Clouds over a Wooded Landscape, New York

Frederic Edwin Church's sketch captures atmospheric effects over a Hudson River valley vista. The rapid pencil notation—with numbered color notations (5-delicate steel blue, 6-eggniole sea blush, 7-dark clouds cool purple, landscape green) and compositional marks—reveals the artist's working method. Church, a leading Hudson River School painter, used such field studies to record light conditions and seasonal moods, later developing them into large exhibition paintings. This working sketch demonstrates how nineteenth-century landscape artists translated direct observation into ambitious studio compositions.