Chesley Bonestell

Chesley Knight Bonestell Jr. (January 1, 1888 – June 11, 1986) was an American painter, designer, and illustrator. His paintings inspired the American space program, and they have been (and remain) influential in science fiction art and illustration. A pioneering creator of astronomical art, along with the French astronomer-artist Lucien Rudaux, Bonestell has been dubbed the "father of modern space art".

Early life and education

Bonestell was born January 1, 1888, in San Francisco, California, to Chesley Knight Bonestell and his wife, Jovita ( Ferrer). Jovita was a daughter of Manuel Y. Ferrer, a Spanish-American musician.

Chesley attended Clement Grammar School, Dickensen's Academy, and St. Ignatius College Preparatory, and George Bates University School. After graduating in 1904, he worked for his grandfather, Louis H. Bonestell, at the Bonestell Paper Company. For the next three years, he attended evening classes at the Hopkins Art Institute.

Career

His first astronomical painting was done in 1905. After seeing Saturn through the telescope at San Jose's Lick Observatory, he rushed home to paint what he had seen. The painting was destroyed in the fire that followed the 1906 earthquake. Between 1915 and 1918, he exhibited lithographs in the 4th and 7th annual exhibitions of the California Society of Etchers (now the California Society of Printmakers) in San Francisco.

Bonestell enrolled as an undergraduate at Columbia University in New York City in 1907, adopting an architecture major. Dropping out in June 1910, he worked as a renderer and designer for several of the leading architectural firms of the time, including the firm of Willis Polk, "The Man Who Rebuilt San Francisco."

Bonestell moved to England in 1920, where he rendered architectural subjects for the ''Illustrated London News''. He returned to New York in 1926. While with William van Alen, he and Warren Straton designed the art deco façade of the Chrysler Building as well as its distinctive eagles. During this same period, he designed the Plymouth Rock Memorial, the U.S. Supreme Court Building, the New York Central Building, Manhattan office and apartment buildings and several state capitols.Chesley Bonestell Chronology
, By Melvin H. Schuetz, 1999, uPublish.com Parkland Florida,

Returning to the West Coast, he prepared illustrations of the chief engineer's plans for the Golden Gate Bridge for the benefit of funders. In the late 1930s he moved to Hollywood, where he worked (without screen credit) as a special effects artist, creating matte paintings for films, including '' The Hunchback of Notre Dame'' (1939), ''Citizen Kane'' (1941) and ''The Magnificent Ambersons'' (1942).

Magazines, books, motion pictures, public artworks

Bonestell then realized that he could combine what he had learned about camera angles, miniature modeling, and painting techniques with his lifelong interest in astronomy. The result was a series of paintings of Saturn as seen from several of its moons that was published in ''Life'' in 1944. Nothing like these had ever been seen before: they looked as though photographers had been sent into space. His painting "Saturn as Seen from Titan" is perhaps the most famous astronomical landscape ever, and is nicknamed "the painting that launched a thousand careers." It was constructed with a combination of clay models, photographic tricks and various painting techniques (Titan has a thick haze; such a view is probably not possible in reality). Bonestell followed up the sensation these paintings created by publishing more paintings in many leading national magazines. These and others were eventually collected in the best-selling book '' The Conquest of Space'' (1949), produced in collaboration with author Willy Ley.

Bonestell's last work in Hollywood was contributing special effects art and technical advice to the seminal science fiction films produced by George Pal in the 1950s, including '' Destination Moon'', '' When Worlds Collide'', ''The War of the Worlds'', and '' Conquest of Space''. Of particular note, Bonestell created the animated introduction sequence for the 1953 ''The War of the Worlds'', which depicted a Martian city with canals and views of the other planets of the solar system (except Venus) as they were understood at the time, including an inaccurate volcanic surface on Jupiter. The scenes were narrated by Sir Cedric Hardwicke, who explained why only Earth seemed suitable to the Martians for a new home as their own planet reached exhaustion. Less memorably, Bonestell's moonscape art appeared (without permission) in the campy, low-budget '' Cat-Women of the Moon'' in 1953.

Beginning with the October 1947 issue of ''Astounding Science Fiction'', Bonestell painted more than 60 cover illustrations for science fiction magazines, primarily ''The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction'', in the 1950s through 1970s. Bonestell admitted that he had little personal interest in reading science fiction, preferring factual and scientific content, but was happy for the income his cover art brought in. He also illustrated many fiction and non-fiction book covers.

When Wernher von Braun organized a space flight symposium for ''Collier's'', he invited Bonestell to illustrate his concepts for the future of spaceflight. For the first time, spaceflight was shown to be a matter of the near future. Von Braun and Bonestell showed that it could be accomplished with the technology then existing in the mid-1950s, and that the question was that of money and will. Coming as they did at the beginning of the Cold War and just before the sobering shock of the launch of Sputnik, the 1952–1954 ''Collier's'' series, " Man Will Conquer Space Soon!", was instrumental in kick-starting America's space program.

A notable percentage of Bonestell’s paintings from the 1940s and the 1950s portrayed views of the Moon and Mars as seen close-up from space and on the surface, often with human explorers and spacecraft added for scale and narrative. Some of the details, however, represented scientific thinking that turned out to be inaccurate or that sometimes reflected Bonestell’s own artistic license to enhance visual appeal.

The airless, waterless environment of the Moon was assumed to experience little or no erosion, meaning that steep, jutting, sharp-edged landforms in lower lunar gravity in principle could remain unchanged over long ages. However, telescopic views of the Moon already had suggested by the 1940s and earlier that lunar landforms were in fact more rounded in shape. Bonestell apparently was aware of the evidence, but exercised a personal choice to depict more interesting steep and rugged lunar terrain that would become iconic in the popular imagination. After the success of his imagined views of Saturn seen from its different moons for ''Life'' in 1944, Bonestell created another set of photo-like paintings for the magazine in 1946 for a journey from Earth to the Moon and back by rocket. Other notable lunar scenes included a winged rocket on the Moon (cover of the book ''The Conquest of Space'') and explorers with moontractors above a lunar plain (from ''Collier’s'' magazine in 1952). Bonestell’s more dramatic version of lunar vistas became what many thought the Moon should have looked like. As reported by special effects expert Douglas Trumbull in the 2018 documentary ''Chesley Bonestell: A Brush with the Future'', Stanley Kubrick chose to depict the surface of the Moon in his 1968 motion picture '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'' after Bonestell’s sharp and craggy vision rather than recreate the more accurate but visually duller, worn-down rolling vistas revealed by lunar probes in the 1960s.

Between 1957 and 1970, the Charles Hayden Planetarium in Boston displayed "A Lunar Landscape", a ten-by-forty-foot, oil-on-canvas mural depicting the Moon's surface, painted by Bonestell. The Boston Museum of Science had commissioned the giant work in 1956, completed in 1957. The imagined lunarscape presented a dramatic panorama of craggy, sharp-edged mountains and craters with Earth in the sky as seen from the opposite wall of a large crater. The vista was lit by the searing, slanting rays of the Sun on the higher peaks and by the bluish glow reflected from the Earth within the otherwise shadowed regions of the crater. Moon probes and human exploration in the 1960s and 1970s found that most of the real lunar topography was rounded and worn down by millions of years of micrometeorite and larger impacts, not sharp and rugged. The planetarium judged the mural outdated and inaccurate, and removed it from display in 1970. The work became part of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum art collection in 1976. After careful restoration, the historic mural went on display in 2022 as part of the "Destination Moon" exhibit at the national museum to represent earlier ideas about space.

Another notable painting by Bonestell, "The Exploration of Mars" (1953), is on display in the Kenneth C. Griffin Exploring the Planets Gallery at the National Air and Space Museum, showing human explorers in spacesuits on the Martian surface. The rugged, reddish desert landforms are close to accurate, but the Martian daylight sky is now known to be tinted red as well by dust and haze in the thin atmosphere, not a clear, deep dark blue with a few visible stars.

Death

In 1986, Bonestell died in Carmel, California, with an unfinished painting on his easel.

Legacy

During his lifetime, Bonestell was honored internationally for the contributions he made to the birth of modern astronautics, from a bronze medal awarded by the British Interplanetary Society to a place in the International Space Hall of Fame to an asteroid named for him. ''The Conquest of Space'' won the 1951 International Fantasy Award for nonfiction, one of the first two fantasy or science fiction awards anywhere, at the British SF Convention. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted Bonestell in 2005, the first year it considered non-literary contributors.

His paintings are prized by collectors and institutions such as the National Air and Space Museum and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. One of his classic paintings, an ethereally beautiful image of Saturn seen from its giant moon Titan, has been called "the painting that launched a thousand careers." Wernher von Braun wrote that he had "learned to respect, nay fear, this wonderful artist's obsession with perfection. My file cabinet is filled with sketches of rocket ships I had prepared to help in his artwork—only to have them returned to me with...blistering criticism."

Additionally, Bonestell Crater on the planet Mars, and the asteroid 3129 Bonestell are named after him.

In 2017, the first ever album of Sun Ra vocal tracks was released, ''The Space Age Is Here to Stay'', featuring sleeve art authorized by the Bonestell estate.

Books illustrated by Bonestell

* Ley, Willy (1949), '' The Conquest of Space'' (Chesley Bonestell, Illustrator)
* ''Across the Space Frontier'' (1952)
* Illustrations by Chesley Bonestell:
** Constructing the moonships in the space station's orbit (endpapers)
** The space station (p. 11)
** Spaceships coming in for a landing on the Moon (p. 63)
** Landing on the Moon (p. 67)
** Unloading the cargo ship on the Moon (pp. 76–77)
** Exploration convoy crossing lunar plain (p. 101)
** Take-off from the Moon (p 115)
* Heuer, Kenneth (1953), ''The End of the World'' (Chesley Bonestell, Illustrator) (Reprinted and revised in 1957 as ''The Next Fifty Billion Years: An Astronomer's Glimpse into the Future'', Viking Press)
* ''The World We Live In'' (1955)
* ''The Exploration of Mars'' (1956)
* ''Man and the Moon'' (1961)
* ''Rocket to the Moon'' (1961)
* ''The Solar System'' (1961)
* ''Beyond the Solar System'' (1964)
* ''Mars'' (1964)
* ''Beyond Jupiter'' (1972)
* ''The Golden Era of the Missions'' (1974)
* ''Worlds Beyond: the Art of Chesley Bonestell'', Frederick C. Durant and Ron Miller, Donning (1983)
* ''The Art of Chesley Bonestell'', Ron Miller, Paper Tiger, (2001)
* '' Project Mars: A Technical Tale'' (2006)

Films with artwork by Bonestell (abbreviated list)

* '' The Hunchback of Notre Dame'' (1939)
* '' Only Angels Have Wings'' (1939)
* '' Swiss Family Robinson'' (1940)
* ''Citizen Kane'' (1941)
* ''The Magnificent Ambersons'' (1942)
* '' Destination Moon'' (1950)
* '' War of the Worlds'' (1953)
* '' Cat-Women of the Moon'' (1953) Unauthorized use of Bonestell art from the book, "The Conquest of Space"
* '' Conquest of Space'' (1955)
* '' Men into Space'' (TV series, 1959–60)
* ''Chesley Bonestell: A Brush with the Future'' (feature-length documentary, 2018)
Chesley Bonestell: A Brush with the Future
'

Documentaries

Bonestell appeared in the documentary '' The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal'' (1985) (Produced and directed by Arnold Leibovit).
A documentary about his life, ''Chesley Bonestell: A Brush with the Future'', was produced in 2018.

Popular culture references

* Arthur C. Clarke, in his 1953 story " Jupiter Five", referred to Bonestell's astronomical illustrations appearing in ''Life'' magazine in 1944.
* Robert A. Heinlein made Bonestell's name into a verb first in his 1958 juvenile '' Have Space Suit—Will Travel'', then in his 1961 novel '' Stranger in a Strange Land'': "Opener: zoom in on Mars, using stock or bonestelled shots, unbroken sequence, then dissolving to miniature matched set of actual landing place of ''Envoy''.
* In the '' Star Trek: The Next Generation'' episode "Tapestry", a young Captain Picard is involved in a fight with aliens at the Bonestell Recreation Facility, a spaceport named after the artist. This incident is first mentioned in the second-season episode " Samaritan Snare".
* In chapter 35 of '' The Long Mars'' by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter and set in the year 2045, the character Douglas Black says that "this world was ... just like a Chesley Bonestell painting, and all of them save Mac had to look up that reference to see what he meant."

See also

* Chesley Awards
* List of space artists
* Robert McCall

Notes

References

Citations

Sources

* Miller, Ron and Frederick C. Durant III (1983), ''Worlds Beyond: The Art of Chesley Bonestell'', Walsworth Pub Co
*Miller, Ron and Frederick C. Durant III (2001), ''The Art of Chesley Bonestell'' (Foreword by Melvin H. Schuetz), Paper Tiger
*Schuetz, Melvin H. (1999), ''Chesley Bonestell Space Art Chronology'', Universal Publishers
*Schuetz, Melvin H. (2003), ''Supplement to A Chesley Bonestell Space Art Chronology'' .
*Tuck, Donald H., ed. ''The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy'' Volumes 1 and 2. Chicago: Advent Publications, Inc., 1974.

External links

*
*
*

''Chesley Bonestell'', a portrait by Ansel Adams
*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bonestell, Chesley
1888 births
1986 deaths
Artists from San Francisco
People associated with astronomy
American science fiction artists
Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees
Space artists
American special effects people