Donald Olson walked 10 steps down a beach in the French town of tretat before pausing to snap a photo of the setting sun.

He walked systematically from one end of the beach to the other, stopping every 10 steps to take another photo. Olson, physics and astronomy professor, was looking to uncover the exact moment of inspiration for the Claude Monet painting tretat Sunset through studying a combination of celestial body movements and distinctive landforms depicted in the painting.

Monet began the painting Feb. 5, 1883 at 4:53 p.m., according to Olsons research findings.

It is no easy task to date a painting back to the exact minute the artist began working on it, but bringing humanities and sciences together in the process is important, Olson said.

Olson first began experimenting with art when fellow professors asked him to help them discover the astronomy behind the skies depicted in The Canterbury Tales and the natural elements impacting a military battle from World War II, he said. Olson and the professors researched the moon and tide patterns during each of the time periods and wrote computer programs to help with their findings.

My next thought was, if you can study the skies of the 14th century and the skies of World War II, then we can try to figure out what Van Gogh was looking at, Olson said.

This thought led Olson to research the moment of inspiration for dozens of paintings all over the world. Impressionist paintings often depict outdoor settings, making it possible to determine when and where the works were created because of distinctive foregrounds.

Olson said Monet painted dozens of scenes of tretat depicting sunsets and twilights, but chose to study tretat Sunset because the painting is the only one that shows a setting sun rather than just a glow in the sky. Distinctive rock formations also helped place the painting.

Olson said he calls himself and his team celestial sleuths because they are doing detective work and putting pieces of a puzzle together.

(Olson is) extremely good at problem solving, said Philip Smith, physics lecturer and Olsons former student. Hes probably one of the sharpest people Ive ever met.

Read the original post:

Defending the First Amendment since 1911 | The independent student newspaper of Texas State University