I showed the cover to Edgar and he inscribed the line "I lived down the road" and signed it. At the same time, Edgar Mitchell, who would walk on the Moon during the Apollo 14 mission, grew up in Roswell and would walk past Goddard's home on his way to school. Goddard moved to the southwestern desert near Roswell, NM to test rockets that had outgrown his farm in Massachusetts. The other reason that this piece is a personal favorite has to do with coincidence. Both rockets are launching in the daylight of one of McCall's trademark brilliant Suns. As shown above McCall depicted the man between two famous eras of rocketry, the testing of a liquid fueled rocket in Roswell, NM in the 1930's and the Saturn V. This is a first day cover issued in 1964 commemorating the professor and his work on liquid fueled rockets. My personal favorite of the works included here is this portrait of Robert Goddard. I brought along some space related covers for McCall in the hope that he would do a small pen drawing on each of them. McCall is a truly fascinating man as well as an excellent subject for an interview about the Apollo era. During our time together as I interviewed him about his art and his time at NASA. I photographed him as he was posing next to pieces of his art work that he had prepared for movies like 2001. In March of 2001, I was lucky enough to have the chance to visit with Robert McCall at his studio. Since that time Robert McCall has documented some of the most famous images of a special time in history. McCall was one of the artists brought on board to record Man's journey into Outer Space.
McCall's work on very large murals at the National Air and Space Museum, it's annex, the Udvar-Hazy Center and the Johnson Space Center are seen by hundreds of thousands each year and his movie poster art work on Tora! Tora! Tora! and 2001 as well as other movies have been seen by millions.īeginning in 1963 under the orders of James Webb, NASA commenced a program to have artists help document the work being done in the race to the Moon. If Chesley Bonestell is the Dean of Space Art, then Robert McCall is the superstar of the genre. It is, in all likelihood, the last acquisition that I will make directly from Robert McCall. This is a major addition to the space art collection. McCall granted my request to pose with this original work of art. The San Antonio College, where it now hangs in the Francis Scobee Planetarium. Recently in 2008, the Cheevers family donated the mural to He commissioned the painting from Robert McCall, who in 1970 completed the life-sized painting that has hung in the Broadway Bank lobby ever since."
Cheever and bank employees gathered around a TV in the bank lobby to watch and celebrate the momentous touchdown with champagne. The article states, "On July 20, 1969, Co lon el Ch a rles E. In tracing the history of the painting, I found a San AntonioĬollege News Rele ase that p r ovid ed some information on the mural itself. Finally, in the study, McCall used more of his technique of placing the Earth in the background of the composition while immersed in a cross pattern of stars and galactic dust. Aldrin appears further away from Armstrong in the study. The study shows the lunar module (LM) is facing the artist, while it is turned sideways in the mural. While the study is very true to the mural, there are some differences. The scale grid marks show on the canvas of the study.
McCall used a grid scale to determine the location and dimension of the subjects used in the mural. The work that I was able to procure is a two by three foot original painting that was the study for the mural. The above original work titled "First Men on the Moon" was painted as a smaller study for an eight by twelve foot mural. In 2009, I was able to make one final purchase directly from Robert McCall, just prior to the donation of his entire collection to the University of Arizona for permanent display.
It is with great sadness that I note that Mr.