The coming of first gas then electric light transformed the night, and replaced one of the most common household items after candles, the oil lamp. In this article and the next I look at various readings of oil lamps and the light cast by them.
There are few specific connections between oil lamps and myth or legend.
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes shows one association in his painting of the personification of Vigilance from 1866. Traditional attributes associated with this personification are the oil lamp she holds aloft, a book and a rod, which are omitted.
Oil lamps rather than candles make an occasional appearance in night scenes, here Pompeo Batoni’s account of The Infant Hercules Strangling Serpents in his Cradle from 1743.
Perhaps the most enduring association in Christian religious art is with Mary Magdalen, who is often seen at night, lit by a single candle or oil lamp.
In Georges de La Tour’s undated The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame, a larger floating oil lamp is the source of the smoking flame and the cause of chiaroscuro.
Oil lamps also made their way into the rooms and hands of the sorceress or witch.
Frederick Sandys’ Morgan-le-Fay from 1863-64 casts her as an alchemist-sorceress, working on mysterious spells. Her right hand holds an ornate oil lamp, and at her feet are spell-books. Behind is a tripod with burning coals.
Shadowplay is a common reason for an oil lamp as a point source of light, particularly when there’s some narrative to be found.
Johann Eleazar Zeissig shows A Family Making Chinese Shadows in his painting from the late 1700s. A family are entertaining themselves late in the evening with the aid of a lamp as a point source of light. An older boy is tracing the silhouette of his mother on a sheet of paper which he holds on the wall behind her. At the upper right are examples of his ‘shadowgraph’ drawings. Three younger children are holding up their hands to form the silhouettes of a rabbit and a cat, a cliché of childhood.
John Collier attained fame with this ‘puzzle picture’ of The Prodigal Daughter in 1903. An elderly middle-class couple are seen in their parlour in the evening in their sober black clothes and sombre surroundings. They’re surprised when their prodigal daughter turns up out of the blue, in her low-cut gown with floral motifs and scarlet accessories. Father is still sitting, backlit by an oil lamp to heighten the drama. Mother has risen from her chair and is visibly taken aback. Daughter stands, her back against the door and her hand still holding its handle, as if ready to run away again should the need arise. Collier uses ingenious shadowplay: here the mother’s cast shadow makes her appear much larger than the daughter’s, like an ogre bearing down on a child.
One of the strongest associations of oil lamps, even when unlit in daylight, is with long hours of work and fatigue.
This is shown well in Henrietta Rae’s best-known painting of Miss Nightingale at Scutari, 1854 from 1891. Florence Nightingale was the pioneer nurse who attained fame nursing wounded soldiers in the Crimean War, giving rise to her epithet of the lady of the lamp.
In Naturalist paintings of the late nineteenth century, women who worked through the night sewing garments were often depicted in the company of an oil lamp. Wenzel Tornøe, a Danish genre painter, shows this in his Seamstress, Whit Sunday Morning of 1882, his best-known work. This seamstress had been engaged in making costumes to be worn for the Danish festivities of Pentecost (Whitsun), when many Danes rise early to go out and see the sun dance at dawn. By the time the festival morning has arrived, she has fallen asleep over her work, exhausted, with an oil lamp beside her.
The Norwegian Naturalist Christian Krohg may have been inspired by that painting for his Tired in 1885. This was part of his longer-term exploration of the theme of fatigue and sleep, particularly among mothers. The young woman seen here is no mother, but a seamstress, one of the many thousands who worked at home at that time, toiling for long hours by lamplight for a pittance.
Among Carl Larsson’s many personal views of family life is Homework from 1898, showing two of the Larsson children working in the evening by the light of a kerosene lamp.
The association of long working hours with poverty was one of the themes in Vincent van Gogh’s early social realist paintings.
The Potato Eaters from 1885 makes effective use of reduced contrast chiaroscuro, in depicting a poor peasant family eating inside their dark cottage, lit by a single oil lamp.