Views in the Lake District: Borrowdale (recto); and Grain's Ghyll looking towards Rosthwaite Fell, Borrowdale (verso)

1806 was by far the most productive year in Constable's career, and his trip to the Lake District in the autumn, encouraged and perhaps financially supported by his uncle David Watts, was typical: between 1 September and 19 October he averaged two drawings a day, mainly in watercolours. Judging by the dates on his surviving drawings he was at Borrowdale from 25 September until 13 October (see Reynolds, op. cit., p. 101, no. 06.204 and p. 105, no. 06.232). As Ian Fleming-Williams relates: 'During this tour, greatly stimulated by the Lake scenery, Constable appears to have experienced within himself powerful and still deeper feelings about landscape and, gradually, through a process of stylistic blending and distillation, to have discovered ways of expressing these sensations' (Constable and his Drawings, London, 1990, p. 77).
The inscription on the verso seems to refer to the time of day and weather conditions depicted on the other side. The view on the verso, which is different from that on the recto, is over Grain's Ghyll towards Rosthwaite Fell.