Sketch at Hampstead: stormy sunset

Sketch at Hampstead: Stormy Sunset at the Victoria and Albert Museum, painted in 1820, belongs to the intensive series of sky studies that Constable made from Hampstead Heath during the early 1820s — arguably the most important meteorological studies in the history of European landscape painting. He moved to Hampstead in 1819 for his family's health, and the elevated ground of the Heath, above the smoke and heat of the city below, gave him an ideal observation point for studying cloud formation, light effects, and atmospheric conditions across the full range of English weather. His 1821–22 letters describe the sky studies as experiments in 'skying' — the systematic investigation of cloud types and their associated light conditions that he pursued with scientific intent. The stormy sunset of this 1820 canvas captures the most dramatic of the atmospheric effects he studied: the orange-red of a sun descending through storm clouds, the dark cumulus formations, the rapidly changing light that could transform a landscape in minutes. These sky studies were made rapidly, sometimes in under an hour, and their freshness and directness were qualities that influenced Delacroix and through him the entire subsequent history of outdoor painting.

Rapid execution captures the fleeting sunset with bold strokes of warm oranges and reds against cooler violet-gray storm clouds. The paint is applied thickly and confidently, wet-into-wet, preserving the urgency of the momentary observation.

This Hampstead sunset sketch from 1820 is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It predates Constable's more systematic sky-study campaign of 1821-1822 but shares the same approach of recording specific atmospheric conditions. The small oil sketch has been stabilized. The bold colors of the sunset are well-preserved. The work retains its spontaneous, observational character.