During a visit to Salisbury in 1811, Constable made three drawings of the cathedral: from the southeast, the southwest and the east. He used the view from the southwest in 1823, twelve years later, as the compositional basis for an oil painting: Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Grounds.
Constable painted this work for his friend Bishop Fisher of Salisbury. The bishop is shown in the left foreground, pointing out the sunlit cathedral to his wife, as one of their daughters, Dorothea, walks along the path towards them. Near the reflective pond in the foreground Constable included cows, which contribute a peaceful, pastoral element to the composition.
An arch of trees frames the spire of the cathedral, and a lower arch of foliage partly obscures the building. The framing device of the trees directs the viewer’s eye from the right foreground, diagonally to the central left tree and then to the sunlit background. Constable wrote: ‘Does not the Cathedral look beautiful amongst the Golden foliage? its silvery grey must sparkle in it’.
This work was Constable’s most important exhibit at the 1823 Royal Academy exhibition and it was well received by critics. However, the passing storm clouds over the cathedral spire, which give movement and contrast to the scene, were not appreciated by the bishop, who may have thought that in presenting the cathedral under a cloud Constable had created an image that reflected the changing attitudes to religion that were current at the time.
In July 1824 the bishop asked Constable to over paint the dark cloud, but rather than doing so he painted a second version for the bishop, a full-scale replica with a sunnier sky, and the trees thinned-out and no longer meeting in an arch above the cathedral spire. It is interesting to note that by this time Constable had employed an assistant, John Dunthorne Junior, to block in the structure of his compositions.
Further information
• Salisbury Cathedral was built between 1220 and 1265, with the tower and spire added at the beginning of the fourteenth century. It is the tallest spire in England, being 123 metres tall. The cathedral is 145 metres long and 70 metres wide, and the height of the interior is 25 metres. About 3 acres of glass were used for the windows and 60 000 tons of Chilmark stone were used in the construction. The view Constable painted in this work was created in the eighteenth century, when the boggy land was drained and an ancient cemetery covered over.