The LORD sits enthroned over the flood; 
the LORD sits enthroned as king for ever.
May the LORD give strength to his people!
May the LORD bless his people with peace! (Psalm 29:10–11)

This enormous work on canvas was painted in the aftermath of the death of John Constable’s wife, Maria Bicknell. Salisbury had become a place of friendship for the artist, through his association with John Fisher, one of the cathedral’s resident clergy. But for a loyal Tory and member of the Church of England like Constable, it was a time of political anxiety. The year 1829 had brought Catholic Emancipation and the Reform Bill would be enacted in 1832. It was Fisher who suggested The Church Under a Cloud as a subject.

When the painting went on to three regional exhibitions following the first showing at the Royal Academy in 1831, the rainbow had been added, with the subtitle Summer Afternoon—A Retiring Tempest. The heavy storm clouds have receded behind the cathedral. In the foreground, a carter and his horses begin to cross the stream, a boatman unties his boat, and another tiny figure is visible on the bank behind the cart. A sheepdog in the foreground among tree stumps looks alertly towards the cathedral. The leaning trunks of the trees to the left of the cathedral have learned to live in all weather. At the upper right, the sky is clearing and light falls on the meadow. The cathedral’s enormous spire pierces the storm clouds to reveal more blue sky, while a rainbow arcs leftward from the Cathedral Close over the building itself.

Ordinary, peaceful activity suggests another kind of resolution, underpinned by motifs bearing strongly biblical associations. The crossing of water from untidy growth towards the Cathedral Close recalls the salvific crossings of the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21–22) and the Jordan (Joshua 3–4). The rainbow evokes God’s covenant with Noah after the Flood (Genesis 9:12–17).

Emblematic of the Established Church, the cathedral stands secure as the agent of light. In a certain sense, God is enthroned over the flood (Psalm 29:10) and God’s people are blessed in their Church and their surroundings.

References

Evans, Mark with Stephen Galloway and Susan Owens. 2014. John Constable: The Making of a Master (London: V&A Publishing)

Vaughan, William. 2015. John Constable (London: Tate Publishing)

Ascribe to the LORD the glory of his name;
worship the LORD in holy array.
The voice of the LORD is upon the waters; 
the God of glory thunders, 
the LORD, upon many waters. (Psalm 29: 2–3)

From 1831–32, painter and printmaker Katsushika Hokusai produced studies of eight waterfalls in the Japanese provinces. Like his earlier fifteen studies of Mount Fuji, these were also intended to be collected as a set. Matthi Forrer points out the ‘combination of light and strong, intense blues (Prussian Blue had recently become available), mostly contrasted with whites’ in Hokusai’s treatments of the falls themselves, with their surroundings depicted in naturalistic earth colours (Forrer 2008: 16).

Where the Fuji prints emphasized the distinctive shape of the mountain, the dominant feature in these prints is falling water. In this print of Kirifuri Waterfall, on the route to the Tokugawa mausoleum at Nikko, north of Tokyo, Hokusai brings together the drama of the vertical drop with an extraordinary characterization of the waterfall itself—a knotty primeval ‘root system’ of thick, ropey, branching streams, descending into a pool that seems almost to boil at the impact of the water.

As in Jean François Millet’s work elsewhere in this exhibition, human figures provide a sense of scale here. Hokusai’s figures are, like us, observers: respectful and awestruck. Three stand at the foot of the falls, gazing up; two stand further up the slope watching the downward rush of the water. The heads of the lower figures are raised in an attitude suggestive of wonder, admiration, and even worship. Two stand alertly upright, while the third adopts a lower, yet still attentive posture.

For the external viewer, the scene does not depict any actual destructive event. Yet it invites us to imagine the water’s power to destroy simply by being itself, as it cleaves its way through rocks and vegetation. The artist has styled the water as a prehistoric creature, whose vast talons confront us in the foreground.

What a visual representation cannot reproduce, though, is sound. The roar of the water rushing down the mountainside into the pool is a task for the imagination, and the inner ear might hear in it the voice which the psalmist places both ‘over the waters’, and yet somehow speaking through them (Psalm 29: 3–4). 

References

Forrer, Matthi. 2008. Hokusai: Mountains and Water, Flowers and Birds (Munich, London & New York: Prestel)

The voice of the Lord causes the oaks to whirl,
and strips the forest bare;
and in his temple all say, ‘Glory’ (Psalm 29:9)

This scene, painted late in Jean François Millet’s career, depicts a storm on the peninsula of La Hague in Normandy, close to the artist’s hometown of Gruchy. Atlantic storms frequently buffeted the area, whose ‘wind-swept fields and hills bare to the point of savageness’ are described by one of Millet’s biographers (Turner 1910: 36).

A great oak tree is caught in the moment of its fall, as a powerful gust of wind tears it out of the soil by the roots. Leaves and broken branches fly through the air. To the right, a shepherd and his sheep are fleeing, the shepherd’s outstretched arms perhaps instinctively protecting his head and face. In the foreground, the turbulence of a stream reflects the accelerating force of the wind. Only the rocks and a few houses on the horizon remain stoically motionless.

Light and dark vie for dominance. A heavy storm cloud advances, driven by the wind that is uprooting the tree. Yet there are suggestions of light behind the cloud and the horizon behind the houses is illuminated by the intense brightness that sometimes accompanies a storm.

The psalmist who sees the ‘glory and strength’ of the Lord (Psalm 29:1) present within the universe, and animating it, does not equate such qualities with order, symmetry, and beauty. In fact, Psalm 29 might be said to exult in the power of the of the thunderous and fiery voice of God, destructive not because it is malign, but because it is infinitely stronger than the elements of the world in which it plays. In that light, majesty is present in A Gust of Wind as the sheer physical force which is capable of gouging an ancient tree out of the earth where it has stood for generations.

Yet the evident fear of the shepherd and his sheep tell a different story. Indeed, although Millet is hailed as a precursor to the Impressionists, the work dramatizes the ‘classic Romantic struggle of man against the forces of nature’ (Fairclough & Dawes 2009: 104). The composition deliberately diminishes the human and animal presence in this landscape—and, even before the storm, there might not have been much that was idyllic or pastoral about it. We may wonder whether this is a glory compatible with human flourishing.

References

Fairclough, Oliver and , Bryony Dawkes. 2009.Turner to Cezanne: Masterpiece from the Davies Collection National Museum Wales (New York: American Federation of Arts)

Turner, Percy M. 1910. Millet (London: T.C. & E.C. Jack)