This painting is by the hugely influential illustrator Chesley Bonestell (1888-1986). When I was about nine or ten I got Willy Ley's book Beyond the Solar System (1964) from the library, purely because of this wonderful painting, used as the cover picture.
Probably his most well known painting was one that was only a sketch, which he did for the film When Worlds Collide (1951), in which a rogue star destroys the Earth and scientists build a space ark to take a select few to the planet Zyra, which orbits it.
In the final scene the spaceship lands on the planet and the explorers look out on what should have been a, no doubt, splendid matte painting by Bonestell. Unfortunately the producers refused to cough up the cash for the final painting and just used Bonestell's sketch instead. It should have looked so much better!
Bonestell's hugely influential pictures of spaceflight speak of a cool, clean, gleaming future that never was.
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