Hadleigh Castle, The Mouth of the Thames--Morning after a Stormy Night
Date:
1829
Materials & Techniques:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
48 × 64 3/4 inches (121.9 × 164.5 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1977.14.42
Gallery Label:
One of Constable’s most ambitious compositions, this landscape depicts a fourteenth-century stronghold on the Essex coast where the Thames Estuary widens and meets the sea. The dilapidated structure dominates the otherwise flat marshland, long ago reclaimed by nature and returned to rural use. With characteristic verve, the artist summons a dynamic, windswept scene, with clouds rolling across the sky and shards of sunlight illuminating the dank water below. His evocations of the march of time and the transitory nature of life have been interpreted as expressions of Constable’s grief at the loss of his wife, Maria, who died shortly before he painted this scene. Though he continued his work, he considered himself a ruin without her. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2025
