Page 18 - constable.pages copy

Charlotte Mason Picture Study Aid John Constable

Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds

ca. 1825
oil on canvas
87.9 x 111.8 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
KEY TOPICS:

• The main focal point of this piece is the cathedral at Salisbury, which dominates the central part of the painting.
In the foreground is a small pond in front of a lawn leading up to the Cathedral. Several cows are drinking from

the pond or grazing on the lawn. Tall trees frame the Cathedral on either side and in the lower-left, the Bishop,

pointing to the church, and his wife stroll along a lane. Further along the lane, a woman with a parasol, possibly
their daughter, can be seen. Behind the cathedral, the sky is blue with scattered cumulus clouds. 2, 6
• Constable made many preliminary sketches of the Cathedral even before the Bishop’s commission and all were

from different angles. Whereas with his other “country house portraits” (as in the case of Wivenhoe Park, Essex), he

painted the buildings at a distance. But with the Cathedral, he ran into the problem of it looking larger than
everything around it the further away he went from it (an example of this can be seen in Salisbury from the South,

a sketch Constable completed in 1820 - see next page). As such, he chose to paint the Cathedral at a relatively
close distance so that the trees framing it could compete with its size.

• This piece was originally commissioned by the Bishop in 1820 specifically for his drawing room in London.
Constable finished the piece (currently housed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London - see next page)

which was nearly identical to this one except one dark cloud to the right and above the Cathedral, which the

Bishop did not like. Constable went on to paint another piece with this subject for the Bishop’s daughter’s
marriage, and then painted yet another version for the Bishop to replace the one with the dark cloud. The

version in this picture study is a preliminary, full-size study Constable painted prior to completing the final
piece. 2

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