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Room 7: The Opening of Waterloo Bridge 1832
John Constable
The Opening of Waterloo Bridge
(‘Whitehall Stairs, June 18th,
1817’) 1832
Oil on canvas
© Tate
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Constable took thirteen years to complete this, for him,
unusual subject for exhibition at the Academy, hoping
to emulate the great Venetian and Thames views of
Canaletto. It shows the processional opening of the
new Waterloo Bridge in 1817, with the Prince Regent
accompanied by soldiers, sailors and the Lord Mayor
embarking on a royal barge from Whitehall Stairs to
the left of the painting.
Constable experimented a great deal with his
viewpoint in 1819 and 1820, before putting the painting
to one side, on the advice of the painter Joseph
Farington, to paint The Hay Wain exhibited in 1821.
By 1824 he seems to have begun another version
and in November 1825 complained to John Fisher that,
‘my Waterloo...like a blister begins to stick closer
& closer& to disturb my nights.’
In 1826 he seems to have started again on the
composition, this time choosing a higher view from the
terrace of Pembroke House, but once again stopped
painting returning to it again only in 1829. The evolution
of the image was so complex that scholars are still
uncertain about the relationship between the various
sketches in oil and pencil and the exhibited work.
On the ‘varnishing days’ allowed to Academicians
to retouch their paintings before the opening of an
exhibition, Turner responded to the high colour key
of Constable’s large canvas by adding an intense red
to one of his own paintings nearby.
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John Constable
Sketch for ‘The Opening of Waterloo Bridge’ about 1819
Oil on millboard
Courtesy the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
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This oil sketch is one of Constable’s first
attempts at a subject he worked on for
thirteen years.
He had probably witnessed the opening
of Waterloo Bridge in June 1817. Three pencil
drawings in a sketchbook thought to have
been made in the summer of that year are
of the bridge or its immediate vicinity.
This sketch was made from a lower
viewpoint than previous examples and
includes the royal barge on the Whitehall
Stairs to the left with the Prince Regent and
his entourage lining the quay. A puff of smoke
on the bridge indicates the firing of a salute.
Among changes from Constable's previous sketch 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
Sketch for ‘The Opening of Waterloo Bridge’ about 1819-20
Pen and brown ink over pencil on tracing paper laid on card
Courtesy the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
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This drawing was made about the same time
as the oil sketch (above). It shows
Constable experimenting with a view from
slightly further back. He seems to have drawn
the image in pencil and then worked over
it freely with pen and brown ink, somewhat
in the style of Canaletto who was celebrated
for such city river scenes and had also painted
this stretch of the Thames.
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John Constable
The Opening of Waterloo Bridge (first version) about 1820-5
Oil on canvas
Courtesy Anglesey Abbey, The Fairhaven Collection
(The National Trust)
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This version of the subject is considerably
larger than the final one exhibited at the
Academy in 1832. It does not include the tall,
white ‘shot tower’ built in 1826 for the
manufacture of lead shot which appears
in Constable’s versions after that date.
The viewpoint is also lower than that of the
later versions and is painted on a reddishbrown
primed surface typical of his work from
the early 1820s. It is likely therefore that this
version was begun around 1820. It remains
unclear whether this work was a sketch
or intended to be worked up further for
exhibition and then abandoned.
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John Constable
Sketch for ‘The Opening of Waterloo
Bridge’ about 1829
Oil on canvas
Lent by the Yale Center for British Art,
Paul Mellon Collection
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This sketch uses a higher viewpoint than
previously, taken from the terrace of
Pembroke House. The newly-built ‘shot tower’
is now visible and the bow-fronted window
on the left is brought into full view. Constable’s
revived interest in the subject was probably
connected to his aim of including it in the
proposed series of mezzotints by David Lucas
which became known as English Landscape.
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John Constable
The Opening of Waterloo Bridge
(‘Whitehall Stairs, June 18th, 1817’) 1832
Oil on canvas
© Tate
enlarge this image
In this, the final version of the subject, the Lord
Mayor’s barge is now included on the right.
The ‘shot tower’ is of course an anachronism
for an event which occurred nine years before
its construction.
A parapet surmounted by urns appears
in the foreground, acting as a repoussoir,
or device for projecting the eye deep into the
composition. Above the bridge Constable
portrays a rare atmospheric condition which
he described thus: ‘when the spectator stands
with his back to the sun, the rays may be seen
converging…towards…the horizon’.
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