Distant View of Salisbury Cathedral

1821

Constable visited Salisbury, in the southwest of England, throughout his career, staying with his friend Archdeacon John Fisher and painting views of the cathedral. This sketch shows the cathedral’s spire in the distance, dominating the landscape. The inscription—“painted on the spot / Nov. 19th 1821”—underlines the artist’s practice of making small-scale studies directly from nature.

Medium	oil on panel
Dimensions	6 13/16 x 10 1/16 in. (17.3 x 25.6 cm)
Object Number	1955.684
Acquisition	Acquired by Sterling and Francine Clark before 1955
Status	On View

Image Caption

John Constable, Distant View of Salisbury Cathedral, 1821, oil on panel. Clark Art Institute, 1955.684

Select Bibliography

Boston: Museum of Fine Arts.. Art in New England: Paintings, Drawings, Prints from Private Collections in New England.. June 9-Sept. 10, 1939.. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Exhibit Four & Exhibit Seven. Exhibition catalogue. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1958. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Exhibit Four & Exhibit Seven, Supplement: West Gallery. Exhibition catalogue. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1959. Reynolds, Graham, Charles Rhyne, and Julius Meier-Graefe. John Constable, R.A. (1776-1837): Paintings, Drawings, Watercolours, Mezzotints. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, 1988. Ronald B. Beckett, ed.. John Constable's Correspondence. Vol. 2: Early Friends and Maria Bicknell (Mrs. Constable), 1964; Vol. 6: The Fishers, 1968.. Ipswich (G.B.): Suffolk Records Society.. 1964-1968.. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1972. Hoozee, Robert. L'opera completa di Constable. (Classici dell'arte series). Milan: Rizzoli. 1979. Charles S. Rhyne.. Unpublished letter to Clark Art Institute.. Oct. 17, 1983.. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1984. Reynolds, Graham. The Later Paintings and Drawings of John Constable. 2 vol. New Haven: Published for the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 1984. Kern, Steven, ed. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1992. Wilcox, Timothy. Constable and Salisbury: The Soul of Landscape. Exhibition catalogue. London: Scala Books, 2011. Lees, Sarah, ed. Nineteenth-Century European Paintings at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute; New Haven and London: distributed by Yale University Press, 2012. Polley, Robert L., ed. Great Art Treasures in America's Smaller Museums. Text by Harold E. Haydon. New York: Putnam's, 1967.

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EUROPEAN PAINTINGS CATALOGUE ENTRY

Provenance

Captain Charles Golding Constable, son of the artist (d. 1879); Mrs. A. M. Constable, his wife, by descent (1879–90, sale, Christie’s, London, 23 June 1890, no. 75, as Salisbury, Painted on the spot, Nov. 19, 1821, sold to Dowdeswell);¹ Dowdeswell Gallery, London, from 1890]; Major Henry Lee Higginson, Boston (d. 1919); Alexander Higginson, Boston, by descent (from 1919); Mr. and Mrs. L. Denis Peterkin, Andover (by 1939); [Clyfford Trevor, New York, in 1945, sold to Clark, 19 Feb. 1945]; Robert Sterling Clark (1945–55); Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1955. 1. Mrs. A. M. Constable lent the picture to the South Kensington Museum, London, from 1880 to 1883. See Graham Reynolds, The Later Paintings and Drawings of John Constable, 1984, vol. 1, no. 21.74, p. 87.