photo #8790387

Jacob van Ruisdael, landscape painter of the Dutch Golden Age, often devoted more than half of his canvases to the sky. In Wheat Fields (c. 1670), for instance, he gave plenty of room for Cumulus congestus clouds to tower over the fields, distant ships, and a traveller walking towards a woman and child in the sunlight between cloud shadows. All look tiny beneath the vertiginous summits of Cumulus as they grow into Cumulonimbus storm clouds. The canvas, measuring 100 by 130 cm, was large for this period. It was apparently painted as a schoorsteenstuk, or ‘chimneypiece’, to be hung above a fireplace mantel in a Dutch home. So from the comfort of the sitting room, viewers could marvel at the seemingly endless sky, making this painting a 17th-century Dutch precursor to the Cloudspotting app.