Overcast

Sunlight is dramatic, but it is not the light most of the world actually lives in. The overcast sky — flat, grey, shadowless — is the true daylight of Northern Europe, and the painters of the North made an honest art out of it. A cloud-covered sky acts as an enormous diffuser, softening every shadow and lowering every contrast, so that colour becomes quiet and form is revealed gently rather than carved. The Dutch landscapists were its first masters, giving two-thirds of the canvas to a luminous grey sky over a low, flat land. The Hague School and the Barbizon painters loved it for its truth and its melancholy restraint. The technical interest is tonal subtlety: with no strong light or shadow to lean on, the painter must find the picture in small, closely valued shifts of grey, green and brown. Watch the sky — in these pictures it is doing most of the work, and its weight presses the land down beneath it. The grey day is undramatic by definition, which is exactly why painting it well is so hard.

Curatorial note by Alexander Knigge, Editor, Artifact World Gallery