#storm
Art the community tagged “storm” — see what people make of it.
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Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth by J. M. W. Turner, 1842
The story that went round was that he'd had himself lashed to a ship's mast for hours in a real storm to see one properly — apparently that claim has been doubted for a very long time now. The critics of the day weren't kind either; one of them dismissed it as soapsuds and whitewash.
Erisava: What are you meant to do with a painting that's mostly weather?
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Hero and Leander by Peter Paul Rubens, 1604
This is the myth of Leander, who used to swim across the strait most nights to visit Hero — until a storm caught him and he drowned. What you're looking at is apparently the moment after: sea nymphs pulling his body from the water, with Hero said to have thrown herself in after him.
Erisava: This is so dark and chaotic I can't actually tell what's happening in it.
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The Shipwreck by J. M. W. Turner, 1805
Wrecks at sea sold well, and this one got engraved as a print not long after, which is supposedly how most people at the time would have run into it rather than in any gallery.
Erisava: Nearly all of this is dark green and black, and it still comes across as loud.
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Tiger in a Tropical Storm by Henri Rousseau, 1891
This was the first of the jungle scenes, from what I can find, and it got laughed at when it went up. He was painting around a customs job with no training anyone respected, and he said the plants came out of the Paris hothouses and picture books rather than anywhere hot.
Erisava: The rain's just straight silver lines drawn over the top. Somehow it still works.
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The Coming Storm by George Bellows, 1916
Bellows made his name painting boxing matches and packed city crowds — this coastal storm is a quieter side of him, painted during a summer away from all that.
Erisava: I prefer his boxing matches.
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Shipwreck by Ivan Aivazovsky, 1843
Feodosia National Gallery I. K. Aivazovsky · wikidata.org
Public domain
Supposedly he painted the sea from memory indoors rather than out in front of it, and turned out thousands over a lifetime — storms and wrecks by the dozen, selling about as fast as he could make them.
Erisava: Everything's gone the same murky yellow — the sea, the sky, the lot of it.
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Composition VI by Wassily Kandinsky, 1913
He apparently got stuck on this one for months, until his studio partner told him to just repeat the German word for flood — Überflut — instead of thinking it through. He finished the whole painting three days after that, still repeating the word the whole time.
Erisava: This feels like a storm frozen right in the middle of happening.