Plaster, 1918-1919. Donated to the museum by Niels Hansen Jacobsen. Bronze cast for Vejen Art Museum of unknown date. 173,5 x 159 x 70 cm. Inv. no. 164. The plaster original is found in the foyer at Vejen City Hall.

The motif

There is no known literary model for the figure. "The Cloud" depicts a stately young woman hovering on a cloud. She is nude, but her stylized hair is embellished with a crescent moon and she holds a cloud in her hand, a perfect miniature of the cloud on which she herself is seated. "The Cloud" is a kind of goddess of the heavens who inscrutably floats by at night, a personification of the moonlight that illuminates the clouds in the night sky. The sculpture is stylized and decorative. The cloud elements create elegant, Art Nouveau-like ornaments. In the bronze version, the crescent moon and parts of the cloud in her hand were gilded.

Niels Hansen Jacobsen's images of night

In Niels Hansen Jacobsen's sculpture production, "The Cloud" most closely resembles the sculptures "An Unknown Star" and "Spring", both of which have a stylized look and make use of the female body as a decorative element. The mood of this sculpture, in contrast, seems amazingly light and innocent compared with Niels Hansen Jacobsen's other depictions of the creatures of the darkness in "Night" and "The Shadow".