Sky Only

For most of art history the sky was a backdrop, the upper third of a landscape filled in to set off the land below. Then, in the early nineteenth century, painters began to study the sky for its own sake. Constable made hundreds of rapid oil sketches of clouds over Hampstead Heath, annotating each with the date, hour and wind, treating the weather as a scientist might — he called it skying. Turner dissolved whole pictures into atmosphere until little but light and vapour remained. The cloud study is the landscape with the land removed: nothing but air, water vapour and light, the most changeable subject a painter can choose. The discipline is speed and observation — clouds move, so the sketch must be quick and the memory exact. Watch the structure of the clouds and the way light passes through and around them; a good sky study is a record of a specific quarter-hour that will never recur. It is among the purest forms of painting from nature, and one of the first steps toward abstraction.

Curatorial note by Alexander Knigge, Editor, Artifact World Gallery