Cloudy Sky, Mexico

Frederic Edwin Church's graphite sketch captures atmospheric conditions over the Mexican landscape. Church, a leading Hudson River School painter, was renowned for his dramatic skies and meteorological precision. This study demonstrates his working method—rapid notation of cloud formations and light effects observed from nature, later refined into finished compositions. The horizontal layering and tonal gradations show Church's systematic approach to recording transient atmospheric phenomena, essential to his monumental landscape paintings that defined American landscape art in the nineteenth century.