If you ask any child, up to the age of about six, to paint you a picture of rain, they’ll have no problem doing so. The patterns of slashes and spots they will give in response are almost as much a part of infant iconography as lollipop trees and houses with chimney smoke like springs. But I was thinking today, while trying to avoid getting soaked, that I couldn’t remember much in the way of examples of grown ups painting downpours.

Ok, I’m going to have to qualify this a bit. Japanese art has a rich tradition of representing rain, but what about the west? Looking back through our own art history, most only show rain as either atmospheric (Turner, Monet, impressionism) or in terms of its effects and paraphernalia: rainbows, dark threatening clouds, umbrellas, puddles, shiny streets, etc. storm damage and thrashing trees (Ruisdael, Dutch painters). but not much in terms of depictions of recognisably distinct drops. The only exceptions I can find are a few mediaeval paintings showing rains of fire and blood as part of the apocalypse or in the wake of Hailey’s comet (and I don’t think blood and fire counts). Even representations of Noah’s flood seem to be absent of actual falling droplets.

I can only think of three artists: Sickert, Hockney and Alex Katz, who’ve done so. All of these painters worked relatively recently, a long time after Japanese woodblocks had become widely known in the west, and also, after the development of photography to a point of technical advancement able to capture at least streaks of water in its fall downwards.

So how come children have no problem with painting and drawing rain, but adults, at least in the west, do? Is there a point in our development when we forget how to do such simple things?