His wife's tuberculosis first brought Constable to Hampstead in 1819. It was an ideal place for him to study the cloud formations and weather conditions that had become such an important part of his work, and he made cloud studies such as this one regularly there. These sketches, considered among the most original aspects of his work, gained favour with collectors only after the French painters of the Barbizon school and the Impressionists helped establish a taste for free, loose, and spontaneous ways of working.
