photo #7027466

Nineteenth-century Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh sometimes experimented with painting in multiple dabs, resembling the pointillist style of contemporary artists like Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Such a technique can confound the unwary cloudspotter. If you look closely at the calm sky in Van Gogh’s painting Peach Trees in Blossom, you might see it as a fine example of Cirrocumulus, the high formation that consists of countless tiny cottony tufts, or cloudlets. But anyone spotting clouds in paintings of this style should be wary. To get the cloud formation right, you might need to step back and blur your vision. Then you’ll more likely see a low-lying clumpy layer of cloud with darkly shaded undersides. In other words, the low clumpy layer of cloud known as Stratocumulus rather than the array of Cirrocumulus cloudlets. In an 1874 letter to his brother, van Gogh wrote: ‘If one truly loves nature, one finds beauty everywhere.’ This includes the sky, of course, even if art cloudspotters need to look twice to be sure what they’re spotting.Detail from Peach Trees in Blossom (1889) by Vincent van Gogh, in the collection of the the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, England. Thanks to Mary Williamson (Member 54,343) for suggesting this painting.