Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows: the Rainbow

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.”