Rainstorm over the Sea

In the spring of 1824 Constable's wife Maria was ill with tuberculosis, and the family moved to Brighton for the sea air. He stayed mostly in London and came down whenever he could. He did not care for the town. Brighton, he wrote to his friend John Fisher, a clergyman, was the receptacle of the fashion and offscouring of London, and there was nothing there for the painter but the breakers and the sky. So he painted those, sitting on the beach with his paint box on his knees and a sheet of paper pinned inside the lid. This small sketch is one of the most dramatic. He left out almost all the boats and figures he usually put in, keeping a black cloud, a curtain of rain and one shaft of sunlight breaking through. The flat lines across the sea were scratched into the wet paint, probably with the end of the brush. His daughter Isabel gave it to the Royal Academy in 1888.