HAPPY TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE DAY!

Happy Total (for those of you in the Path of Totality) Solar Eclipse Day!

Ever wonder how people depicted a solar eclipse before modern photography? The Princeton Art Museum is currently featuring an exhibit of paintings by Howard Russell Butler (1856-1934). Butler was a graduate of Princeton University’s first School of Science. He was also a portrait and landscape painter who founded the American Fine Arts Society.

Left Panel

In 1918 Butler, who had already established himself as a renowned painter of transient phenomena such as sunsets, was invited to accompany the United States Naval Observatory Eclipse Team to Salem, Oregon. At a time when photography was not yet sophisticated enough to capture the nuances of a solar eclipse, Butler’s painting, completed from memory and notes within hours of observing the eclipse, provided an account that astronomers heralded for its scientific accuracy.

Center panel with image of Bailey's Bead

In 1925 the American Museum of Natural History commissioned a triptych for an astronomy hall Butler had designed. The hall was never built, but the triptych was later mounted over the entrance to the Hayden Planetarium. The smaller version pictured above was given by Butler’s son to Princeton University in 1958. The left panel is the solar eclipse from the 1918 expedition. The middle panel is the 1923 solar eclipse in Lompoc, California, which captures what is known as a Bailey's Bead, a bead of sunlight that is glimpsed briefly amid the craggy topography of the moon. The panel on the right is the solar eclipse of 1925 in Connecticut.

Right panel