Weymouth Bay: Bowleaze Cove and Jordon Hill

Weymouth Bay: Bowleaze Cove and Jordon Hill, painted in 1816 and now at the National Gallery, was made during Constable's honeymoon with Maria at Osmington on the Dorset coast. The broad sweep of the bay — pebble beach extending to distant chalk cliffs, the sea stretching to the horizon, the enormous sky dominating the composition — represented a complete departure from the enclosed river valleys of his Suffolk subject matter, and its success suggests that he found the coastal openness liberating. The marriage had been hard won against the sustained opposition of Maria's grandfather, the Reverend Dr Rhudde, who considered Constable insufficiently prosperous; the atmosphere of happy release evident in the painting carries the joy of a major obstacle finally overcome. The near absence of human figures — a boat far distant on the sea's surface — gives the composition a solitary grandeur unusual in his work, the landscape experienced as an elemental presence rather than a populated working environment. Turner had painted the Dorset coast in his early career; Constable's treatment is characteristically more intimate and meteorologically specific.

The broad, panoramic composition gives prominence to the sky, which occupies fully two-thirds of the canvas. Constable's naturalistic rendering of the clouds and the quality of coastal light demonstrates his extraordinary sensitivity to atmospheric conditions.