Weymouth Bay: Bowleaze-Bucht und Jordon Hill

Constable married Maria Bicknell in October 1816, after a long engagement her family had opposed on the grounds that a landscape painter was no match for her. For their honeymoon the couple stayed six weeks with a clergyman friend near Weymouth, on the Dorset coast, and this view comes from that autumn. It looks west across Weymouth Bay to Bowleaze Cove, with the little Jordan stream crossing the beach and Furzy Cliff behind. He worked the scene up in the studio from sketches made on the spot, catching the broad grey sky and the wind coming off the water. It is the middle of three oil versions Constable made of this bay. The largest and most finished of them now hangs in the Louvre in Paris.