The Cloud
A vast white cloud towers over a dark, low-lying landscape. Prince Eugen painted Swedish landscapes in the atmospheric spirit of the 1890s.
The cloud fills almost the entire picture – the sky, not the land, is the protagonist.
Prince Eugen, son of King Oscar II, decided early on to become a painter. He studied in Paris in the 1880s and joined the Opponents, the young artists who protested against the teaching at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. The Cloud was painted in the mid-1890s and belongs to the Gothenburg Museum of Art.
The subject is simple. A vast, bright cumulus cloud rises above a low, dark landscape of fields and woodland edges. The sky takes up most of the picture, and the land is merely a narrow strip at the bottom. The cloud glows in the evening light while the ground already lies in shadow.
The composition rests on the contrast between low and high. The horizontal strip of landscape brings calm, while the cloud grows upwards like a sculpture. There are no people in the picture, and nothing happens. The cloud’s form and light are the subject.
The colours are muted and harmonious. The cloud is painted in white, cream and grey tones that give it weight and volume. The landscape is dark green, almost black. The cool blue sky around the cloud intensifies its light. Prince Eugen was particularly interested in dusk, the time of day when colours deepen and outlines are simplified.
The painting belongs to what is known as mood painting, a tendency that became important in Sweden in the 1890s. Artists sought not merely to depict the landscape but to convey a feeling about it. Scholars have seen influences from Symbolism and from the French artists Prince Eugen had encountered, as well as an interest in the national. The Swedish landscape was to be portrayed in its own light and with its own character. The cloud motif had a long tradition in European landscape painting, from the Dutch painters of the 17th century to the Englishman John Constable, who made a great many cloud studies. In Paris, Prince Eugen had studied under Léon Bonnat and Henri Gervex, among others.
The Cloud has been interpreted as an image of something greater than humankind, almost a silent presence over the land. Prince Eugen, however, was wary of explaining his pictures, and the interpretation must remain open. What can be said for certain is that the painting turns an everyday weather phenomenon into something monumental.
Today The Cloud is regarded as one of Prince Eugen’s major works and one of the best-known Swedish landscapes from the turn of the century. Prince Eugen also became an important art collector and patron. His home, Waldemarsudde, was bequeathed to the state and is now an art museum. He returned to clouds several times, for example in The Night Cloud of 1901 in the Thiel Gallery. He was also a monumental painter and executed large murals, including in Stockholm City Hall and the Royal Dramatic Theatre.