Palmer studied clouds for their picturesque qualities. Unlike the artist John Constable he did not go 'skying' as a way of capturing particular meteorological effects which could then be used to inform the overall mood of his landscape paintings. In a letter of 1828 to his friend John Linnell he wrote: 'Nor must be forgotten the motley clouding, the fine meshes, the aerial tissues that dapple the skies of spring; nor the rolling volumes and piled mountains of light.' He saw in the treatment of clouds in Linnell's own paintings 'how the elements of nature may be transmitted into the pure Gold of Art.'
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