Leifer
Senior Member.
(copyright 2012, Max Mogren)
Albert Bierstadt, Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California, 1865, oil on canvas, Birmingham Museum of Art, Gift of the Birmingham Public Library

Albert Bierstadt, Evening, Owens Lake, California
1860's (?)

Spring Motif - Mikalojus Ciurlionis, 1908

Fuji, Mountains in clear Weather (Red Fuji) - Katsushika Hokusai, 1831

Winslow Homer (1836-1910), Song of the Lark (also known as In the Field)

Frank Johnston, "The Fire Ranger", 1920

Also to keep in mind, that many (most) of the landscape painters would not put every detail in every cloud. The sky was often painted with a look of ease, naturalness, and a conservation of effort.....reducing clouds to as few brush-strokes as possible. (the paintings above are more detailed....... is what I could find in 1 hour on-line).)
So what may have been Altocumulus stratiformis, or Cirrocumulus....would become a field of color with a few suggested cloud tips/edges (perhaps with a pattern, or "flow")
The "detail" in a typical landscape painting is reserved for the foreground.
Links:
http://www.wikipaintings.org/de/paintings-by-genre/landscape/11#supersized-gustave-courbet-191884
http://www.wikipaintings.org/de/pai...pe/12#supersized-frederic-edwin-church-319465
http://www.wikipaintings.org/de/pai...pe/12#supersized-frederic-edwin-church-319487
http://www.wikipaintings.org/de/paintings-by-genre/landscape/21#supersized-ferdinand-hodler-255025
(1908)
http://www.wikipaintings.org/de/paintings-by-genre/landscape/31#supersized-konstantin-bogaevsky-260770
(1903)
http://www.wikipaintings.org/de/paintings-by-genre/landscape/35#supersized-tom-thomson-293598
(1915)
Early color photograph, 1930's (Library of Congress)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2179086581/in/set-72157603671370361/lightbox/
1930's

[between 1940 and 1946]

More early photos....
1930's
http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2179901014/sizes/o/in/set-72157603671370361/
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/matpc.04465/
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