Scientists Use Van Gogh Paintings to Look at History of Climate

Vincent Van Gogh doesn't just matter to art lovers, but also to scientists. Some Greek and German scientists have looked at hundreds of paintings and photos from 1500, including Van Gogh's recently discovered Sunset at Montmajour (pictured) in order to see what the skies used to look like. Their article was published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Why bother looking at paintings? Well, they didn't have photographs (let alone color photographs) back in 1500. One subject painters seemed to love was how the sky looked like after a volcanic explosion. By comparing the paintings to color photographs of polluted skies and skies after volcanic explosions, scientists hope to get a better picture of our planet's climactic history.

This isn't the first time this group has used paintings to help figure out the history of the air. They previously published a large study in the same journal back in 2007. They also commissioned a contemporary artist to paint sunsets after a dust storm in 2010 on the island of Hydra. Paintings by JMW Turner were also used in the study.

According to the study's authors, "Because of the large number of paintings studied, we tentatively propose the conclusion that regardless of the school, red-to-green ratios from great masters can provide independent proxy AODs [Aerosol Optical Depth] that correlate with widely accepted proxies and with independent measurements."

New Van Gogh Painting Discovered (Sorta)

Earlier this month, art experts from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam announced that a painting stored in an attic for 80 years is a genuine Van Gogh.  80 years ago, a Norwegian collector bought it thinking that it was genuine and was bitterly disappointed when it was declared a fake.  When it was bought a few years ago by an anonymous family, they had the painting reassessed.  They waited two years for a final report.

Why is it now considered genuine?  Because researchers unearthed two newspaper articles that article mentioned this painting, "Sunset at Montmajour"   The first article was a review of an Amsterdam art exhibit from 1892.  The second was a review from an art exhibit in the Netherlands in 1901.  It was then that the painting disappeared.

Another reason is that we can do something that we couldn't do 80 years ago -- we can chemically analyze pigments from one painting to see if it matches another.  Pigments from "Sunset at Montmajour" were a match to many other known Van Gogh paintings at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.  Experts can also X-ray the canvas to see if it matched other Van Gogh canvases.

The painting is not a masterpiece by a long stretch.  When I first saw it, I promptly forgot what it looked like ten minutes later.  That may be more of a criticism of my memory than this particular Van Gogh painting, but even the art critic of the Guardian was not impressed, who wrote that "even great artists have bad days." (Owie.)

Some Doctor Who fans love it because the buildings in the top left corner look remarkably like the good Doctor's TARDIS.

There are numerous artworks by Van Gogh that are missing.  There are also artworks mentioned in his letters that do not seem to match the works known to exist or has existed.  "Sunset at Montmajour" was such a painting.  According to a letter from Van Gogh to his long-suffering brother Theo, he painted this on July 4, 1888.