The transcendent quality of this work is communicated after, what the British Museum calls, “careful and specific observation of the weather.”
They say that a few years prior to this work, Constable had suffered the loss of his wife, Maria, and that he, “occasionally considered a rainbow to be a symbol of resurrection, a thought that may have been comforting as he contemplated his late wife’s favourite view.”
London from Hampstead, with a double rainbow
by John Constable
Date: June, 1831. Medium: Watercolour with scraping out on grey paper.
The British Museum, London, England.