Chesley Bonestell's Lost Lithographs

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"I don't know what that is, but I hope you get them."

 

That's what the lady at the auction house said when Marianne Porter told her that all Marianne wanted were the Chesley Bonestell lithographs. There were 32 of them in the lot, and it was clear nobody at Pook & Pook knew what they were.

 

Over a century ago, in 1918, when Bonestell was a young artist specializing in architectural renderings, he was commissioned to create a suite of lithographs documenting the creation of a nitrate plant in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. That he made them was a matter of record. But the lithographs themselves disappeared from public awareness. In Ron Miller and Frederick C. Durant III's The Art of Chesley Bonestell, the number of lithographs was speculated to have been ten.

 

This project was long before Bonestell began creating the astronomical paintings that would make him famous.  But his extraordinary artistic skill is on display in the array of techniques he employed. Some of which later informed the infrastructure of his visual documentation of future spaceflight technology.

 

Now Marianne and I are making those lithographs available to the public for free. Starting this Thursday, April 4, we will be posting one image every weekday on this blog.

When the entire series has been posted, a torrent will be created containing the complete collection in high-density format. All of the images are in the public domain.

 

 

Bonestell's astronomical art was not only beautiful in its own right but a major influence on early modern science fiction. Marianne and I are thrilled to be able to make these images available to whoever wants them.

 

 

 

Above: Marianne and me, examining our collection.

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