Cloud study

John Constable

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Constable used this sketchbook page to capture a September sun sinking through clouds. The artist’s studies of England’s changeable skies were made as part of a systematic and pioneering effort across decades to record varying weather conditions at different times of day. This work represents a significant addition to The Met’s collection since most of Constable’s surviving cloud studies, whether in oil or watercolor, were bequeathed by his daughter to London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. The exact subject and date remain to be established, although the month (September) is affirmed by a fragmentary inscription at upper right. We may look west toward Harrow from Hampstead, where the artist lived part of each year to bolster his wife’s fragile health.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art