Weathering the Storm

By the early nineteenth century, artists throughout Europe had grown increasingly interested in depicting the weather. Working outdoors, many used the lively technique of quickly drawing in oil paint on paper to portray the wondrous but often fleeting atmospheric conditions they encountered. The burgeoning science of meteorology likewise bolstered artists’ desires to give form to ethereal natural phenomena, such as sparkling rain or the shimmer of light as it skips across water.

Storms proved especially intriguing subjects. The oil sketches here—completed at different times and places by various artists—together portray the onset, duration, and aftermath of a blustery downpour. From gloomy clouds and thundering rainfall to a graceful sunset, the pictures collectively evoke the visual and emotional journey of weathering a storm. They prompt us to consider, in our own moment marked by a proliferation of severe climatic events, how the weather is both a shared and a highly personal experience.

Weathering the Storm highlights works from the collection of oil sketches given jointly to the Morgan and the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Eugene V. Thaw, a trustee of both institutions.