The Moon, New York
On loan to The Met
This work of art is currently on loan to the museum.Inspired by Harvard’s Great Refractor, Rutherfurd constructed a fourteen-foot-long telescope in the backyard of his New York home. He quit his successful day job as a lawyer and devoted himself to astrophotography—a field he soon transformed by inventing a new telescopic lens. Because photographic plates are sensitive to a different spectrum of light than the naked eye, astronomers had to focus their instruments by trial and error. In 1864 Rutherfurd solved this problem by devising an achromatic lens specially corrected for the light sensitivity of the photographic plate. By disregarding human sight in favor of the camera’s eye, he managed to produce extraordinarily precise images of the moon, widely celebrated for their beauty.
Artwork Details
- Title: The Moon, New York
- Artist: Lewis Morris Rutherfurd (American, New York 1816–1892 Tranquility, New Jersey)
- Date: 1865
- Medium: Albumen silver print
- Dimensions: 27 15/16 × 17 11/16 in. (71 × 45 cm)
- Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Collection of Alexander W. Rutherfurd
- Curatorial Department: Photographs