Sky Studies: Oil Sketches from the Thaw Collection: At the Morgan Library

In this uncommon show, the Morgan Library delivers a great number of oil paintings, executed on paper, as exercises/studies of sky coloration and clouds, by artist from the middle of the eighteenth century in Europe.

The samples seem uncommon because of the medium itself, and the insistence to depict an ever-changing subject that, accordingly to the information seen in the Museum information boards, determined the entire palette to be used within the entire composition of the future painting. Such sky studies were elaborated before the actual painting, as a way for preparing the artist to capture the essence of a given landscape environment.

It is a pleasure and a privilege to encounter the visual studies before the master paintings. So many times, as evidenced in this exhibit, the practice behind the final work reveal how thoroughly the artistic endeavor dives into the object to be depicted, and the process denotes and reveals even more pleasant, interesting aspects that give art history its consistency as a cultural study around the world. These following images from the Morgan Library's website help illustrate the exhibition here: