Hampstead Heath with ponds and bathers

This view is a short walk from the Lower Terrace, it looks west over Branch Hill pond towards Harrow. On the reverse an inscription reads "Evening of Coronation, July 19, 1821. Westward by north, cloudy and tempestuous looking but did not turn out so." Constable frequently chose the view over Branch Hill pond for his Hampstead studies.
In the same period he was painting pure sky-studies, where the viewpoint was entirely above the horizon. Given the careful annotation that the artist applied to the skyscape an landscape, there seems little doubt that Constable was a keen amateur meteorologist. Hampstead was the ideal place to work systematically on the integration of sky and land.