Mineral Gallery

The Clay Pit, Harold Harvey (1874-1941)

Oil on canvas, Newlyn School, 1923. View of Leswidden China Clay Works near St Just. This painting shows the harsh, labour-intensive working conditions of a china clay pit. Leswidden China Clay Works, near St Just, was a more primitive works than the larger, more mechanised works in the St Austell area. The pit was closed before 1942. Harold Harvey was one of the few successful artists of the period who was born and raised in Cornwall. He grew up surrounded by the industry he would later paint and counted many of the working people he depicted as friends. He originally studied under Norman Garstin, but also visited Paris as a young man where he was greatly influenced by the Post-Impressionist movement. His earlier work was very much influenced by Stanhope Forbes, though it changed as he grew older, his brushwork becoming less thick and his forms more simple. Some of his later work shows a period stylisation but without the Picasso influences of his contemporaries Ernest and Dod Procter. Harvey continued to work right up to his death in 1941

© RIC

Waxing gibbous Moon, computer-enhanced

Waxing gibbous Moon, computer-enhanced image. The colour saturation of this image has been enhanced to accentuate the natural variation in colour of the Moon's surface. This brings out the differences in surface composition, which reveals that the Moon's surface comprises many different minerals. For instance, deep craters excavate bright material from below the surface, and distribute it across the surface. The Moon is said to be waxing when it is increasing in apparent size. A gibbous Moon is one that is between half and totally full

© RUSSELL CROMAN/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Martian landscape

Martian landscape, artwork. Mars is a rocky desert world with no surface water. The red colour of the rocks is due to a high content of iron oxides. The Martian atmosphere, less dense than Earth's, is mostly carbon dioxide. Surface temperatures are well below freezing. Mars has two moons, and the larger and closer moon, Phobos, is seen in the sky at upper left. Phobos is less than 30 kilometres long, and is an irregularly shaped chunk of rock. It only takes 8 hours to orbit Mars, at a distance of less than 10, 000 kilometres

© DETLEV VAN RAVENSWAAY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY