Clouds above the Hudson Valley, New York

Frederic Edwin Church, American, 1826–1900 · July 1866

Landscape sketch showing a view of a lush and rolling landscape in the Hudson River Valley beneath an immense and billowing bank of reddening clouds at sunset, likely viewed from or near the artist's property in Hudson, New York. In the foreground, groups of trees line a grassy and rolling field that stretches across the composition from left to right. In the middle distance, a heavily wooded hill and slightly sloping hill descends from left to right, rendered in a dark shade of brownish purple. In the background, a dark blue mountain range forms an undulating horizon beneath a massive bank of billowing clouds, partly in shadow and partly illuminated gold, orange, and red, by the setting sun.