photo #6016316

The French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Cézanne once wrote in a letter that ‘to paint from nature is not to paint the subject but to realise sensations.’ You might say this atmospheric painting by Sarah A. Doidge demonstrates the point. Depicting Cumulus clouds at sunset over the sea, it was painted sometime around 1900. Doidge was born in Devon, England and trained as a painter in London where her work was exhibited at the Royal Academy and where she became friends with the famed author Charles Dickens. In later life, Doidge lived in a small cottage on the coast of Wales, which is where she likely painted this piece – looking west over Cardigan Bay and Ireland beyond as the setting Sun dipped from view, and the darkened forms of Cumulus dissolved into the night.Clouds over the Sea (c. 1900) by Sarah A. Doidge, in the collection of the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth.