photo #6719439

For many years, the artist responsible for this unsigned cloud painting, Steile Wolke, was a mystery. The painting was one of a set of early twentieth-century European art given to the Princeton University Art Museum. Painstaking analysis of the artist’s watercolour style and handwriting of the painting’s title led art historian Giada Damen to attribute the work to the German expressionist painter Erich Heckel. The artist’s estate later confirmed her finding when they identified the likely location of Heckel’s painting as Anglia, a small peninsula on the Baltic coast in the northern tip of Germany.After the forensic detective work, the museum then translated the title of Heckel’s work Steile Wolke as ‘High Clouds’. Did they not think of consulting the Cloud Appreciation Society? If they had, we’d have told them Heckel’s Baltic sky depicts Cumulus congestus and Cumulonimbus clouds, which are tall but have low, dark bases. They’d have learned that any cloudspotter, as Heckel clearly was, knows ‘High Clouds’ suggests a very different sky with wispy Cirrus, speckled Cirrocumulus, or hazy Cirrostratus. If only they’d asked us; we’d have suggested they might want to consider the more fitting alternative translation of the German title, ‘Steep Clouds’. Next time, they know who to call.Detail from Steile Wolke (1913) by German artist Erich Heckel, in the collection of Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey, US, and suggested by Marty Krasney ( Cloud Appreciation Society Member 41,141).