his artistic talent and ambition was recognised early and at the age of 11 he was taken out of school and ‘apprenticed’ to a portrait painter. After painting portraits for a decade, Pratt settled in Birmingham directing his principal attention to narrative pictures and the landscape of Brittany where he holidayed. He was a ‘solid’ painter, exhibited occasionally at the Royal Academy, and was a member of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists as well as its Honorary Curator. He clearly liked to paint dark, atmospheric interiors – his painting of Watt’s workshop must have appealed to him as he painted a copy of it which is now held by the Birmingham Museums Trust.

Watt’s workshop has been displayed as the centrepiece of a major new permanent gallery in the Science Museum in South Kensington since 2011. The museum will re-open tomorrow for visitors after the COVID lockdown. It will be sometime before we can see it in person – so a virtual visit during National Science Week will have to do.