"The Great Comet of 1843," Charles PIazzi Smyth, 1843.
Smyth (1819-1900) is remembered today as a groundbreaking astronomer, but he was also a photographer, traveler, writer, and a pyramidologist. He was the son of an astronomer, his brother was a geologist, another brother was a distinguished Army officer, and a sister was the mother of Sir Robert Baden-Powell, so it was a pretty busy family. Smyth himself married Jessie Duncan, a noted geologist, and they formed quite a team.
This painting was done while he was working at an observatory in South Africa; it clearly shows a certain artistic talent, as well as the influence of the Romantics.
A few years later Smyth would be appointed Astronomer Royal for Scotland, and began to work and teach in Edinburgh.
Despite much excellent work in the field of astronomy, he also studied and wrote about the Pyramid of Giza, and his work there is dismissed as pseudoscience today (because it is). He was also a vocal opponent of the metric system, as he felt it was atheistic and radical.
From the National Maritime Museum, London.
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