226 



NATURE 



\July 5, 1888 



illustrations — that of the tower of Beauvais Cathedral in 

 front of a thundery sky — is the finest delineation of cloud 

 in line that has yet been produced ; and though Mr. 

 Ruskin's writings have had a powerful influence on con- 

 temporary art in England, the following notes on the 

 pictures now hanging on the walls of the Royal Academy 

 will show that much still remains to be done before 

 British artists have exhausted the possibilities of cloud- 

 painting. 



The great landscape of the year is undoubtedly Sir J. 

 Millais' " Murthly Moss " (No. 292), and readers will 

 naturally ask, Is the sky good ? The answer is, unequi- 

 vocally, Yes. Our great artist has selected a somewhat 

 rare form of sky, but one which is most useful in giving 

 distance and perspective to a picture. As a whole, the 

 sky is covered with a sheet of thin flat cloud ; but, while 

 the top of the picture appears uniform, the sky lower 

 down looks as if it were composed, or made up, of 

 parallel bars, which get thinner and thinner as they 

 approach the horizon. 



If a series of disks stretched in a line from nearly 

 overhead to the horizon, at a uniform height of about 

 10,000 feet, we should see the whole under-surface of 

 those overhead ; and progressively less and less, till on 

 the horizon the thin edges of the disks only were visible, 

 like straight bars. This is exactly what happens in 

 Nature when a thin flat sheet of cloud is broken into 

 irregular flakes. Above, there is only visible the flat, 

 formless under-surface, while in the distance the thin 

 edges of the flakes appear more and more like bars. 

 Thus the picture of the sky alone gives instinctively the 

 idea of retreating distance. 



Turner, curiously enough, hardly ever painted cumulus, 

 but almost always a coarser form of this flaky sky grow- 

 ing into thinner and thinner bars towards the horizon ; 

 and I have seen pictures by Mr. Leader, in which the 

 same device was used for giving distance, with great 

 effect. In Millais' picture the artist has painted the sky 

 with consummate skill, true to Nature, and true to art 

 in not destroying the balance of relative distance. 



Another important landscape is No. 102, Mr. G. 

 Boughton's " A Golden Afternoon." But in this the sky 

 is scarcely satisfactory. The clouds are rather spotty, 

 but yet not of the kind which come in flocks of little 

 cloudlets ; and it is difficult to make out either the 

 precise form which it is intended to delineate, or the 

 perspective of the whole sky. The reproduction of re- 

 presentative structure is simply nowhere, for at a distance 

 neither form nor structure are discoverable ; while close 

 at hand the brush-marks are so apparent that the lower 

 clouds appear to have a fibrous structure. This would 

 be practically impossible, for though the summit of a 

 rocky cumulus is often combed out into hairy cirrus, the 

 rest of the cloud remains firm, and this would not occur 

 on " a golden afternoon." 



Mr. Leader can be complimented on sending three first- 

 rate skies in the three pictures which he contributes to the 

 exhibition. In No. 408 he not only paints " An Old English 

 Homestead," but also a truly English sky. A wisp of cirrus 

 floats over a well-painted cumulus, while the ideas of 

 relative height and distance are well given. Cloud forms 

 are essentially the same all over the world, but the details 

 differ ; and if the sky in this picture were alone, I 

 could say that it was nowhere in the tropics, but somewhere 

 irt a temperate zone. In No. 638, "A Summer Day "— 



" When the south wind congregates in crowds 

 The floating mountains of the silver clouds " — 



Mr. Leader again paints the same kind of sky very 

 beautifully; but in No. 421, over " The Sands of Aber- 

 dovey," he gives a totally different type of cloud. Here 

 the clouds float as a thin white fleece on the sky, with 

 some small raggy, evaporating cloud of a totally different 



structure at a lower level. The effect is very striking, 

 and the accurate drawing of the forms gives height and 

 distance to the picture. 



Mr. V. Cole's "The Pool of London" (No. 350) has 

 been purchased under the Chantrey bequest. This is a 

 large, fine picture, in which the artist has employed a 

 device for giving distance that was sometimes used by 

 Turner. A dark mass of cumulus cloud on either side of 

 the sky leaves a sort of bright vault running down the 

 centre, in which high white clouds lead the eye to the dome 

 of St. Paul's in the distance. The painting of all the clouds, 

 and the effect of their floating at different levels, are very 

 good ; but somehow the scale of distance in the picture 

 is scarcely satisfactory. Artists are conventionally 

 allowed to diminish the size of objects in the foreground, 

 and to increase that of distant objects so as to improve the 

 effect ; but the modern eye, which is trained to the accurate 

 projection of objects at different distances given by photo- 

 graphy, knows that in this picture the ships in the fore- 

 ground should be bigger, and the Cathedral dome smaller 

 than they are here delineated. 



" Then came the Autumn, all in yellow clad," is the 

 poetic title of Mr. G. Lucas's picture (No. 342). A beautiful, 

 finely-painted shower-cloud, in the shape of a rising, 

 driving cumulus, gives such an idea of space and height 

 that it is a pleasure to look at such a truthful transcript of 

 Nature. This is one of the best skies in the exhibition. 



Close by, and in great contrast to the above, but 

 fortunately well skied, hangs a small landscape which 

 contains a sky of the worst possible description. White 

 and blue and gray are patched about the canvas pro- 

 miscuously, regardless of form or drawing or perspective ; 

 and the artist seems to consider that any mixture of these 

 colours represents a cloud-covered sky. 



Artists do not often break a lance with men of science, 

 but Mr. J. Brett has run a tilt against the astronomers and 

 geologists. One of his pictures of this year is an am- 

 bitious subject — " The Earth's Shadow on the Sky : the 

 Rising of the Dusk." A short time after sunset in fine 

 weather, the shadow of the earth appears to rise from the 

 eastern horizon, like the segment of a leaden-gray arch ; 

 but there is little to suggest this on Mr. Brett's canvas, 

 though the general effect of the picture is very pleasing. 

 A bright green sea fills up the foreground, then comes a 

 line of gray mist in shadow, with blue hills above ; while 

 the zoning of a gilded sunset sky from red through 

 orange to blue is very skilfully handled. But the low 

 mist is more characteristic of sunrise than sunset ; and 

 the sky appears to us very bright to be opposite the sun. 

 This artist also shows a well-painted shower-cloud in " A 

 Heavy Squall off the Start Lighthouse," and a confused 

 cumulus in a slightly finished work entitled " The Bristol 

 Channel." 



In " Nearing the Needles — Return of Fine Weather 

 after a Gale," Mr. H. Moore exhibits a pretty picture, with 

 a lovely sea and sunlit chalk cliff; but the clouds are not 

 very well defined ; and are rather soft for the rear of a gale. 

 The Needles appear to lie to the east of the observer, 

 while the sea and ships appear to be running from south- 

 east. If this is so, the sky has far more the character of a 

 north-west than of a south-east wind. Another of Mr. 

 Moore's pictures— "A Breezy Day in the Channel" — brings 

 into evidence the great difficulty of painting clouds care- 

 fully, and yet of maintaining the balance of the picture. 

 Here the clouds — irregular cumulus — are very good in 

 form, and beautifully painted ; but this careful work 

 makes them so heavy that they appear rather too near. 

 An artist's scale of distance is to a certain extent a scale 

 of distinctness ; so that when clouds are painted in minute 

 detail, it is very difficult not to make them appear too 

 near. The same criticism applies to this painter's " West- 

 ward," where another beautiful sky, correct both in form 

 and perspective, is a good deal too heavy. 



