Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Garden

This canvas came to São Paulo in 1951, a gift to an art museum that had opened only four years earlier. Its founder, the newspaper owner Assis Chateaubriand, and its Italian director, Pietro Maria Bardi, were building a European collection in the years after the war. The London art magazines Connoisseur and Apollo had already put it on their covers, and in 1954 it crossed back to England when the young museum showed its collection at the Tate Gallery, where the Constable scholar Andrew Shirley examined it. Constable painted this view from the bishop's garden in Salisbury several times. Shirley argued that this version came first, with handling nearer to The Hay Wain of 1821 and trees that close over more of the sky. The museum follows him and dates it 1821 to 1822, ahead of the version Constable showed at the Royal Academy in 1823.