3-035-774 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Study of Clouds with a Sunset near Rome, 1786-1801. Additional Info: Dark, swirling clouds loom over a narrow strip of land, gently punctuated by far-off trees and a city skyline. The place is Rome. The weather: an impending rainstorm. The day: a late afternoon within the last decades of the 1700s. This painting is one in a series of cloud studies - in fact the forty-eighth - that Simon Denis made to hone his observational and painting skills. Denis's confident paint handling and sensitive rendering of light capture the awe-inspiring power of nature.