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At first glance, the idea of classifying clouds might seem simple, if perhaps a bit academic. For Luke Howard, a chemist and amateur weather scientist who lived from 1772 to 1864, it was a complex and meaningful challenge. His important 1803 work, Essay on the Modification of Clouds, documents the results of a passionate, lifelong study of the ever-changing sky. Before Howard, many people thought it was impossible to create clear types from something as fluid as the heavens. By relying on detailed weather journals he had kept since childhood, Howard became the first person to systematically name the main cloud forms we recognize today. He gave them Latin names that remain in use: cirrus (meaning a wisp of hair), cumulus (describing "convex or conical heaps"), stratus (a "horizontal sheet"), and nimbus (the rain cloud). This project was more than just a breakthrough for meteorology. It also filled Howard's personal sketchbooks with wind-swept watercolor paintings and inspired a new generation of landscape artists. His work was even honored years later by the famous German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who praised Howard in a poem.
Howard's great accomplishment was finding order in what appeared to be random chaos. He wrote that if clouds were simply the accidental result of condensing vapor, then studying them would be "an useless pursuit of shadows." However, with the confidence gained from decades of careful looking, he argued that "the principal Modifications are commonly as distinguishable from each other as a Tree from a Hill, or the latter from a Lake." Howard instructed his readers that to truly see the patterns he described, they too must commit to watching the sky with regular attention.
The poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe discovered a deep beauty in Howard's scientific system. When Howard's essay was translated into German in 1815, it directly influenced Goethe's own study of the skies. Goethe exchanged letters with the Englishman and wrote a poem in his honor. This poem was later printed, still in the original German, in the third edition of Howard's essay published in 1865. In the poem's opening lines, Goethe celebrates both the beauty of a cloudy sky and the clear vision of the man who understood its structure:
Then boldly stirs imagination's power, And shapes there formless masses of the hour; Here lions threat, there elephants will range, And camel-necks to vapoury dragons change; An army moves, but not in victory proud, Its might is broken on a rock of cloud; E'en the cloud messenger in air expires, Ere reach'd the distance fancy yet desires. But Howard gives us with his clearer mind The gain of lessons new to all mankind; That which no hand can reach, no hand can clasp, He first has gain'd, first held with mental grasp. Defin'd the doubtful, fix'd its limit-line, And named it fitly. —Be the honour thine! As clouds ascend, are folded, scatter, fall, Let the world think of thee who taught it all.
Howard included illustrations in his published essay. He worked with the painter Edward Kennion to create printed plates showing massive nimbus clouds and wispy cirrus clouds set against scenic landscapes. While these formal prints are impressive, they lack the fine, personal detail of Howard's own earlier cloud studies. Those were delicate watercolor sketches showing the shifting sky in dynamic washes of beige, blue, and pale gray. A curator named Boris Jardine notes that these personal sketches reflect Howard's many journeys between London and England's Lake District. They show a Romantic artistic practice that was intimately connected to his scientific work of classification. Following the Romantic belief in firsthand observation, Howard carefully warned young students of meteorology not to depend too much on the printed images in his book. He wrote that "a correct comprehension of the subject is only to be obtained by a habitual observation of Nature."
Goethe, who considered himself a student of Howard's work, expressed gratitude for the general cloud forms Howard outlined. These airy models helped Goethe move past "certain indistinct appearances" and identify the "main rules under which they come." As both a poet and a dedicated observer of nature, Goethe was perhaps the ideal person to consider a profound question: Can imposing a logical order on something as vast and seemingly shapeless as the sky lead, perhaps unexpectedly, to a deeper or even spiritual understanding?