Approaching thunderstorm

Hans Thoma's 'Approaching Thunderstorm' (1889) is a late atmospheric landscape subject — the dramatic weather event of the approaching storm was among the most traditional subjects in German landscape painting, from the Romantics' sublime storms through the nineteenth century's more naturalistic engagement with meteorological drama. Thoma's treatment connected his Black Forest landscape observation to the longer German tradition of the storm as a subject that combined natural observation with the deeper resonance of elemental power. The approaching rather than arrived storm gave him the specific quality of the threatening sky before the break.

Thoma renders the approaching storm with his characteristic combination of observed naturalism and broader atmospheric significance — the specific quality of the threatening sky (the darkening clouds, the quality of light before the storm breaks, the particular color of the air under storm clouds) depicted with direct observational accuracy. His handling of the landscape below the threatening sky shows how the approaching storm transforms the familiar landscape through the quality of the storm light.