Lightbulbs throughout the History of Art The electric lightbulb is a relativley new invention. Invented by Thomas Edison in 1879 this exciting development had now become an everyday convenience. They have become something that we now pay no attention too. Lightbulbs are often used within art works, sometime they are used simply as they are in the scene (for example a domestic scene) or they are used to highlight a specific area in the scene or they are used symbolically to show something that you may not necessarily see on first look. Unfortunatley, due to the mundane value of them in the wordl now, we hardly notice or appreciate the significance of the use of electic light bulbs. Here in this timeline I will look at how artists depicted electric lightbulbs and how they used natural light, where we would now use lightbulbs.