Salisbury Cathedral from the Close

Salisbury Cathedral from the Close at the Victoria and Albert Museum, painted in August 1820, is among Constable's earliest studies of the cathedral from the vantage point that would produce some of his most celebrated exhibition paintings. His August 1820 visit to Archdeacon Fisher at Salisbury was among the most productive of his periodic visits to the cathedral city, and the series of studies he made during this visit established the visual vocabulary for the major Salisbury paintings of the following decade. The Close — the enclosed precinct of buildings surrounding the cathedral — gave him a setting more domestically intimate than the open meadow views: ancient trees framing the spire, the Close's buildings providing foreground architecture. The V&A's dating of this canvas to August 1820 with unusual precision reflects Constable's own habit of careful meteorological and temporal notation, a practice that connected his painting to the scientific observation of natural phenomena that was his most distinctive contribution to European landscape art.

The sketch balances architectural precision with atmospheric spontaneity. Constable renders the cathedral's stone surfaces with subtle variations of warm gray while the surrounding trees are painted with vigorous, broken touches of green.

This oil sketch from August 1820 is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It was made during one of Constable's visits to his close friend Archdeacon John Fisher. The sketch has been stabilized and cleaned. The relatively thin paint layer is in good condition. This study relates to the larger Salisbury Cathedral compositions that Constable developed over the following years.