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Weather in Art

The 19th-century English painter Joseph M.W. Turner was fascinated with weather and atmospheric conditions. So much so that he had some sailors tie him to the mast of a ship and stayed there for four hours while the vessel sailed through a violent snowstorm. What Turner experienced in that harbor became the inspiration for his masterpiece Snowstorm: Steamboat offa Harbor’s Mouth (1842). Turner is but one in a long line of artists who looked outdoors at the changing weather and attempted to depict it in paint. This year’s Clip & Save Art Print series will feature 10 such images that celebrate the awesome power, beauty, mystery and sometimes danger of the earth’s most powerful and often unpredictable force. From the warm, glowing days of fall, to the often harsh, yet beautiful weather of winter and early spring, to summer’s long hot days, your students will experience the elements through the eyes of 10 talented and diverse artists.

THE SUN IN ART The ancient Egyptians were a sun-worshipping civilization, and while their depictions of the sun were not particularly related to the weather in a meteorogical sense, the sun figured prominently in their art and iconography. In many wall paintings and reliefs, the sun is depicted as an orb, its life- giving rays tipped with tiny hands touching a lotus plant, bringing with it the power of growth. The Aztec civilization also worshipped a sun deity, and the iconography of their artwork includes many references and depictions of the sun. Indeed, it is not hard to trace sun imagery throughout art history, so powerful is the sun’s presence and influence on artists.

STUDYING THE CLOUDS Jumping ahead nearly 50 centuries to 19th- century England, John Constable was busy making cloud studies of the shifting skies near his Hampstead home. Although made as studies, these compositions stand alone as forces of color and form, and seem more akin to 20th-century abstractions than to mid-19th century landscape painting. Along with Turner, Constable regarded the weather as a subject worthy of representation.

ATMOSPHERIC IMPRESSIONS Shortly after Constable was busy looking to the skies, a group of young, radical, French artists led by Claude Monet were taking their easels out-of-doors and painting atmospheric conditions in ways that were both new and exciting. They came to be known collectively as the Impressionists, as their work seemed to capture a fleeting moment, or impression, of what the human eye sees as it moves across a visual plane.

The weather was the perfect subject matter for these artists who were interested in the effects of light and atmosphere, the emotional impact of wind, snow, rain and sun, and the changing nature of color throughout the times of day and the seasons of the year.

The leader of this group, Claude Monet, was perhaps the most fascinated by the weather and its effects on light and color. In nearly all of Monet’s works, weather and atmospheric changes serve to clarify or enhance the mood of the image. For example, a field of haystacks is enhanced by the light dusting of snow lying gently on the muffin-shaped mounds, purplishblue reflecting off them in the winter light. Or, in a painting of the tower of Westminster, the rain at once obscures and calls attention to the building’s facade.

EXPRESSIVE POSSIBILITIES Shortly after the Impressionists come the Post-Impressionists on the art-historical timeline. They, too, were fans of the weather and knew the myriad possibilities for expression with this broad subject area. Bonnard, Signac and Derain all incorporated weather imagery in their work, but perhaps a gifted and misunderstood artist by the name of Vincent van Gogh best understood and embraced the weather as a source of inspiration and celebration.

Wind through cypress trees, lines of rain falling on a field, and hundreds of drawings and paintings of the sun-drenched French countryside are hallmarks of van Gogh’s body of work. Sunrise, sunset and every moment in between, Vincent’s suns beam their light to the earth in thick lines and planes of paint. Van Gogh saw the sun differently than most people: a sunrise radiates purple and yellow light; a sunset leaves the sky dyed with acid green and pink. Even today, it is not uncommon for a tourist in the south of France to describe the quality of the light as being “from a van Gogh.”

Van Gogh was strongly influenced by the Japanese prints that were flooding France in the mid- to late-19th century. Works by Hokusai, Hiroshige and other Japanese printmakers working in the Ukiyo-e style (the floating world, or images that depict the pleasures of everyday life) that show people moving through all sorts of weather conditions made a huge impact on both the Impressionists and Post- Impressionists. Effects of mist and wind are common subjects found in Chinese and Korean painting as well, which places great importance on nature and all of its component parts.

THE SUBJECT IS WEATHER When doing a survey of weather as subject matter in art, it is clear to see why many painters (far more than can be represented in this year’s series) have visited and revisited this subject. First, many weather conditions lend themselves to a painterly use of paint. Swirling clouds, falling snow, sheets of rain and the effects of wind give painters a chance to “show off’ their facility with paint.

Turner, as mentioned above, was a master of this. His use of paint in many of his canvases that depict a weather moment is so painterly that it is easy to imagine what it would feel like to be experiencing the weather conditions firsthand. Many famous watercolorists, such as Winslow Homer, Maurice Prendergast and Charles Burchfield, have painted many images of the weather, understanding that the medium works beautifully for depicting wind and rain.

Secondly, most artists are intrigued by the natural world. The weather, being a huge and often dramatic part of that world, is a subject that fires the imagination with its grandeur. Artists who love to depict nature have a ready-made subject with the weather, one that provides beauty, emotion and mystery all at once.

In the 20th century, as the art landscape began to shift, artists continued to look to the weather for subject matter. One of the fathers of modern art, Wassily Kandinsky, often used the weather as a vehicle for his abstracted compositions. Other noted artists of the 20th century, many American, are known for their depictions of the weather, such as Edward Hopper, Grant Wood, John Steuart Curry, Georgia O’Keeffe and David Hockney.

Some of the artists mentioned here will be featured in this year’s Clip & Save series, but the possibilities are endless for you and. your students to discover many more wonderful works of art that capture one of art history’s most popular subjects: the weather.

USING THE ART PRINTS The most important thing a teacher can do with the prints is display them on the classroom wall and direct student attention to them. Students might be asked questions about the meanings of the images, with answers derived from the accompanying notes.

After some preparatory thought, teachers can also encourage students to participate in discussions about the artworks and help them become more confident when defending their opinions in public.

To help achieve these goals, teachers are encouraged to laminate the art reproductions to extend their useful life. This is especially important if students will be handling the prints. Other teachers may prefer to mat the prints for wall display and place photocopies of the notes beside them for students to read. Alternatively, the 10 monthly prints may be used to form a nucleus of images featuring weather, to which students may add other prints and, in so doing, extend their knowledge and appreciation of the art topic.

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