The Storm by Pierre Auguste Cot Poster

The Storm by Pierre Auguste Cot, oil on canvas 1880, is a French academic classical painting of two young people running to take shelter from a storm, brightly lit against a darkened forest landscape, a billowing piece of fabric shielding them against the rain. Cot combines a modern realism that borders on the photographic with inspiration from sources in classical antiquity, such as the shepherd costume from the ancient world and the girl’s diaphanous drapery. The Storm was commissioned as a type of companion piece to Cot’s other large painting of young lovers, Springtime, both of which became enormously famous in Europe and America.