There have been some hefty downpours this week, but there have also been some magnificent clouds to admire, drifting across the sky like parades of mythical beasts.
It is somewhat reminiscent of the weather 200 years ago when John Constable began a frenetic time making cloud pictures; what he called his “skying period”. He rented a house in Hampstead, then a village outside London, climbed up to Hampstead Heath with its imposing views of London below and made oil sketches of the sky. Unusually for that time, he worked in the open air and at a furious rate, trying to faithfully catch the shapes, colours and texture of the clouds, sometimes fighting to finish a work before the rain fell. Also, unusually for artists then,
