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Arguably the most famous sky in the art world is Vincent Van Gogh's The Starry Night (1889), which depicts the view outside the artist's sanatorium window at Saint-Remy. With its crackling cypresses and spiral constellations, its sun-like moon and whirling clouds, this world-renowned image is an ecstatic expression of country skies as "purer than the suburbs or bars of Paris," (in the artist's words).

JWM Turner is renowned for his skies. His late skyscapes in particular, generally painted at sunrise, often on the spot, are very nearly abstract and utterly sublime.

It …