Painting Clouds

In almost every landscape painting, clouds will play an important part. There are exceptions, of course: a cloudless blue sky makes a summer day extremely pleasant, even if it lacks artistic interest, and when the sky takes up only a tiny part of the painting, a simple, often cloudless sky avoids any conflict of interest with the main focus.

In most cases, however, a cloudy sky is integral to adding interest to a landscape painting. Two of Britain’s most famous painters, John Constable and JMW Turner,, an exhibition of the former artist’s later work, is currently on show at London’s Royal Academy of Arts and presents a wonderful opportunity to see just how important skies were to his paintings. Both Constable and Turner filled sketchbooks with what were essentially sky studies, but it is impossible to know how literal these were. Skies change rapidly, often by the minute so did these painters pick a moment and paint that or did they instead paint the essence of what they were seeing? I like to think it would be the latter.