The Geographer (2000)

Oil on canvas, 72x132cm

This painting was for the suite named after René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, who explored the area of North America that he named Louisiana after the French King. The detail in the top left hand corner is from Hans Holbien's portrait of Nicolaus Kratzer, an astronomer in the service of Henry VIII, and is shown with some of the same instruments that reappear in The Ambassadors, a detail of which I used in The Navigator painting. The picture at lower right is Vermeer's The Geographer, the companion piece to his painting The Astronomer, a detail of which appears in the Coastal Survey painting. Partly obscured behind this is a skull found in the wreck of La Salle's last ship, which was recently discovered.

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©copyright 2005 Nicholas Middleton