Hadleigh Castle, The Mouth of the Thames—Morning after a Stormy Night

Hadleigh Castle is one of John Constable’s iconic “six-footers,” a series of large exhibition canvases that he began around 1818–19. The painting is a late example of the Romantic taste for ruins, which became popular symbols of the transience of human life and handiwork, as well as emblems of the picturesque and sublime. Other watercolors in this exhibition by Joseph Mallord William Turner and Thomas Girtin offer earlier examples of this aesthetic. However, Constable’s take on the subject is unique: he balances the imposing architectural fragments and the tempestuous sea and sky with the pastoral motifs that dominated his earlier landscapes, such as the shepherd and his herd. A full-size sketch for this composition is at Tate Britain, London; also surviving are three small sketches, one of which is in oil and on display in The Critique of Reason.