History of Clouds, Part II, 19th and 20 Centuries

As the 18th century closed and the age of Enlightenment gave way to the age of Romanticism,  the new 19th century painters followed and anticipated the new cultural  and scientific shifts. While geology and meteorology were nascent in the late 1700s they found academic footing, research, and popularity in the 1800s. The new Romantics, Constable, Turner and Delacroix  all fixed their observations on nature, on the sky, on the activity of wind and sunlight. These  taste-makers were also  interested in contemporary science from  pigment developments to vision research, from geology to hydrology, from color theory to the newly invented photograph.   Simultaneously, they  advocated the exaggerated dramatic effects encouraged by this new age of Romanticism. These forces reveal themselves in the content, brushwork, palettes, lighting, compositions and even the clouds/skies of these artists. Their efforts reverberate through contemporary painting, certainly through the 20th century. This late 19th century image of Winslow Homer’s of a fisherman anxious to return to his ship before   the advancing fog.  His cloud shapes  echo the direction of the boat as the waves run counterpoint to boat and cloud lines. These are dramatic clouds, exaggerated and simplified to provide dramatic punch.  Edward Hopper would later similarly simplify his clouds to echo an emotional theme. Homer’s clouds recall the romantic drama in the skies of Delacroix and Gericault and, they are consonant with a natural event not merely serving as a staged back drop.
. Constable would recast his observed studies of clouds in his exhibition paintings. They would be refitted to current conventions of painting. Notice first his small plein air study, then his initial oil sketch, and finally the more stylized,  repetitious  predictable  rounding and curling clouds  in his final exhibition painting.
  Constable’s contemporary, J.M.W. Turner, spontaneously explored the effects of weather and drama in small watercolor experiments then, reorganized them into a stronger design in a final exhibition painting. The watercolor’s more amorphic dark sky gets divided into shapes of opposing light and darks, with opposing complementary color effects in opposing design patterns in the final painting. (First the small watercolor then the oil)   .
Within a couple of decades, followers of Turner in the USA like Thomas Moran,
Sanford Gifford and John F. Kensett pursued a new luminism, with complementary colors, dissovling edges, and bringing the values of the opposing complements close when luminous effects were to be evoked. (example by Kensett)
.  While luminism and themes of Romanticism were the concern of  American painters, Monet and Renoir  pioneered new painting in which patches of complementary color observed on location often at mid-day to maximize the daylight’s successive contrast effects  which were reconstructed as broken brush strokes applied in deft patches or touches with complementary pigments in accordance  the principles of simultaneous contrast as described by Michel Chevruel, Goethe, and Delacroix, a scientist, a poet and a painter. Here is an example by Monet painted at Etretat.
. Van Gogh took the simultaneous contrast principle further after conferring in Paris with Seurat and Signac and, he added an abundance of Romantic exaggeration in the intensity of  his color as well as brushwork. His legacy reverberated into the 20th century with Fauve artists like Andre Derain. Derain’s expressive use of color and form in the sky comes to us via Van Gogh as you can see here.  .
In the Early 20th Century  Marsden Hartley and John Marin returned clouds to their role as symbols, or icons,  which is where I began this study of clouds. They would modify their iconic clouds with expressive marks or gestures borrowed from neo-impressionists like Van Gogh. (Example is Marsden Hartly with rectangular cloud.)
. The 20th century would see many post-romantic variations on clouds from the curvy biomorphic shapes of Arthur Dove and Georgia O’Keeffe to the late 20th century cartoon cloud forms of Wayne Theibaud and  Red Grooms.   Antique compositional forms and the role of the clouds as celestial representatives and supporting characters to the dramatic tone or theme  has stayed with us. Remember this  Philips Koninck from the 1600s? Observe contemporary artists as they borrow and mutate his composition and  the dramatic role of clouds. First, Koninck, then April Gornik, then Roger Brown and finally, my painting.
. This history is profoundly condensed to accommodate the blog constraints. If you are interested in more and wish to see  studio demonstrations of historic and contemporary skies in oil, watercolor and acrylic then, I invite you to take my one day workshop on “Skies” at Jerry’s Artarma’s “Art of The Carolinas”  in Raleigh Durham, NC. on Saturday November 12th.  Or, if you are interested in Italian Landscape painting and techniques take my workshop the following day, Sunday November 13. See my website for details.