Homage to Beaufort

摘要

Weather is art. Its colors, moods, and motions fill our minds: sometimes with anxiety, sometimes with elation, always with wonder. When we encounter a book that says, "...there is a poetry in the winds that no mere instrument can measure," we know we have found a kindred spirit. Combine such writing with magical art and we are putty in the hands of our booksellers. I stumbled across The Rising of the Wind: Adventures Along the Beaufort Scale while reading Scott Huler's new book about the scale, Defining the Wind. In his book, Huler recounts a conversation that a French artist, Claire Forgeot, had with her brother-in-law about imagination. She challenged him to pick any subject for her to illustrate. Forgeot's brother-in-law was a sailor, so he chose the Beaufort Scale. The resulting paintings were so captivating that when an editor saw them, she found a writer, Jacques Yvart, to collaborate with Forgeot on a book.