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Lot Essay
It is testament to John Constable’s genius that he was able to capture on a slender sheet of paper the immensity of the heavens. In swift, sure strokes he captures dark rain clouds massing on the horizon, airy cirrus clouds scudding high across still blue skies, and heavy cumulous clouds resting on the far ridge. In all paintings, the sky, omnipresent and ever-changing, was for Constable ‘the “key note” – the “standard of scale” – and the chief “Organ of Sentiment”’ (J. Constable, letter dated 23 October 1821), but it is in studies such as the present work that this idea is distilled down to its purest form.
It is likely that this sketch depicts Harnham Ridge. Situated to the west of Salisbury, it was an area that Constable explored with his great friend Archdeacon John Fisher (himself a keen amateur artist), producing numerous paintings of the gentle landscape. John’s uncle, Bishop Fisher, had first invited Constable to stay in Salisbury in 1811. The artist returned for extended periods on a number of occasions over the following decades, with his final two visits being in 1829 after the death of his wife, Maria, when he turned to his friend for support. Harnham was then for the artist a place of both artistic possibility and personal importance. The elevated viewpoint of the present composition implies that it may have been executed looking out from an upper window of Fisher’s house, rather than from a vantage point in the garden, as is the case in works such as Harnham Ridge from Leadenhall Gardens (Private collection, UK), in which he is clearly looking up at - rather than down on - the scene.
Constable’s interest in the changing appearance of the sky dates to his very first forays into artistic creation. At twenty-two, newly enrolled as a student at the Royal Academy, he described the London sky as being how ‘a pearl must look through a burnt glass’ (quoted by J.E. Thornes, ‘Constable’s Meteorological Understanding and his Painting of Skies’, Constable's Clouds, exhibition catalogue, Edinburgh, 2000, p. 155). It is not, however, until 1805 that we find his first dated weather notes on the back of a sketch, when he wrote ‘Nov. 4 1805 – Noon very fine day on the Stour’. As he developed as an artist, the notes on his sketches became more and more detailed. Perhaps the most famous group of pure cloud studies dates from the period 1821-22, when Constable was living in Hampstead. On these he made comments such as ‘Septr. 13th – One o’clock. Slight wind at North West, which became tempestuous in the afternoon, with rain all the night following’ (Study of Altocumulus Clouds, Yale Centre For British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, PA-F01129-0065).
While it might be tempting to see Constable’s plein air oil sketches, so different from the pencil and chalk studies of his contemporaries, as a form of nascent Impressionism, this type of very careful note marks a clear difference in both their aim and their conception. Whilst Monet’s Impression, Sunrise spoke of the search for spontaneous expression and presented a (debatably utopian) notion of the present, Constable’s commentary shows that he was trying to capture a sense of time and place that was much more closely linked to a lived experience that by necessity incorporated the passage of time. His altocumulus clouds were intended to tell the viewer not only of the prevailing weather, but also of previous and future weather, the night of rain that was to come. Similarly, in the present study, the gold highlights in the grass speak of hot summer sun, that in the preceding weeks has bleached the dark green grass, and the grey clouds to the left tell of rain to come. With great agility, Constable thus situates his viewer at a point that stretches both forwards and backwards in time.
We are grateful to Anne Lyles for endorsing the attribution after first-hand inspection.
It is likely that this sketch depicts Harnham Ridge. Situated to the west of Salisbury, it was an area that Constable explored with his great friend Archdeacon John Fisher (himself a keen amateur artist), producing numerous paintings of the gentle landscape. John’s uncle, Bishop Fisher, had first invited Constable to stay in Salisbury in 1811. The artist returned for extended periods on a number of occasions over the following decades, with his final two visits being in 1829 after the death of his wife, Maria, when he turned to his friend for support. Harnham was then for the artist a place of both artistic possibility and personal importance. The elevated viewpoint of the present composition implies that it may have been executed looking out from an upper window of Fisher’s house, rather than from a vantage point in the garden, as is the case in works such as Harnham Ridge from Leadenhall Gardens (Private collection, UK), in which he is clearly looking up at - rather than down on - the scene.
Constable’s interest in the changing appearance of the sky dates to his very first forays into artistic creation. At twenty-two, newly enrolled as a student at the Royal Academy, he described the London sky as being how ‘a pearl must look through a burnt glass’ (quoted by J.E. Thornes, ‘Constable’s Meteorological Understanding and his Painting of Skies’, Constable's Clouds, exhibition catalogue, Edinburgh, 2000, p. 155). It is not, however, until 1805 that we find his first dated weather notes on the back of a sketch, when he wrote ‘Nov. 4 1805 – Noon very fine day on the Stour’. As he developed as an artist, the notes on his sketches became more and more detailed. Perhaps the most famous group of pure cloud studies dates from the period 1821-22, when Constable was living in Hampstead. On these he made comments such as ‘Septr. 13th – One o’clock. Slight wind at North West, which became tempestuous in the afternoon, with rain all the night following’ (Study of Altocumulus Clouds, Yale Centre For British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, PA-F01129-0065).
While it might be tempting to see Constable’s plein air oil sketches, so different from the pencil and chalk studies of his contemporaries, as a form of nascent Impressionism, this type of very careful note marks a clear difference in both their aim and their conception. Whilst Monet’s Impression, Sunrise spoke of the search for spontaneous expression and presented a (debatably utopian) notion of the present, Constable’s commentary shows that he was trying to capture a sense of time and place that was much more closely linked to a lived experience that by necessity incorporated the passage of time. His altocumulus clouds were intended to tell the viewer not only of the prevailing weather, but also of previous and future weather, the night of rain that was to come. Similarly, in the present study, the gold highlights in the grass speak of hot summer sun, that in the preceding weeks has bleached the dark green grass, and the grey clouds to the left tell of rain to come. With great agility, Constable thus situates his viewer at a point that stretches both forwards and backwards in time.
We are grateful to Anne Lyles for endorsing the attribution after first-hand inspection.