The Sun

The Sun might be a big gas ball millions of miles away but it makes life on earth possible. Throughout history, we’ve used the sun in all sorts of different ways — from telling the time to generating electricity.

But for many cultures, the Sun’s powers were even greater — they believed that the Sun was divine. For the Aztecs, he was a God who needed daily human sacrifices. The Greek Sun God rode in a chariot across the sky. The pharaoh Akhenaten even tried to change the religion of Ancient Egypt to focus on worshipping the sun’s light.

The magic of the Sun's light as it rises and sets, inspired artists like Hokusai who showed how the slopes of Mount Fuji in Japan turned red in the dawn light of autumn in one of his most famous prints.

Its journey around the earth has sparked the imaginations of artists like Pieter Bruegel the Elder. His famous paintings capture moments in normal people’s lives at different times of year, from having a nap whilst harvesting in the Summer to ice skating on frozen ponds in the Winter.

Impressionist artists wanted to capture the effects of the Sun’s light so much that they painted outside. Monet sometimes got sand stuck in his paint!

But when it comes to art it doesn’t just inspire it, it can be used to make it.

The Sun’s light was used to create the first photographs — they were called heliographs which means sun writing.

The enormous stained glass windows of Sainte-Chapelle in Paris depict over one thousand scenes from the Bible and history — when the Sun shines through the coloured glass, the beautiful images come to life. The whole chapel feels like a kaleidoscope.

Some ancient structures were even designed to catch the Sun at exact moments each year. At Newgrange, the rising Sun shines deep into the ancient monument at the Winter Solstice — the shortest day of the year.

It’s not just our ancestors who caught the Sun like this. In the 1970s, Nancy Holt positioned four massive concrete tunnels in the Utah Desert to frame the Sun as it rises and sets at the winter and summer solstices.

From golden Bronze Age sun discs to Patrick Scott’s solar paintings, from smiling emojis to flags around the world, the Sun isn’t just in the sky in art, it’s everywhere.

^{By Helena Hunt}