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Painting the summer storm 2

By: hoakley
10 August 2025 at 19:30

In the first of these two articles showing masterly landscape paintings of summer storms, I had reached John Constable in the early 1830s.

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Constant Troyon (1810–1865), The Approaching Storm (1849), oil on canvas on board, 116.2 x 157.5 cm, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Wikimedia Commons.

Of Constant Troyon’s early paintings the most outstanding must be The Approaching Storm from 1849. Set on a river worthy of Constable, two anglers appear to be readying themselves for the torrential rain heading towards them, while others still wander in the last patch of sunshine on the far bank.

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Jules Noel (1815-1881), Panorama of the Town of Dieppe (c 1865), further details not known. Image by Philippe Alès, via Wikimedia Commons.

Jules Noel’s Panorama of the Town of Dieppe (c 1865) shows a large picnic party on the cliffs overlooking the town of Dieppe on the coast of northern France. These families seem blissfully unaware of the dark clouds and heavy rain already over the land to the right.

Albert Bierstadt, A Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rosalie (1866), oil on canvas, 210.8 x 361.3 cm, Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.
Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902), A Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rosalie (1866), oil on canvas, 210.8 x 361.3 cm, Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.

One of the finest and most dramatic of Albert Bierstadt’s paintings from his second expedition to the West in 1863 is this of A Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rosalie from 1866. Its foreground shows a pastoral valley floor with a native American camp, in mottled light. Some people and their animals are seen making haste to return from the pastures to the shelter of the camp. A small rocky outcrop has trees straggling over it, which are silhouetted against the brilliant sunlight on the lake behind, in the middle distance.

Behind the lake the land rises sharply, with rock crags also bright in the sunshine. In the background the land is blanketed by indigo and black storm-clouds. Those are piled high, obscuring much of Mount Rosalie, but its ice-clad peaks show proud, high up above the storm, with patches of blue sky above and beyond them. A single large bird, an eagle perhaps, is seen in silhouette, high above the lake.

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Volodymyr Orlovsky (1842–1914), Harvest (1882), oil on canvas, 62 x 100 cm, National Art Museum of Ukraine Національний художній музей України, Kyiv, Ukraine. Wikimedia Commons.

It was Volodymyr Orlovsky’s painting of Harvest on the steppe in Ukraine, in 1882, that apparently earned the artist’s promotion to Professor in the Imperial Academy.

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Winslow Homer (1836–1910), Hurricane, Bahamas (1898), watercolor and graphite on wove paper, 36.7 × 53.5 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.

Few artists ever get to witness tropical storms, but after his time painting winter storms at Cullercoats in England, Winslow Homer witnessed and painted this Hurricane, Bahamas in 1898.

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Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), Approaching Thunderstorm (The Large Poplar II) (1903), oil on canvas, 100.8 x 100.7 cm, Leopold Museum (Die Sammlung Leopold), Vienna, Austria. Wikimedia Commons.

In 1903, Gustav Klimt spent his summer holiday at Attersee with his partner’s family, where he painted this landscape of an Approaching Thunderstorm. Many of his other landscape paintings made during his summers away show no sky at all, but this is an exception.

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Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Thunderstorm at Vernouillet (1908), oil on canvas, 50.2 x 65.1 cm, Private collection. The Athenaeum.

Thunderstorm at Vernouillet is an atmospheric landscape painted by Pierre Bonnard in 1908, or the following year. Vernouillet is on the southern bank of the river Seine, midway between the centre of Paris and Monet’s property at Giverny.

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Tom Thomson (1877–1917), Thunderhead (1912-13), oil on canvasboard, 17.5 x 25.2 cm, National Gallery of Canada / Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa, ON. The Athenaeum.

The young Canadian artist and canoeist Tom Thomson excelled in rapid sketching in oils, with several witnessed accounts of him dashing off a painting in little more than fifteen minutes. As a result he was able to capture many transient effects, such as the passing thunderstorm in Thunderhead from 1912-13.

If you’re fortunate, the storm is soon gone, its humid air blows away, and summer returns.

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Arkhyp Kuindzhi (1841-1910), After a Thunderstorm (1879), further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Arkhyp Kuindzhi specialised in painting in spectacular light. After a Thunderstorm from 1879 is one of his oil sketches capturing the brilliant colour and light following heavy summer rain on the steppe.

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