The Approaching Storm

Moody Landscapes, 1849

Dark, nickel-gray clouds encircle a spot of bright blue sky above a river and forest in this horizontal landscape painting. The tops of the clouds are creamy white in the sunlight and steel gray beneath. The horizon comes about a third of the way up the painting, and on the land below, a tall, deep green, leafy tree nearly reaches the top edge of the painting to our right of center. More trees cluster around it on a spit of land that runs along an olive-green body of water. Along the shoreline, across from us, several wooden rowboats have pulled up to a low dock. One person holding a tall, thin rod sits in one of the boats. A woman and child walk toward the boat, away from another pair of people under the trees. The woman with the child looks over her shoulder toward the clouds. On our side of the water, a man, also with a tall rod, climbs onto a dock in the lower left corner. Flat meadows meet rolling hills in the deep distance, beneath streaks in the clouds above, perhaps falling rain far away. The artist signed and dated the painting with red in the lower left corner: “C. TROYON 1849.”
Artist
Moody Landscapes
Date
1849
Type
Painting
Medium
oil on canvas on board
Dimensions
116.2 × 157.5 cm
Collection
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Licence
Public domain, CC0

Image description

Dark, nickel-gray clouds encircle a spot of bright blue sky above a river and forest in this horizontal landscape painting. The tops of the clouds are creamy white in the sunlight and steel gray beneath. The horizon comes about a third of the way up the painting, and on the land below, a tall, deep green, leafy tree nearly reaches the top edge of the painting to our right of center. More trees cluster around it on a spit of land that runs along an olive-green body of water. Along the shoreline, across from us, several wooden rowboats have pulled up to a low dock. One person holding a tall, thin rod sits in one of the boats. A woman and child walk toward the boat, away from another pair of people under the trees. The woman with the child looks over her shoulder toward the clouds. On our side of the water, a man, also with a tall rod, climbs onto a dock in the lower left corner. Flat meadows meet rolling hills in the deep distance, beneath streaks in the clouds above, perhaps falling rain far away. The artist signed and dated the painting with red in the lower left corner: “C. TROYON 1849.”

Moody Landscapes