The Moon in art: 10 artworks to celebrate 50 years since the moon landings

Fifty years ago, humankind realised a dream held ever since we started looking towards the stars – we walked on the moon.

This week is the anniversary of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, and the National Maritime Museum is opening of an exhibition to mark the occasion.

As well as equipment on loan from NASA that has actually made the journey and returned, artworks will be on display showing humanity’s fascination with our neighbour in space.

From poets to songwriters and painters to performers, artists have held an enduring interest and longing towards the moon. To mark moon-mania, we've collected together some of those artworks from across the centuries:

Endymion and Selene by Victor-Florence Pollet (mid-19th century)

The moon crops up in all sorts of mythology. In ancient Greek legend, the moon goddess Selene falls in love with a beautiful mortal shepherd, Endymion. Some accounts say that, to preserve their love forever, she puts him into an eternal sleep so she can visit him every night, and he has 50 daughters by him. Parisian painter Victor-Florence Pollet depicts Selene closely watching over Endymion and bathing him in her light.

The Moon by John Russell (c.1787)

John Russell, an 18th century artist and astronomy enthusiastic, spent more than 20 years creating hundreds of pencil sketches of the moon in fine detail. These pictures formed the basis of a series of pastel drawings, including this one, which was the most faithful early depiction of the moon to be seen at the time. Even now, it looks almost photographic.

First Woman on the Moon by Aleksandra Mir (1999)

On the 30th anniversary of the moon landing, contemporary artist Aleksandra Mir became the first woman to set foot on the surface of the moon – sort of. Reflecting that “if a woman wants to land on the moon, she will have to build it for herself”, she enlisted 50 volunteers and hired 10 bulldozers and created her own lunarscape on a beach in the Netherlands, where she planted the American flag.

I want! I want! by William Blake (c.1820)

William Blake expressed his longing to set foot on the moon a full 176 years before anyone managed it. Blake’s small engraving – just 7.1cm long and 4.8cm wide – was originally created as an illustration for a children’s book, and sees two figures watching as a third takes the first step on a ladder into space. The caption and the method are both suitably child-like.

Bontonguru from The Afronauts by Cristina de Middel (2012)

History has narrowed the players in the Space Race down to the USA and the USSR, but there was another hopeful in the running. In 1964, a science teacher in a recently independent Zambia designed his own rocket. Edward Makuka Nkoloso led the Zambian space programme with the desire to put a woman and two cats on the moon before anyone else and trained them – as well as 10 men – up as astronauts. Sadly, the project was hardly funded and the dream never realised, but Cristina De Middel’s Afronauts series recreates the story.

'Like a lunar unicorn / under the covers / she shines even brighter' from Private Moon by Leonid Tishkov (2003-5)

The lunar romance continues. Russian artist Leonid Tishkov’s photographs and poems tell a story of a man who discovers the fallen moon in his attic and decides to spend the rest of his life with it. Tishkov has taken his illuminated moon around the world, photographing it in Paris, New Zealand, Romania and the Arctic.

The Yûgao Chapter from The Tale of Genji by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1886)

Japanese artist Yoshitoshi is recognised as an innovator and the final master of ukiyo-e woodblock printing. This is one of his illuminations of Murasaki Shikibu’s novel, which was written sometime between 1000 and 1012. The story follows the romantic adventures of Prince Genji, with this chapter focusing one of these lovers. Genji fell in love with her at the sight of her handwriting, but she wouldn’t tell him her name, so he called her Yûgao, meaning evening face. Yoshitoshi portrays her, faced towards the moon surrounded by flowers.

The Thames and Greenwich Hospital by Moonlight by Henry Pether (c.1854-65)

Henry Pether came from a clan of moon-obsessed artists. His father Abraham Pether and brother Sebastian Pether were both taken with painting moonlit scenes much like this one. At the time of this work’s creation, Greenwich Hospital was used as a home for veteran naval soldiers but it is now a heritage site called the Old Royal Naval College. Pether’s paintings all show landscapes over water with the moon hanging low in the sky.

A wizard and his accomplice performing incantations in a forest during a full moon by Samuel Palmer and A.H. Palmer (c.1860)

The moon hasn’t just fascinated scientists and stargazers – it’s well known that the best time to practice spells is by moonlight. Samuel Palmer’s night time etching has a sorcerer and his assistant raising the ghost of a king from the dead. Many of the artist’s paintings and etchings depict scenes by moonlight. His son A.H. Palmer (who made this print) burnt much of his work after his death, wishing “to save it from a more humiliating fate”. Thankfully, his reputation recovered in the mid-1900s.

Chamber by Tom Hammick (2017)

Tom Hammick’s prints bring viewers on a journey to consider what it could be like to settle 400,000km away. Chamber sees a solitary person in their lunar pod reminiscing about life back on Earth. The woodcut print is part of Hammick’s Lunar Voyage series, all imagining different aspects of human life on the moon.

The Moon exhibition runs at the National Maritime Museum from July 19-January 5, rmg.co.uk