Join my complete beginner's course: How to Draw from Scratch: Start the Course

John Constable’s Cloud Study (1821, oil on paper laid on board) is a painting about air. The small surface is filled with air, clouds drifting, light shifting, birds flying and a sense of fresh air. The whole composition is sky, rendered with such directness that it seems less like invention than observation. Seen in person, the painting feels like a record of a few moments of changing weather. The brushwork is quick and open, and the colour shifts gently from warm to cool

At the Tate Modern, it’s common to see long queues, crowded rooms, and people taking photographs in front of the artworks. Art has become a popular experience. Many now visit galleries as they might visit a landmark, to be part of something familiar, social, and shared. The popularity is undeniable. What is less clear is what it means.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted A Gust of Wind around 1872, in the early years of Impressionism. The painting, now in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, captures a moment in nature that is both ordinary and magical, a sudden movement of air sweeping across a field