Collections: European Art: Stormy Sky over Landscape with Distant Church

• Download
• Add to set
• Favorite
• Posse icon
• Share
• Print

Stormy Sky over Landscape with Distant Church

Despite the modest scale of this sketch, Cels here pays homage to the sudden, sublime power of nature. Dark, heavy clouds—rendered in strokes of blue, gray, and purple—dwarf the low horizon of a tree-lined landscape and the steeple of a village church. The hint of bright blue sky and white-edged cloud at the top right and the sunlit salmon-colored clouds at the center suggest either the rapid approach or the break of this summer storm. The precise notation of the time—11 a.m.—in the lower left corner further underscores the artist’s attention to nature’s fleeting phenomena.


• Artist: Jean-Michel Cels, Belgian, 1819-1894
• Medium: Oil on bluish-gray laid chain paper
• Place Made: Belgium
• Dates: July 1838
• Dimensions: 6 7/8 x 11 3/8 in. (17.5 x 28.9 cm) Frame: 12 1/2 x 17 x 2 1/4 in. (31.8 x 43.2 x 5.7 cm)
• Inscriptions: Lower left: "Juillet 1838/11 heures du matin"
• Collections: European Art
• Museum Location: This item is on view in Beaux-Arts Court, South, 3rd Floor
• Accession Number: 1998.26
• Credit Line: Healy Purchase Fund B
• Image: Overall, 1998.26_framed_SL1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph
Jean-Michel Cels (Belgian, 1819-1894). Stormy Sky over Landscape with Distant Church, July 1838. Oil on bluish-gray laid chain paper, 6 7/8 x 11 3/8 in. (17.5 x 28.9 cm) Frame: 12 1/2 x 17 x 2 1/4 in. (31.8 x 43.2 x 5.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Healy Purchase Fund B, 1998.26 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 1998.26_framed_SL1.jpg)