The sky is, by its very nature, the most important source of light in landscape painting, and so it is not surprising that artists working outdoors increasingly turned their attention upward.

At the center of the group of works by Johann Jakob Frey and other artists shown here are the clouds in their ever-changing forms and states. During his years of study in Italy, the Swiss painter Frey devoted himself with particular intensity to the sky and its manifold manifestations. Frey’s oil studies are impressive testimonies to a new conception of nature at the beginning of the 19th century.

The gaze wanders into the distance, beyond ochre-colored fields, along the coast, and across the sea, where the silhouette of the Pontine Islands appears. These elements of the landscape, however, remain understated. Frey merely hints at them with quick, rough brushstrokes. The focus is on the mighty towers of clouds, upon which the light falls and which dominate the sky and the canvas. The various shades of white and gray capture the light. The background shimmers through the clouds, making the immediacy of the work palpable.

The depiction of clouds has played a special role since his earliest oil studies. Working en plein air enabled the artists for the first time to capture fleeting weather phenomena directly on paper. Rain, wind, and changing light conditions became independent pictorial motifs in studies that the artist later developed into larger oil paintings in his studio.