Der Kettensteg, Brighton

Constable did not much like Brighton. He came only because his wife Maria was ill with the consumption that would kill her, and doctors had sent her to the sea air. Through the mid-1820s he visited often and filled sketchbooks, yet he found the resort itself vulgar, all fashion and bustle and off-scourings from London. This is the one large painting he made of the place. He shows the crowded beach against Brighton's new hotels and terraces, and the Chain Pier of 1823 reaching out over the water, a novelty barely older than his visits. He exhibited it in 1827. The pier he recorded here stood until a storm tore it away in 1896.