A Boat passing a Lock

In this painting, a boat waits to enter a lock before moving upstream as threatening rainclouds pass overhead. John Constable captures a momentary weather condition, which animates the painting and dramatises the figure of the lock keeper with his red jacket silhouetted against the horizon. Constable was fascinated by cloud formations and the play of light on the landscape.

The central figure, a man in a red waistcoat holding a large crowbar, is working the mechanism which will open the lower gate and let the water rush in from the lock into the river. Constable wrote to his friend a few years before making this work, “The sound of water escaping from mill-dams, etc., willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork, I love such things…”