How Did Famous Artists Paint Wind?

Capturing the wind, a force of nature that cannot be seen, is a challenge for any visual artist working in a two-dimensional medium. But numerous painters, pushing the boundaries of composition and symbolism, have used a variety of techniques to do so.

Techniques that create movement in paintings are the key since ultimately making things move is the only way to visually perceive the wind. Directional brushwork with variations in stroke technique, mixing flat and impasto texture, repetition of elements, and juxtaposing warm and cool color temperatures are all common ways to create the illusion of wind in a painting. By arranging their paintings to create a sense of wind and featuring certain subjects commonly impacted by it, such as sails or trees, the impression is made visible. These motifs and technique can be seen in a number of paintings.

1. A Gust of Wind, Painted by Gaetano Bellei

An Italian painter active at the turn of the 20th century, Bellei often painted subjects who were dealing with the elements. In A Gust of Wind, a jaunty and elegantly dressed woman is descending a staircase in a park. Her flowing dress is moving from left to right across the canvas, driven away from her body by the wind’s force. Her parasol has freed itself from her grip and is sailing away. Finally, leaves blown from trees stage right are crossing the frame, upturned at odd angles to emphasize their motion. As the title implies, the wind is the true subject of this painting.

2. Cauld Blaws the Wind Frae East to West by Joseph Farquharson

The human subjects of Cauld Blaws could not be more divergent than that of A Gust of Wind, but the wind — moving in this case from right to left — is just as overpowering. The scene captures a Highlands woman with a child upon her back and two kids walking with her up a mountain path. They lean into a gale that is whipping their shawls, its force imposing itself on their posture. One kid holds her hat upon her head, with a backdrop of menacing grey and white clouds adding a sense of hazard and motion to the composition.

3. The Wind and the Willows by Robert Bagge-Scott

An English landscape painter (from the same era as Farquharson), Bagge-Scott’s painting does not depend on a human subject to convey the elemental power of the wind. Using a heavy impasto texture for the canopies of a small stand of trees on the right, the movement of the wind through them towards the left is implied. The tops of the trees bend under the force. More subtly, the water that makes up the bottom third of the painting also ripples, distorting the reflection of the swaying trees that tower over it.

4. Fruit Trees in Blossom in the Wind by Edvard Munch

A more impressionistic work than those considered above, the swaying of Munch’s Fruit Trees is driven by the varied directional brushwork and rhythm implied in the trees (and swaying grass that anchors the bottom of the canvas). Painted in 1917 by the Norwegian master, it was part of a flurry of landscape works he produced around the time, including In the Wind and Two White Horses in a Green Meadow. The entire canvas seems to sway and shimmer with movement, anchored by the bold lines of the tree trunks and elastic swaying of the foliage.

5. Ships In a Strong Wind and Under a Dark Sky by Willem van de Velde the Younger

A product of the Dutch Golden Age, van de Velde the Younger was a marine painter of great success who relocated to London in the employ of King Charles II. Ships In a Strong Wind is a classic wind-driven painting, with the seemingly frail sail of the only distinct subject in the painting — a small vessel riding an incoming wave — rippling in the wind. The line and shadowing of the warmly lit brown sail is the only color in the scene, with the rest of the painting dominated by black and grey colors that create a sinister backdrop of inclement weather. The pennant atop the mast is horizontal to the sea, pushed out straight by the wind’s force, while the mast itself is leaning precariously, driven back by the elemental force of the approaching storm.

Humans and their environment have been a powerful theme throughout the history of Western art, especially prior to modern weather prediction and mass communication. Painters who sought to express wind, larger-than-life phenomena developed a number of techniques to give visual life to its force and effects, meeting the challenge of capturing the awe it inspired.