'Conquest of the Skies' Loan Exhibition 2013

Was a selection of little known original works which focused on the fascination of ballooning, chosen from the Science Museum Art Collection and jointly curated by Harry Moore-Gwyn, specialist in Modern British pictures and Boris Jardine, Curator of History of Science at the Science Museum.

This was a rare chance to see these works by artists such as Rowlandson, Gillray, Seppings-Wright and Tissandier, as they had been retrieved from the archives, conserved and framed and were on show for 4 days only. They had never been presented to the public before.

All pictures are © Science Museum / Science and Society Picture Library.

“The Conquest of the Skies” Further Reading

An exhibition of works on paper depicting balloons and ballooning from the Science Museum Art Collection.

The Works on Paper Fair Loan Exhibition for February 2013 will present a selection of watercolours, drawings and prints relating to balloons and ballooning from the Science Museum’s Art Collection, the majority of which have never been seen in public before.

Tracing the history of the great pioneers in the development of ballooning, the show will include contemporary and near contemporary images of their first ascents, including rare early records of those undertaken by the Montgolfier Brothers in France in the 1780s and Vincenzo Lunardi, James Sadler and James Glaisher in late eighteenth and early - to mid-nineteenth century England.

The significant place that ballooning occupied in the popular imagination is demonstrated by a series of engaging British political caricatures that use ballooning as their subject, including two well-known engravings by James Gillray from the early 1800s and another by John Doyle from the 1830s.

A final part of the exhibition will focus on the central part that the balloon has played in conflict and will include a selection of works that range from a rare Napoleonic War watercolour showing a balloon outside Mainz, just before its siege in 1795 (painted by Nicolas-Jacques Conté) to a highly unusual Japanese woodblock print of a parachute demonstration. A number of original illustrations for the British publication Illustrated London News highlight the crucial role balloons played in reconnaissance in such conflicts as the Boer War, with a later watercolour by Norman Wilkinson recording the use of the Zeppelin during the First World War.

A note on the collection by curator Boris Jardine

The works shown are part of the extraordinary collection of aeronautical imagery amassed by Winifred Penn-Gaskell in the 1920s and ’30s. From her remote home high on a Dartmoor hill, Penn-Gaskell placed herself at the heart of cosmopolitan modernity by chronicling the history of flight – collecting everything from these depictions of early ballooning to parts of downed Zeppelins and the very first air-mail stamps.

During her lifetime she became a noted collector, winning an award in 1931 for her unparalleled stamp collection. The prize, appropriately enough, was a 9-hour journey on the famous Graf Zeppelin. On the eve of World War II and uncertain of the fate of her collection, Penn-Gaskell bequeathed it to the Science Museum, where its 1,500-odd items went on to form the core of the Art Collection. Penn-Gaskell’s enthusiasm for heroic endeavour comes across particularly well in her collection of ‘ballooniana’, the highlights of which are brought together here for the first time.

This exhibition is being held for 4 days only, during the annual
Watercolours + Works on Paper Art Fair at the Science Museum, London SW7 from Thursday 31 January to Sunday 3 February.
It is jointly curated by Harry Moore-Gwyn, specialist in Modern British Pictures and Boris Jardine, Curator of History of Science at the Science Museum.