An Ordinary Sky by an Extraordinary Painter

An Ordinary Sky by an Extraordinary Painter
Jan van Goyen, „Auf der Düne“ [„On the dune“], Oil on wood, 1642, Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig [Museum of Fine Arts], Inv. No. 590
A contribution to the Summer of Science 2008
In Dutch landscape painting the selection of the weather situations represented is rather one-sided: powerful, towering heap clouds (cumuli) and dramatic representations of storms predominate, but the “ordinary, featureless weather", the cloudy skies that are part of the daily weather routine in Europe, do not appear as often in paintings as in the real atmosphere. Van Goyen's painting is an extraordinary exception.

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