1834
watercolor
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
Dominant colour
Old Sarum is a 1834 watercolor by John Constable, a Romanticism work, held at Victoria and Albert Museum.
John Constable painted Old Sarum in watercolour in 1834. It’s a quiet landscape of a place he knew well. He rarely traveled just to paint. This spot had been ruins for centuries, so artists liked it for its worn, wild look. Constable visited his friend John Fisher in Salisbury. He made this while staying there. The place was already famous with painters before him. Look up the Victoria and Albert Museum to see this work in person.
Constable’s 1834 watercolour depicts the ruined earthworks and surrounding landscape of Old Sarum near Salisbury, a site long reduced to a grassy mound by the 16th century. The composition combines sweeping cloud-studded skies with scattered foliage, distant fields, and a solitary figure accompanied by a dog in the foreground. Painted during his final visit to his friend John Fisher in Salisbury, the work reflects the picturesque and Romantic taste for decaying ruins and wild scenery.
Read the full account in the museum source.
John Constable (; 11 June 1776 – 31 March 1837) was an English landscape painter in the Romantic tradition.
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