Hampstead Heath, Stormy Noon, Sand Diggers

For John Constable’s semi-autobiographical collection Characteristics of English Landscape Scenery (1831, 1833), the printmaker David Lucas followed Constable’s instructions in order to coax remarkable tonal effects from mezzotint. This technique renders wet, windy sweeps of rain and cloud, lit with glancing, gleaming light—distinctive features of Constable’s England and of the visual language through which he expressed his love for it. His feeling was already nostalgic in 1831, recalling the East Anglian canals, locks, mills, and farms of his youth from the distance of London. In Hampstead Heath, London dazzles in the distance (at the far center on the horizon), just visible from the heights of a vast suburban heath where sand is dug and carted in an almost rural scene.