CONSTABLE AND CLOUDS. I was surprised to see that there was a lot of scholarly opinion that Constable’s late paintings were not realistic but rather expressive. Of course, grief or sadness could have influenced the particular skies and clouds that Constable chose to paint. And Constable did say that “the sky was the ‘chief organ of sentiment’ in his paintings.” But the notations he made on the backs of paintings showed how important clouds were to him and that he was trying to paint a moment in time.
I posted here about the Cloud Appreciation Society and how Constable devoted a period in 1821 and 1822 exclusively to painting cloud studies. In that post, I quoted Alexandra Harris, who wrote WEATHERLAND about the effect of English weather on writers and artists: “The extraordinary cloud paintings of John Constable were not fanciful renderings, Ms. Harris reminds us. Constable grew up helping his father trim the sails on the family windmill: ‘He could read the sky as a ploughman reads the field or a coachman the road ahead.’”