Vue de la terrasse basse, Hampstead

Constable took lodgings at 2 Lower Terrace in Hampstead for the summers of 1821 and 1822, partly because his wife Maria's health was poor and the village stood well above London's coal smoke. This is the view from that house, looking at the two next door, numbers 4 and 3, with a garden wall and a few trees. The canvas is small, about 25 by 35 centimetres, and the subject is simply where he happened to be living. On the Heath a few minutes up the hill he spent those same months painting studies of sky alone, writing the date, the hour and the wind direction on the back of many of them. The picture stayed in the family for two generations and came to the museum in 1888, with the large group of Constables given by his daughter Isabel.