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Comparative Magnitude of the Planets [American or English, June 1853] Signed lower left “MAS[ter] J. Lawton, Del’r”; Dated lower right “At J. Moss’ June / 53”. 13 x 18 ¾ inches overall. Pen & ink & watercolor on heavy card stock; light staining & age toning, else excellent. While 19th century, manuscript school exercises depicting maps appear on the market with some frequency, this is the first example we’ve seen with astronomical subject matter. Works of this type, as is the case here, often served a secondary pedagogical purpose in providing practice in penmanship, Spencerian script in particular that was popular at the time; see below. Master Lawton, this work’s maker, clearly had a refined hand: several quite elegant and diverse styles of calligraphy are found here. No wonder then that works of this kind have recently been avidly collected as striking examples of folk art. In this work, each of the then known planets is shown from innermost Mercury to the then recently discovered (in 1846), outermost planet Neptune, as well as the moon and four principal asteroids. They are presented in various colors in descending size order with text giving their diameter in miles. A possible source for the drawing is Elijah Burritt’s “A Plan of the Solar System Exhibiting its Relative Magnitudes and Distances,” which also shows the relative magnitudes of the planets by descending sizes with information about their diameters. It appeared in Burritt’s Atlas of the Heavens, first published in Connecticut in 1835. This atlas was used widely in America for educating students in astronomy and was republished in many times in subsequent decades. Another possible source is a chart that was issued as a card published by James Reynolds in London in 1846. It has the exact same title as our manuscript and many other similarities, such as portraying the planets in descending order of size and in the delineation of Saturn with its characteristic blue ring. Reynolds’ “Comparative Magnitude of the Planets” was issued as part of a larger set of hand-tinted astronomical cards drawn and engraved by British artist John Emslie, intended for astronomy instruction at school or at home in the parlor. Our manuscript, as mentioned above, was also likely an exercise in the use of Spencerian script, a style of handwriting popular between 1850 and 1925. It was largely the established American script for official communications before the widespread adoption of the typewriter. As a form of oval-based cursive handwriting, Spencerian script required instruction and was integrated into school syllabuses as a required subject. Students often created decorative pen and ink studies as a calligraphy exercises, such as with various textual sayings, and sometimes incorporating animals such as lions, eagles, and deer. “Comparative Magnitude of the Planets.” Science Museum Group Online. https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co66924/comparative-magnitudes-of-the-planets (22 October 2024). “Spencerian Script.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencerian_script (22 October 2024).
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