Five o'clock shadows

12/27/11, 5:30 pm, looking northeast

Actually, they were closer to 5:30 pm shadows. These massive cumulus clouds hugged the horizon in the northeast against a deep blue-violet sky. The tension created by the angle and the dramatic shadows makes for a delightful cloudscape. These beauties dominated the sky on Tuesday evening, December 27th.

These magnificent clouds bring to mind a portion of William Wordsworth's The Prelude, Book First:


. . . these same scenes so bright, 

So beautiful, so majestic in themselves, 

Though yet the day was distant, did become 

Habitually dear, and all their forms 

And changeful colours by invisible links

Were fastened to the affections.*

Kurt Badt quotes this snippet of the poem in his book, John Constable's Clouds, to illustrate the idea of "second vision" in the work of Wordsworth and Constable. Second vision is the mature, "ultimate truth of nature [created] in the quiet of his own studio." This follows the first vision which the painter sketched en plein air on location. I'm all about the first vision myself.

*lines 606-611

Perfect fall day

Friday, November 4th was a perfect fall day with gentle breezes and orange and gold falling leaves. Rain came in the night and dawn was overcast. The afternoon sky was a clear cerulean blue deepening to ultramarine in the higher atmosphere. Small puffy clouds were blown south into the sunshine at 4 pm. They were lovely to watch, a fragile parade.


The clouds were between me and the sun and so the shadows were strong on each of these insubstantial fluffs. Apparently having a shadow is characteristic of altocumulus clouds which makes them easy to distinguish from high-atmosphere cirrocumulus clouds.


Art historian Kurt Badt, in The Cloud Studies of John Constable, proposes two perspectives to view Constable's cloud studies:

One can look at these cloud studies in two very different ways. One can observe their faithfulness to nature and their accuracy; (although that is not their most striking quality, it would be hard to find anything to equal them elsewhere in paintings of the atmosphere). Or one can approach them as pictures (albeit of strange subjects), as compositions, and then one will become aware of the intellectual element in them, or the 'poetic' element, to use the terminology of the Romantics.

In all the sky, an artist selects the compositions from the expanse before her. The challenge of creating a three-dimensional world on paper or canvas is great.

A day of gathering clouds

The forecast on October 21st was for a sunny fall day and it began clear and bright. As the day wore on, little clouds blew in from the south and by 4 pm when this painting was made, larger cumulus clouds were showing up.


These clouds kept company in the west on their way northeast. Later in the evening, the sky was full of clouds and by night, completely overcast.


Here is an excerpt from Kurt Badt's John Constable's Clouds:

Most of [John Constable's] cloud studies seem to have been painted in 1822, however, as Constable reported (on October 7), 'I made about fifty careful studies of skies, tolerably large to be careful.' Leslie, who was probably the first to see them, felt at once how extraordinary these studies were. He has told us that 'twenty of Constable's studies of skies made during this season were in his possession'; and he said 'there is not one among them in which a vestige of landscape is introduced. They are all painted in oil, on large sheets of thick paper, and all dated with the time of day, the direction of the wind, and other memoranda on their backs.'

Today dawned clear and cool

As I've been making a record of the weather over the path couple of months, I've noticed that there are fewer clouds earlier in the day. Clouds seem to move in about 11 am and then build up over the afternoon. I think this has to do with the rising temperature during the daylight hours.


These little cumulus clouds were the the early arrivals at about 10 am in the east. They were blowing northeast on this gusty, clear and cool day. It is a very Fallish day with blue skies, cool temperatures (about 60 degrees F) and red, yellow and orange leaves swirling in the gusts.


I've recently found a wonderful book by Kurt Badt called John Constable's Clouds. Written in German, but translated by Stanley Godman and published in English in 1950, this book seems to reflect the fascination I feel for Constable's cloud studies. Kurt Badt was a German art historian born in 1890 in Berlin who died in 1973 of suicide while despondent. He was interested in the meaning of color in paintings and questioned deeply rooted principles of art history. This charming and insightful book will prove a good companion to my year of Constable.