Saturn V Rocket

The Saturn V stood 363 feet tall and weighed more than six million pounds fueled. At liftoff its five F-1 engines put out about 7.5 million pounds of thrust.

It was designed largely at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, under Wernher von Braun, and it launched from Launch Complex 39 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Thirteen flew between November 9, 1967, and May 14, 1973. One of them, Apollo 6, had engine trouble on the way up, but none lost its payload. Saturn Vs carried 24 astronauts to the Moon, and 12 of them walked on it.

The launches drew crowds to the beaches and roadsides along that stretch of the Florida coast.

The painting puts you in one of those crowds. The rocket clears its orange launch tower on a column of flame, white smoke boiling up around the pad and reflecting in the water. A flag snaps on a tall pole at the left, a single firework bursts against the clouds on the right, and along the bottom a row of spectators stands with hands raised in salute, a man in a white-topped officer's cap among them. The light is the warm gold of late afternoon.