Albert Einstein Wall Art

Albert Einstein Wall Art

Portraits of Great Scientists Most of these images were made under tungsten light or through a north-facing studio window, and they carry that lighting with them. Put one on a wall lit by a single warm bulb and the mid greys go brown. Put it opposite a bright window and the highlights on the forehead and collar blow out to paper white by mid morning. The image has a light it was born under, and rooms either agree with it or argue. The safest position is a wall at right angles to the window rather than one facing it. Light raking across a picture at that angle keeps the tonal range intact and avoids the reflective sheen that flattens a dark photograph into a mirror at exactly the times of day you are in the room. The subject is archival portraiture of physicists, chemists and mathematicians, mostly from the first half of the twentieth century, mostly monochrome, often with a blackboard, a desk or laboratory glassware in the frame. Some are formal sittings and some are press photographs, and the press ones usually make the better wall pieces because the sitter is doing something rather than posing. These suit a study, a landing, a schoolroom or the wall behind a desk. They look odd in a dining room, where one serious face at head height across the table makes people self-conscious. Offices absorb them easily, because a portrait reads there as a reference rather than a decoration. One caveat worth taking seriously: a monochrome portrait under mixed lighting — a warm lamp on one side, a cool ceiling fitting on the other — picks up a visible colour cast that drifts across the image. Match the bulbs in the room to a single colour temperature before you blame the picture.