Skip to Main Content

Provenance

Unsold by the artist; (John Constable sale, Messrs. Foster, London, 15-16 May 1838, 2nd day, no. 13, with Glebe Farm); bought by William Hooker Carpenter; (his sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 16 February 1867, no. 77); bought by Halsted. Sir John Kelk, Bt. [1816-1886], Tedworth, Wiltshire; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 11 March 1899, no. 6); bought by (Thomas Agnew & Sons, London); sold the same day to (Messrs. Lawrie & Co., London); purchased 11 November 1901 by (M. Knoedler & Co., New York); sold 26 January 1903 to (Arthur Tooth & Son, New York); purchased by William K. Bixby, St. Louis, Missouri;[1] sold 8 May 1918 to (M. Knoedler & Co., New York); purchased April 1918[2] by Andrew W. Mellon, Pittsburgh; deeded to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift 1937 to NGA.

Exhibition History

1911
"The Home Exhibiton:" A Collection of Paintings owned in St. Louis, City Art Museum, St. Louis, 1911, no. 15, repro.
1991
Constable, Tate Gallery, London, 1991, no. 136, repro.
2002
Constable Le Choix de Lucian Freud, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 2002-2003, no. 168, repro.
2007
Loan for display with permanent collection, Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, 2007-2008.

Technical Summary

The medium-fine canvas is plain woven; it has been lined. The top of the canvas has been cut down and folded over and later torn off, and the top inch of the picture is on a separate fabric strip which has been painted subsequently (this in turn has been folded over). The ground is white, of moderate thickness. There is a thin streaky brown imprimatura. The painting is executed sketchily, leaving large areas of the imprimatura revealed, and worked with impasto and scrubbing; the paint layers in much of the landscape are blended wet into wet, with many of the smaller details added as dabs of paint over a dried underlayer. The impasto has been flattened during lining. Repainting in the sky at upper right and along the bottom edge center was adjusted in 1948. The moderately thick natural resin varnish has discolored yellow to a significant degree.

Bibliography

1941
Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 43, no. 108, as A View of Salisbury Cathedral.
1942
Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 241, repro. 13, as A View of Salisbury Cathedral.
1949
Paintings and Sculpture from the Mellon Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1949 (reprinted 1953 and 1958): 122, repro., as A View of Salisburg Cathedral.
1952
Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds., Great Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1952: 142, color repro., as A View of Salisbury Cathedral.
1960
Cooke, Hereward Lester. British Painting in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 1960 (Booklet Number Eight in Ten Schools of Painting in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.): 34, color repro., as A View of Salisbury Cathedral.
1963
Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 322, repro., as A View of Salisbury Cathedral.
1965
Reynolds, Graham. Constable: The Natural Painter. London, 1965: 141, pl. 38.
1965
Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 29, as A View of Salisbury Cathedral.
1966
Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. A Pageant of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. New York, 1966: 2:366, color repro., as A View of Salisbury Cathedral.
1968
Cooke, Hereward Lester. Paintings Lessons from the Great Masters. London, 1968: 178, repro., color repro. opposite.
1968
Gandolfo, Giampaolo et al. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Great Museums of the World. New York, 1968: 149-150, color repro.
1968
National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 22, repro., as A View of Salisbury Cathedral.
1975
European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 72, repro.
1975
Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1975: no. 595, color repro.
1976
Whittingham, Selby. Constable and Turner at Salisbury. 2d rev. ed. Salisbury, 1976: 48, color repro. (cover).
1979
Hoozee, Robert. L'opera completa di Constable. Milan, 1979: 114, no. 281, 115, repro., color pl. xl.
1984
Reynolds, Graham. The Later Paintings and Drawings of John Constable. 2 vols. New Haven and London, 1984: 1:57, no. 20.53; 2:color pl. 177.
1984
Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 408, no. 580, color repro., as A View of Salisbury Cathedral.
1985
European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 93, repro.
1992
Hayes, John. British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1992: 39-41, color repro. 41.
2004
Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 349, no. 280, color repro.
2006
Constable's Great Landscapes: The Six-foot Paintings. Exh. cat. Tate Britain, London; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino. London, 2006: fig. 54.
2021
Kennicott, Philip and Matthew Cappucci. "Examining the Elements of Breathtaking Art." Washington Post 144, no. 225 (July 18, 2021): E1, E10, color repro.

Related Content

  • Sort by:
  • Results layout:
Show  results per page
The image compare list is empty.