To artists inspired by what they see in nature, volcanic sunsets are the holy grail of light and color. They transform placid sunsets and post-twilight glows into vibrant bloodbaths of spectral radiance. Yet I’m not writing this to hang on the wall another volcanically inspired sunset painting for us to ponder. Rather, I want to introduce to observers a subtle and little-known daytime phenomenon linked to volcanic activity. It may have, in part, inspired 19th-century Post-Impressionist French artist Georges Seurat (1859–1891) in his attempt to reform Impressionism and illuminate the world with a new form of art: his own version of optical blending of color, called Pointillism.
The Sky As Art
A number of 19th-century artists re-created volcanic sunsets in their paintings. Most touted are the works of English landscape pioneer William Turner, who spent a year painting the vibrant sunsets induced by the weather-altering 1815 eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Tambora — the most powerful volcanic event in recorded history.
William Ascroft of Chelsea, London, captured what are arguably the most faithful representations of sunset skies infused with aerosols from the 1883 eruption of Krakatau (aka Krakatoa; also in Indonesia). He made more than 500 crayon sketches of the changing hues, several of which appear as the frontispiece of the 1888 Royal Society publication, “The eruption of Krakatoa, and subsequent phenomena.” And in 2004, Don Olson of Texas State University added Norwegian artist Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893) to the tally of paintings inspired by the sunsets observed in the three years following Krakatau’s historic blast.
These artists may not have been alone. In a 2014 paper in the scientific journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Christos Zerefos of the Academy of Athens in Greece tells how he and his team analyzed red-green ratios in more than 500 paintings from 181 artists, dating from between 1500 and 1900. They recognized the effects of volcanic aerosols (namely, a preponderance of warm hues) in sunset paintings created within a period of three years that followed each of 54 major volcanic events during that time period. These include works by Turner, John Singleton Copley, Edgar Degas and Gustav Klimt. The findings are not surprising. But topping the list is Seurat.
