Salisbury Cathedral and Leadenhall from the River Avon

Constable painted this outdoors, quickly, during a six-week summer stay in Salisbury in 1820. He and his family were lodging with his close friend John Fisher, an archdeacon, in the house called Leadenhall that stands at the right of the view, inside the cathedral close. You can still see how fast he worked: the warm buff ground he began on is left bare in patches of the sky and the trees, and the leaves are just flicks and dabs of unmixed paint. This was a private study, not a picture to sell or exhibit. It never found a buyer in his lifetime and passed to his daughter Isabel, reaching the National Gallery only in 1910, 90 years after he set it down beside the river.