On this day in 1879, Thomas A. Edison demonstrated the first incandescent lamp.The first of its type that could be used for domestic purposes, this lamp could burn for more than thirteen hours.
A Bright Idea
On this day in 1879, Thomas A. Edison demonstrated the first incandescent lamp.The first of its type that could be used for domestic purposes, this lamp could burn for more than thirteen hours.
Violet Interior with Lamp by Rose Mary Gonnella-Butler manipulates light and color with her depiction of an incandescent lamp. Gonnella-Butler is fascinated with simple shapes and contrasting degrees of color opacity and employs imaginary color harmonies to evoke questions of time, impermanence, and change. She sets simple still-life arrangements and household objects into domestic scenes, and through altered scale, artificially arranged light, and manipulated space, her interiors take on the atmosphere of doll houses.
Pictured top: Rose Mary Gonnella-Butler, born 1957, Violet Interior with Lamp, 1983, colored pencil and pencil on paper, 16 9/16 x 24 5/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation.
Source: Virginia M. Mecklenburg. Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1987).
Pictured bottom: Rose Mary Gonnella-Butler, born 1957, detail of Violet Interior with Lamp.