View of Salisbury

In July 1820 Constable was staying in Salisbury again, and on the 12th he drew the whole city from Harnham Hill, the high ground to the south. This small canvas repeats that view, pared down. The river Avon catches the light on the left, and right of centre rises the cathedral spire, at 123 metres the tallest in England. Now find the low, flat-topped mound on the horizon near the middle. That is Old Sarum, where the first cathedral and its town stood until the clergy moved down to the river in the 13th century. By 1820 almost no one lived on that hill, yet it still returned two members to Parliament, and went on doing so until the Reform Act of 1832. The picture came to the Louvre in 1952, left by the London and Paris dealer Percy Moore Turner.