Name: CHESLEY BONESTELL (1888-1986)
Brand: THE SHIP STANDS NOSE UP, ALL READY FOR THE LONG DART TO MARS
Price: 45000.00 USD
Availability: SoldOut

CHESLEY BONESTELL (1888-1986)
THE SHIP STANDS NOSE UP, ALL READY FOR THE LONG DART TO MARS
signed Chesley Bonestell (lower left)
oil and paint on board
15¹⁄₄ x 19¹⁄₂ in. (38.7 x 49.5 cm.) (sight)
Executed circa 1947.

Norman Brosterman (b.1952), New York.
Acquired by the late owner from the above, 2001.

Willy Ley, "Race to the Planets," Mechanix Illustrated, July 1947, illustrated (Schuetz 10).
Norman Brosterman, Out of Time: Designs for the Twentieth-Century Future (New York, 2000), p. 88, illustrated.
Ron Miller and Frederick C. Durant III, The Art of Chesley Bonestell (London, 2001), p. 131, illustrated.

Tacoma, Washington, Washington State Historical Society, Out of Time: Designs for the 20th Century Future, 11 November 2000-7 January 2001; also, Lansing, Michigan, Michigan Historical Museum, 27 January-25 March 2001; New York, New York Historical Society, 14 April-10 June 2001; Laramie, Wyoming, University of Wyoming Art Museum, 30 June-26 August 2001; Fargo, North Dakota, Plains Art Museum, 1 December 2001-27 January 2002; Springfield, Massachusetts, 5 October-1 December 2002.

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Lot Essay

An extremely early astronautical illustration by Chesley Bonestell for Willy Ley.

"Two decades before the first Apollo landing in 1969, Bonestell created this eerily accurate depiction of astronauts in the hard-shadowed light of the lunar surface" (Brosterman).

Willy Ley (1906-1969) was an immensely influential German-American popular science writer. He was an early rocket enthusiast growing up in Berlin and was even the rocket model maker for Fritz Lang's 1929 film Die Frau im Mond (Woman in the Moon), which became the first realistic depiction of spaceflight in movie history. He fled Germany in 1935, both because of his personal abhorrence for the Nazis and because he faced special scrutiny as a rocket scientist who published his work internationally.

After Chesley Bonestell's paintings appeared in Life magazine (see preceding lot), he met Willy Ley. It was Willy Ley who encouraged Bonestell to add spacecraft and astronauts to his paintings. In Willy Ley's imagining, and depicted here, the lunar explorers have discovered ice, from which they can extract hydrogen for fuel for the next launch.