Rising fog in paintings 1

For much of the history of European visual art, one of its fundamental principles has been to reveal rather than to hide. Atmospheric and other effects tending to obscure the image being painted have generally been shunned. The great majority of landscape views, at least until the nineteenth century, have shown fair weather, good visibility, and optical clarity.

This has been peculiar to the Western tradition. East Asian art in particular has long favoured views in which substantial passages are obscured by cloud or fog.

Qiu Ying 仇英 (attr) (1494–1552), Ode on Shanglin Park 上林賦 (detail) (1531-38), ink and colors on silk handscroll, 53.5 x 1183.9 cm, National Palace Museum 國立故宮博物院, Taipei, Taiwan. Wikimedia Commons.

In this, the final scene in Qiu Ying’s Ode on Shanglin Park, the emperor’s carriage and cortège pass along the edge of a river or estuary. There are ships at anchor, and areas of padi cultivation at the water’s edge. In the distance are more pavilions and houses, all of which are surrounded by a blanket of low fog.

Two major landscape artists were largely responsible for changing attitudes towards the use of fog and cloud as compositional devices: JMW Turner and Caspar David Friedrich, both painting in the early decades of the nineteenth century.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), Sun rising through Vapour: Fishermen cleaning and selling Fish (before 1807), oil on canvas, 134 x 179.5 cm, The National Gallery (Turner Bequest, 1856), London. Image courtesy of and © The National Gallery.

Turner painted Sun rising through Vapour: Fishermen cleaning and selling Fish before 1807. With the sun rising and slowly dispersing banks of fog, larger ships in the distance are emerging and taking form. In the foreground, three fishing boats are discharging their catch. This early in his career, Turner perhaps didn’t dare to bring the fog effect any closer, and was careful to populate the foreground with people and boats.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), Rain, Steam, and Speed – The Great Western Railway (1844), oil on canvas, 91 x 121.8 cm, The National Gallery (Turner Bequest, 1856), London. Courtesy of and © 2018 The National Gallery, London.

Many of Turner’s later paintings show effects of reduced visibility, but they peaked in his famous painting of a Great Western Railway train crossing the River Thames at Maidenhead: Rain, Steam, and Speed, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1844. The whole image has now become more fogbound and vague, an important precursor to the approach of the Impressionists after Turner’s death.

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), Morning Mist in the Mountains (1808), oil on canvas, 71 x 104 cm, Thüringer Landesmuseum Heidecksburg, Rudolstadt, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

One of Caspar David Friedrich’s earliest paintings featuring fog is his Morning Mist in the Mountains from 1808. This shows the Honigstein massif near Rathen, on the River Elbe, and has a distinctly East Asian look about it.

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), Wanderer above the Sea of Mists (1818), oil on canvas, 94.8 × 74.8 cm, Kunsthalle Hamburg. Wikimedia Commons.

Although set in full daylight, Wanderer above the Sea of Mists from 1818 uses extensive mist and cloud both to detach its scenery from ground level, and to maintain a pervasive air of mystery. A bareheaded, blond man looks out over a blanket of lower cloud, pierced by occasional rock pinnacles and peaks. In the distance, more gradual slopes suggest higher mountains to the sides, and vaguer forms of rounded peaks, and a massive rocky butte, fading into mist.

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), Riesengebirgs Landscape with Rising Fog (1819-20), oil on canvas, 54.9 x 70.4 cm, Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

Riesengebirgs Landscape with Rising Fog from 1819-20 shows Friedrich’s further development of the effects of fog in the mountains.

Peder Balke (1804–1887), Stetind in Fog (1864), oil on canvas, 71 x 58 cm, Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo, Norway. Wikimedia Commons.

The occasional landscape specialist continued to paint a few views modulated by fog. Peder Balke’s Stetind in Fog from 1864 shows Balke’s favourite mountain looking from a blanket of fog.

Claude Monet (1840–1926), Impression, Sunrise (1872), oil on canvas, 48 x 63 cm, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

Fog is exactly the sort of transient effect of light and atmosphere sought out by the Impressionists. In 1872, Claude Monet painted the view that gave rise to the style’s name, Impression, Sunrise. This appears to be a brisk oil sketch of fog and the rising sun in Monet’s home port of Le Havre, on the Channel coast. It’s one of a series depicting the port at different times and in varying lights.

Alfred Sisley (1839-1899), Fog, Voisins (1874), oil on canvas, 50.5 x 65 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. EHN & DIJ Oakley.

The other Impressionists were quick to join Monet in the fog. Alfred Sisley’s Fog, Voisins from 1874 shows a fog-cloaked flowerbed in the foreground, the small patch of colour in this garden. The woman working away isn’t tending her nasturtiums, but toiling away at what will, in a few months time, be carefully prepared and cooked in her kitchen.

Tom Roberts (1856-1931), Fog, Thames Embankment (1884), oil on paperboard, 13.1 x 21.7 cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. Wikimedia Commons.

When the Australian Impressionist Tom Roberts was studying at the Royal Academy Schools in London between 1881-85, he took advantage of the frequent fogs affecting the city to paint Fog, Thames Embankment (1884). This was painted from a similar location to that used by Monet when he was sheltering from the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, on the Embankment to the north of Westminster Bridge.

Emil Jakob Schindler (1842–1892), Sawmill in the Morning Mist (1886), oil on canvas, 84 × 100 cm, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, Austria. Wikimedia Commons.

Realist painters of the day such as Emil Jakob Schindler also used fog effectively, here in his urban setting of a Sawmill in the Morning Mist from 1886.

Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), Île Lacruix Rouen, Effect of Fog (1888), oil on canvas, 44 x 55 cm, private collection. (WikiArt)

Île Lacruix Rouen, Effect of Fog from 1888 is one of Camille Pissarro’s best-known Divisionist paintings, and one of several to use fog to great effect.

Claude Monet (1840–1926), Grainstack, Sun in the Mist (1891), oil on canvas, 60 x 100.3 cm, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN. Wikimedia Commons.

Fog effects became part of Claude Monet’s repertoire when painting series works, here Grainstack, Sun in the Mist (1891) from his famous series showing grainstacks near his house at Giverny.