Thunderclouds, Val d'Aosta

The first volume of Modern Painters (1843) had included three chapters ‘Of Truth of Clouds’, and in the fifth and last (1860), he still saw them as revealing not only God’s 'eternal glory, but His daily handiwork' (LE 7 (1905)/196).

Following Ruskin’s death in 1900, a journalist from the Manchester Guardian visited Brantwood on the morning of his funeral. He wrote, ‘Mr. Ruskin’s study opens off the wide front hall. To-day the fitful rain is beating upon the windows and gusts of wind ruffle the surface of the lake. It was at this window, which overlooks the lake and the fells, that Mr. Ruskin sat when he was at work. Coniston Old Man, which to-day is merged in the cloud and mist, is clearly seen from Mr. Ruskin’s old seat in normal weather, with all the great breathing space of Nature in between.’

Severn’s Thunderclouds, Val d’Aosta reproduces Ruskin’s watercolour of 1858, drawn near Turin, now in a private collection. Severn made a larger version for use as a diagram to accompany Ruskin’s 1884 lecture, ‘The Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century’; and this small copy to illustrate Alexander Wedderburn’s abstract of the same lecture as a wood engraving, produced by J. D. Cooper, published in the Art Journal of April 1884. Severn’s drawing is inscribed in ink, ‘This may be published - Ruskin quite approves’.

‘The Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century’ was delivered in 1884 at the London Institution. The subject of the lecture was the change in atmospheric conditions that Ruskin had witnessed in his lifetime as a result of industrialisation: what he described as the ‘plague wind’, causing skies to darken over Europe (LE 34 (1908)/31). Contemporary reports dismiss Ruskin’s arguments, and his careful documentation, including this cloud study, accumulated over a lifetime’s study of the skies. The meteorological records show, however, that he was correct: the effects of human activity on the atmosphere, not only over Europe’s industrial centers but also its natural landscapes.

Reference no.: 1996P1217