Hone’s early cloud study reminds us of similar oil sketches recording weather conditions by the English landscape artist John Constable, an artist with whom the Barbizon community where Hone lived and worked for a while was very familiar through exhibitions and reproductive prints. To quickly capture the warm glow of the setting sun on the clouds and the shifting reflections in the waves below, Hone loads his brush with the thick paint and pushes it into the canvas leaving a heavy impasto. He separates sky and sea by drawing the paint in thin horizontal bands just below the center line. Below the horizon line, the waves bubble up and crash on the shore in short, thick brush strokes.

from Snay, The Donald and Marilyn Keough Collection of Irish Art (Notre Dame, 2019)