John Constable - Rainstorm over the sea [Seascape study with rainclouds] (c.1824-28)

“This spectacular oil sketch looking directly out to sea is one of the most remarkable open air sketches that Constable painted during his visits  to Brighton. He depicted a dramatic sky, capturing the fleeting effect  of a rainstorm at sea, with thunderous black clouds, and with a shaft  of sunlight breaking through to light up the horizon on the left. […] In his biography on Constable, Andrew Shirley observed that Constable’s sketches: ‘convey an extraordinary force of emotion’ and that in this work in particular he captured ‘the transient rainstorm, tremendous but with  a gleam of light, seized in a moment’ (Shirley 1949, pp. 22–21).” Source: National Gallery of Australia