Il ponte di Waterloo

The bridge in this view had opened only three years before Constable painted it, on the 18th of June 1817, a date chosen because it fell on the second anniversary of the battle of Waterloo. The Prince Regent came in state to declare it open and much of London turned out along the river. Constable, who usually painted the quiet Suffolk countryside of his childhood, was gripped by this piece of modern city ceremony, and he would wrestle with a huge canvas of the opening day for more than ten years, finally showing it in 1832. This calmer picture from around 1820 is an early stage in that long struggle, looking east down the Thames toward the new bridge, with Somerset House and the dome of Saint Paul's beyond.