Old Houses at Harnham Bridge, Salisbury

14/11/1821 · Watercolour · 17.3 × 26.2 cm

Can I see it?

Not on view at present

Where is “Old Houses at Harnham Bridge, Salisbury” now? Collection: Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Not on view at present. Checked September 25, 2026.

Victoria and Albert Museum

London, United Kingdom

It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.

Checked: 16 days ago
In this state since: Sep 25, 2026
Source: The museum

On the map Museum page

About the work

In this watercolour you can see the touches of pure white that are characteristic of Constable's later oil paintings. These may have been the result of retouching in 1831. On the back Constable notes that the retouching was done at Hampstead, on the day after the Coronation of King William IV, which he had attended. He said that he had been ‘eleven hours in the [Westminster] Abbey'.

Constable's grasp of linear perspective is still not perfect, even at this late date in his career. His real interest is in the contrast between light and shadow. Although the watercolour gives more solid blocks of tone than pen or pencil, it is applied with visible diagonal brushstrokes. This gives it a linear quality.

Victoria and Albert Museum

Details

Accession number: 218-1888

What it shows

Arch bridges Landscape Salisbury

In the catalog

Drawings & watercolors Graphite Neoclassicism Romanticism 19th century Great Britain

Sources

Victoria and Albert Museum
Image: Victoria and Albert Museum — © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

In the life of John Constable

The whole life

1821
“The Hay Wain” at the Royal Academy
The picture, shown as “Landscape: Noon”, found no buyer, but it was seen by the painter Théodore Géricault and the writer Charles Nodier. According to Delacroix, Géricault went back to France quite stunned and invited Constable to Paris, while Nodier urged French artists to look to nature rather than to trips to Rome.
1821
Son born: Charles Golding Constable
1821
“I should paint my own places best”
In a letter to his friend John Fisher in 1821 Constable wrote that he should paint his own places best, and that painting is but another word for feeling. The Dedham Vale around his home came to be known as “Constable Country”.
23 October 1821
To Fisher: “I have done a good deal of skying”
Constable wrote to Fisher that he had done a good deal of skying and was determined to conquer all the difficulties that remained. He made cloud studies, noting the weather, direction of light and time of day on the back, and held the sky to be the key note of a landscape, drawing on the meteorologist Luke Howard’s classification of clouds.
1822/1823
Daughter born: Isabel Constable