|
Woolsthorpe Manor by Ian Scott Massie
Original Watercolour
12" x 16" Mounted size - " x " Image size
SOLD
12" x 16" Mounted size - " x " Image size
SOLD
ISAAC NEWTON
I’ve never got over the excitement of being able to stand where amazing things have happened.
In 1665 the plague came to Cambridge and Isaac Newton came home to Woolsthorpe Manor. From one of the trees in the orchard fell an apple that set Isaac thinking about gravity. In addition to theories on gravity, Newton separated white light into its spectral colours, deduced how tides worked and contributed to mathematical, mechanical and astronomical knowledge.
He was born while the Julian Calendar was still in use, at Christmas 1642. A premature baby, his mother said he would have fitted into a quart pot. He attended grammar school in Grantham where he lodged with an apothecary giving him his first experience of practical science. On leaving school his mother persuaded him into farming, which he hated, but his former schoolmaster intervened and prepared him for university.
Despite academic success he was no stranger to poverty and disputes with fellow scientists. A row over his refusal to take holy orders (a requisite of his professorship) also disrupted his studies. Yet his influence is still with us. His theories of colour and how light is interpreted by the eye, are building blocks which every artist uses.
So what made Newton so remarkable? His amazing ability to focus was possibly due to high-functioning autism and his eccentric behaviour, particularly in later life, possibly due to mercury poisoning. But perhaps, every so often, it’s simply that someone comes along who is a little more curious and sees a little further. In Newton’s own words:
“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
In 1665 the plague came to Cambridge and Isaac Newton came home to Woolsthorpe Manor. From one of the trees in the orchard fell an apple that set Isaac thinking about gravity. In addition to theories on gravity, Newton separated white light into its spectral colours, deduced how tides worked and contributed to mathematical, mechanical and astronomical knowledge.
He was born while the Julian Calendar was still in use, at Christmas 1642. A premature baby, his mother said he would have fitted into a quart pot. He attended grammar school in Grantham where he lodged with an apothecary giving him his first experience of practical science. On leaving school his mother persuaded him into farming, which he hated, but his former schoolmaster intervened and prepared him for university.
Despite academic success he was no stranger to poverty and disputes with fellow scientists. A row over his refusal to take holy orders (a requisite of his professorship) also disrupted his studies. Yet his influence is still with us. His theories of colour and how light is interpreted by the eye, are building blocks which every artist uses.
So what made Newton so remarkable? His amazing ability to focus was possibly due to high-functioning autism and his eccentric behaviour, particularly in later life, possibly due to mercury poisoning. But perhaps, every so often, it’s simply that someone comes along who is a little more curious and sees a little further. In Newton’s own words:
“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
How it would look on your wall
|
|
|