Bonestell’s Brilliance
64 SEPTEMBER 2019 • SKY & TELESCOPE
would feature soft, rolling hills. Kubrick preferred the craggy,
dramatic look of Bonestell’s lunar paintings and, of course,
that’s what wound up in the fi lm.
Science fi ction buffs may have been delighted to see Bon-
estell’s contributions to their favorite fi lms, but the general
public came to know his name primarily through his maga-
zine work. He painted dozens of covers for popular sci-fi pulps
such as Galaxy Science Fiction, Astounding Science Fiction, and
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, as well as covers
and illustrations for the most prestigious general interest
magazines of the era. In 1944, for example, Life published a
series of Bonestell paintings depicting Saturn as seen from its
various moons — a view readers had never imagined before.
Collaborating with von Braun, he created a remarkable series
of paintings for Collier’s illustrating the future of spacefl ight.
“What the Collier’s series did — as well as all of Bonestell’s
space art before it — was to show that spacefl ight could bedone with the technology and materi-
als available then,” observes Miller,
who knew Bonestell and authored two
books about the artist. “All you needed
was money to go into space. It was a
revelation. Bonestell made spacefl ight
immediate.”
Stewart agrees, noting, “Chesley
Bonestell had that unique ability to
take scientifi c data and turn it into
something that people could see,
understand, and appreciate. Techni-
cal people like von Braun and Ley were
mathematicians to their core. They had
a message and a plan, and I think Bon-
estell supplied the missing piece that
was necessary for people to get the big
picture. When Bonestell got involved,
things went from intellectual to
emotional. He helped move the space
program along by giving people the
complete idea in a very inspiring way.”
Bonestell died on June 11, 1986, an
unfi nished painting on his easel. Upon
the passing of his widow, third wife Hulda von Neumayer
Ray, in 1998, his estate fell into disarray because he left no
heirs (his daughter, Jane, had died in 1989). “An attorney
representing the estate reached out to Fred Durant, who was
then the assistant director of aeronautics at the Smithson-
ian National Air and Space Museum, to inquire just who
Bonestell was,” Miller reports. “Fred discovered that all of
Bonestell’s records — albums, tens of thousands of slides and
transparencies, awards, sketches — were about to be dumped.”
Durant made an offer for everything in Bonestell’s studio
aside from the paintings, and deposited the extensive archive
in Miller’s home, where it sat for nearly six years. “I devoted
a room to it, but it really needed to be archivally preserved
and I didn’t have the time or the space for that,” Miller says.
Durant and Miller eventually found a benefactor in Microsoft
cofounder Paul Allen, who formed Bonestell LLC to preserve
and promote Bonestell’s work and legacy, and handle requests
from books and magazines regarding the use of Bonestell’s art.
Chesley Bonestell was the rare astronomical artist who
lived to see many of the futuristic concepts he illustrated
become reality. He was alive when Neil Armstrong and Buzz
Aldrin took their fi rst tentative steps on the Moon. While
the spacecraft and hardware used in these endeavors may not
have looked exactly like the ships and technology he painted,“When Bonestell got involved, things went from intellectual to emotional.
He helped move the space program along by giving people the complete
idea in a very inspiring way.”
pBETWEEN THE
COVERS Bonestell
created riveting
magazine illustrations,
many of which were
republished in books.
He collaborated many
times with author Willy
Ley and rocket scien-
tist Wernher von Braun
to produce popular
astronomy and space
science books.qMINIMUM WASTE Like corporations today, Wernher von Braun was
concerned with a spacecraft’s reusability. Bonestell’s 1956 painting
shows a landing craft raised into take-off position on the surface of Mars.CHESLE
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PAINTINGS^ COURT
ESY^ OF^ BONESTE
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