Physio-Géo (Jun 2020)
La représentation du relief de Pegwell Bay (Kent) par William DYCE : géomorphosite et peinture de paysage
Abstract
The painting Pegwell Bay, Kent ‒ a Recollection of October 5th 1858 is emblematic of the relationship between painting and science in nineteenth-century Europe. It was created by a British artist, William DYCE, whose landscapes reveal an authentically scientific vision. This landscape painting provides material for geomorphological commentary thanks to the artist's qualities as an observer and to the realism of his manner. It additionally functions as a group portrait, and as a historical painting due to the event motivating its subtitle, the date DYCE observed DONATI's comet. Pegwell Bay lies between the Weald and the Thames estuary, and is known for the discordance of its Paleocene and Cretaceous Chalk layers, as well as being the base site of the Thanet stratotype in south-east England. The chalk cliffs with notches and caves rise above a foreshore whose dip determines the parallel monoclinal microreliefs. The painting provides a first illustration of head deposits ‒ a term which had just been introduced ‒ on the upper parts of the cliffs. The site contains relics from the Devensian period when there was an authentic periglacial environment here. The canvas was painted at a time when geology and palaeontology were rapidly developing, driven by the dissemination of DARWIN's theory of evolution. This was also the time when science was taken up by art. Its composition is based on a balanced division into sky and earth, creating a horizontal symmetry, on a perspective from the summit and base of the cliffs towards the sun, and on a series of parallel lines along the foreshore. It also draws on astronomy, with the comet is placed at the top of the canvas, this time creating a vertical symmetry. Precision and attention to detail are the major characteristics of this painting, which shares characteristics with the Pre-Raphaelite movement. It reveals attentive observation of nature and an exact representation of mineral elements and landforms, that is to say the objects studied by geomorphology. It is of clear documentary interest, and shows that painters' interest in landforms predated that of geographers. The Pegwell Bay site is of intrinsic geomorphological value, and of recognized cultural value thanks to this pictorial representation.
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