Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows: the Rainbow (1834): Artwork and History

Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows: the Rainbow (1834) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as David Lucas (English, 1802-1881) after John Constable (English, 1776-1837).

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

The landscape painter John Constable owned an edition of J. M. W. Turner’s Liber Studiorum, which he famously referred to as the “liber stupidorum,” a critical remark directed at the ambitious size of the undertaking (of which only 71 of the planned 100 plates were finally printed), rather than its artistry. Constable nonetheless employed David Lucas’s considerable printmaking talents to immortalize 22 of his own paintings in mezzotint for a similarly scaled portfolio, English Landscape Scenery. They also collaborated on this larger plate, revising it until Constable’s death, as the artist agonized over every detail, explaining in a letter to Lucas: “If [the rainbow] is not tender—and elegant—evanescent and lovely . . . we are both ruined.”

Object facts

• Title: Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows: the Rainbow
• Date: 1834
• Artist attribution: David Lucas (English, 1802-1881) after John Constable (English, 1776-1837)
• Place of origin: England
• Medium: Mezzotint with etching, in black, on cream wove paper
• Dimensions: Image: 55.2 × 68.9 cm (21 3/4 × 27 3/16 in.); Sheet: 61.6 × 71.2 cm (24 5/16 × 28 1/16 in.)
• Type: Print
• Department: Prints and Drawings
• Reference number: 1929.276

Collection credit

John H. Wrenn Fund

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.