The following slides are for use with UCAR Center for Science Education’s The Art of Clouds classroom activity
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The Art of Clouds
Can you guess which clouds the artist painted?
Can you identify cloud types in landscape paintings?
Directions: Take a look at each piece of art and try to identify the clouds. The following slide has the answer. Good luck!
Title: Route de Louveciennes
Artist: Camille Pissarro, a nineteenth century French Impressionist painter
There are cumulus clouds. The clouds have distinct edges and puffy shapes.
Title: Field of Poppies
Artist: Claude Monet, a nineteenth century French Impressionist painter
Low cumulus clouds with distinct edges and puffy shapes
Title: The Tower of London
Artist: Robert Havell, an early nineteenth century British artist
These are mostly long mid-level clouds called altostratus.
Photo: Peggy LeMone
Title: Seascape Study with Rain Cloud
Artist: John Constable, a nineteenth century British artist
Cumulonimbus clouds can turn dark and cause rain. The rain is usually not widespread. Instead it is in one spot.
Photo: Wikipedia
Title: Weymouth Bay
Artist: John Constable, a 19th century British artist
These cumulus clouds are beginning to grow vertically. They might have turned into a thunderstorm later in the day.
Title: Cloud Study
Artist: John Constable (1776-1837) British painter
The clouds in front are cumulus.
There are wispy cirrus clouds behind.
Title: Place Saint-Marc a Venise, Vue du Grand Canal
Artist: Eugene Bourdin, a nineteenth century French painter
The clouds that are higher in the atmosphere might be altocumulus or stratocumulus.
The low clouds look like cumulus.
Title: The Grand Canal, Venice
Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner, a 19th century British artist
This type of altocumulus cloud is sometimes called a mackerel sky because they look like the markings on a mackerel fish.
Photo: Peggy LeMone
Title : View of Delft
Artist: Jan Vermeer, a seventeenth century Dutch painter
The clouds in this painting look like stratocumulus.
Photo: Olga and Sergei Kuznetsov
Title: Storm in the Rocky Mountains
Artist : Albert Bierstadt, 19th century American landscape painter
The clouds have the rounded crisp edges and vertical development of cumulonimbus clouds.
Photo: Wikipedia
Title: The Lackawanna Valley
Artist: George Inness, a nineteenth century American painter
There is a low and uniform layer of stratus clouds. Note that the smoke from the chimney is going straight up so there must not be much wind.
Photo: Sara Martin
Title: Saint-Mammes
Artist: Alfred Sisley, 19th century English Impressionist painter
There are just a few small cumulus clouds in the upper left.
Title: Seacoast
Artist: Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-1828) English landscape painter
This sky has a uniform cover of stratus or altostratus clouds.
Photo: Sara Martin
Title: Le Pont des Arts
Artist: Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) French painter
There appears to be two cloud types in the sky: mid-level altocumulus clouds and lower stratocumulus clouds.
Photos: UCAR (top) Olga and Sergei Kuznetsov (bottom)
Title: View of Toledo (Spain)
Artist: El Greco, a 17th Century artist from Greece who lived in Spain
The towering dark clouds in the sky look like thunderstorm clouds called cumulonimbus.
Photo: Wikipedia
Title: Evening on the Volga
Artist: Isaac Levitan, a 19th century Russian landscape painter
These are large stratocumulus clouds.
Photo: Peggy LeMone
Title: After the Rain The Lake of Terni
Artist: Isaac Levitan, 19th century Russian landscape painter
After rain has ended, broken pieces of low clouds called scud are left in the sky. Behind the scud are altocumulus clouds.
Photo: Peggy LeMone
Title: Cloud Shadows
Artist: Winslow Homer, 19th century American painter and illustrator
These are stratocumulus clouds.
Photo: Wikipedia
Title: Flower Beds in Holland
Artist: Vincent van Gogh, 19th century Dutch painter
Stratocumulus clouds look long like stratus, but are puffy like cumulus.
Title: Wheat Field with Cypress Trees
Artist: Vincent van Gogh, 19th century Dutch painter
What types of clouds did van Gogh see in the sky when he captured this scene? It is difficult to tell!
Title: Altocumulus
Artist: Graeme Stephens, contemporary artist and atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University
He painted altocumulus clouds!