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View of the City of London from Sir Richard Steele's Cottage, Hampstead, a sketch with inscriptions 'M.L.' [for Maria Louisa Constable] and 'Hampstead S No 929' (on the reverse) oil on paper 51/2 x 8 1/8 in. (14 x 20.7 cm.) PROVENANCE Maria Louisa Constable. Isabel Constable; Christie's, London, 17 June 1892, lot 250 (15 gns to Dowdeswell). with Dowdeswell, London, 1892-3. Anon. sale; Christie's, London, 16 March 1984, lot 43 (œ54,000 to Spink). with Spink, from whom purchased by the present vendor. LITERATURE G. Reynolds, The Later Paintings and Drawings of John Constable, New Haven and London, 1984, pp. 235-6, no. 32.7, illustrated pl. 822. EXHIBITION London, Grosvenor Gallery, A Century of British Art (Second Series) from 1737 to 1837, 1889. London, Dowdeswell, A Collection of Pictures in Oil by Early British Masters, July-August 1893, no. 58. NOTES This is the plein air sketch for Constable's exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1832, Sir Richard Steele's Cottage, Hampstead (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven, Connecticut; Reynolds, op. cit., p. 235, no. 32.6, illustrated pl. 821, see fig.1). The view is taken from what is how Haverstock Hill, looking down Eton Road. Steele's cottage is on the right. Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729), the essayist, dramatist, journalist and Whig politician, chief instigator of and contributor to, with his friend Joseph Addison, the Tatler, 1709-11, and the Spectator, 1711-13, took it as his country cottage in 1712, retiring first to Hereford and then to Carmarthen where he died, in 1724. The exhibited version of this picture was engraved in mezzotint by David Lucas and published in 1845 as a supplement to his nglish Landscape Scenery (A. Shirley, Mezzotints by David Lucas after Constable, 1930, no. 48). This small oil, 81/4 x 111/4 in. (21 x 28.5 cm.), is at the furthest point in size from Constable's chief exhibit of that year, The Opening of Waterloo Bridge seen from Whitehall Stairs, June 18th 1817, 53 x 861/2 in. (134.6 x 219.7 cm.), Tate Britain. (Reynolds, op. cit., pp.233-4, no. 32.1, illustrated in colour pl.819). Reynolds dismisses a larger version of the composition formerly in the collection of Lord Clark as not by Constable. Reynolds, on the grounds that Constable's views of London from Hampstead more usually include the dome of St. Paul's and the valley of the Thames in the distance after Constable took up residence in Well Walk in 1827, dates our sketch to circa 1827-31. In its loose, nervous handling of paint it is particularly close to such an oil sketch as that for Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows in Tate Britain (Reynolds, op. cit, p. 228, no. 31.5, illustrated in colour pl. 799; the finished painting, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1831, no. 169, is Reynolds no. 31.1, illustrated in colour pl. 792).