In 1818 Constable had moved his family to Hampstead, an airy and clean place, away from the pollution of London. His wife’s tuberculosis worsened despite the changes of environment. In 1827 Constable moved with his family to live at another house in Well Walk, Hampstead. Constable told his friend Bishop Fisher that the house was ‘to my wife’s heart’s content … our little drawing room commands a view unequalled in Europe – from Westminster Abbey to Gravesend’.
Hampstead Heath with London in the distance c. 1827–30 is one of a number of views that Constable painted of London with the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral visible in the distance. He probably based it on a smaller outdoor study of the subject that he painted soon after his arrival at this house. The animated sky, with its broad band of sunbeams, complements the uncultivated landscape of the Heath, with winding pathways leading the eye to the distant, glowing city of London on the horizon.
Activity
• Look carefully at this painting and examine the different types of brushstrokes used to depict clouds, rays of light, heath, trees and the far distant glowing city.