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Room 6: Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows 1831
John Constable
Salisbury Cathedral from the
Meadows (full-size sketch) about 1829-31
Oil on canvas
Courtesy the Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London
 more on this image
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Constable first visited Salisbury in 1811, where he met
the Bishop’s nephew, John Fisher, who became a close
friend and his most important correspondent. In 1829
he visited Salisbury for the last time and made some
drawings from which he worked up his oil sketches,
small and large, in his London studio. His health at this
stage was beginning to decline.
The full-scale sketch was considered a doubtful
attribution until the 1950s when conservation work
removed later over-painting by another hand and, more
recently, Constable’s working methods have been better
understood.
In the finished work Constable used a more subdued
handling of paint than in the full-scale sketch to describe
the forms in greater detail; the wagon, horses and
cathedral emerging in clearer focus. The sky is painted
with an agitated brushwork and Constable added a
great symbolic rainbow which arches over to the
location of Fisher’s house, Leadenhall, nearby.
The painting has been seen as a commentary to
some extent on Constable and his friend Fisher’s
concerns about recent threats to the Anglican church.
This seems quite possible while allowing the more
personal meaning Constable gave to the work when,
once again, he quoted lines from James Thomson’s
poem The Seasons 1727. These refer to life’s travails
being assuaged by religious faith:
‘As from the face of heaven the scatter’d clouds
Tumultuous rove, th’interminable sky
Sublimer swells, and o’er the world expands
A purer azure.’
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John Constable
Sketch for ‘Salisbury Cathedral
from the Meadows’ about 1829
Oil on canvas
© Tate
 enlarge this image
This oil sketch develops the ideas of the pencil
sketch shown nearby . Together with
the pencil drawing and the full-size sketch
(below), it is the subject of an interactive
display in the last room of the exhibition.
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John Constable
Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (full-size sketch) about 1829-31
Oil on canvas
Courtesy the Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London
enlarge this image
Changes to this sketch by another hand after
Constable’s death left it open to doubt as
to whether the work was authentic. The spire
had been painted over with sky leaving just
the main body of the cathedral resembling
a castle. The removal of the overpaint in 1951
began the process of recuperation of the
sketch into Constable’s accepted oeuvre.
An interactive display in the final room
explains its role in the evolution of the finished
painting.
Among the changes from the sketch above are the moving
of the dog to the left, the omission of the
accompanying man and the increase in mass
of the trees on the left. The wagon is also
made more dominant.
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John Constable
Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows 1831
Oil on canvas
The canvas for this finished work is six inches
taller than that used for the full-size sketch
(above). This allowed Constable to show more
of the river bank at the bottom.
With its huge rainbow over the cathedral
the painting has been the subject of much
speculation about its meanings for the loyal
Anglican Constable.
His response to Jacob van Ruisdael’s
The Jewish Cemetery of about 1654-5, which
he knew well, gives some idea of how he
understood the complexities of such an
image: ‘he attempted to tell that which is
outside the reach of art’.
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David Lucas after John Constable
Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows:
The Rainbow about 1835
Mezzotint engraving, touched with pencil,
chalk and grey wash
As well as making small prints after
Constable’s work for English Landscape,
the engraver David Lucas produced some
larger mezzotint plates of Constable’s great
exhibition landscapes. This, the largest of all
these plates, was started at the end of 1834.
However, progress was slow as Constable
liked to check ‘proof’ impressions showing
different stages of the print as it evolved.
He was especially anxious about the
representation of the rainbow, telling Lucas
that ‘if it is not tender – and elegant –
evanescent and lovely …we are both ruined’.
He was still checking proof impressions of
the Salisbury plate two days before he died
on 31 March 1837.
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