{
 "schema": "nephos.method.v1",
 "slug": "constable-weymouth-bay-1816",
 "title": "John Constable, Weymouth Bay (V&A and National Gallery)",
 "urls": [
  "/studies/constable-weymouth-bay-1816"
 ],
 "written": {
  "summary": "Two views of Bowleaze Cove from Constable's honeymoon at Osmington, about mid-October to the end of November 1816: a small oil sketch (V&A, 1816) and a larger canvas (National Gallery, 1816–17).",
  "items": [
   {
    "quote": "The artist must have painted this on the spot, during a sudden spell of stormy weather.",
    "source": "Victoria and Albert Museum, gallery label for Weymouth Bay, 330-1888",
    "url": "https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O17379/weymouth-bay-oil-painting-constable-john-ra/"
   },
   {
    "quote": "Thick clouds scud across the bright winter sky as the Downs slope to the sandy cove and sea.",
    "source": "National Gallery, London, on NG2652",
    "url": "https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/john-constable-weymouth-bay-bowleaze-cove-and-jordon-hill"
   }
  ]
 },
 "records": [
  {
   "name": "Meteorological Diary kept at Exeter",
   "detail": "Barometer, thermometer and the weather in words three times a day, October and November 1816, printed in the Gentleman’s Magazine; 79 km west of the cove. Transcribed by Nephos.",
   "url": "https://archive.org/details/dli.bengal.10689.14207"
  },
  {
   "name": "Central England Temperature",
   "detail": "Daily means from 1772 and monthly from 1659, for ranking the honeymoon weeks against every autumn on record.",
   "url": "https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/"
  },
  {
   "name": "Luke Howard’s London register",
   "detail": "Daily notes on the weather in London for the same weeks, from The Climate of London (1833).",
   "url": "https://archive.org/details/b29350529_0002"
  },
  {
   "name": "Constable’s dated drawings",
   "detail": "V&A drawings dated 11 October (Netley) and 7, 20 and 21 November 1816 (Osmington Bay, Portland, Preston), and Farington’s diary on his return.",
   "url": "https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1041859/"
  }
 ],
 "gaps": [
  "No weather record from Weymouth itself has been found for 1816; Exeter is 79 km west and London 195 km east.",
  "Neither painting is dated to a day.",
  "The full Tate dating argument and Reynolds’s catalogue entry were not accessible; the dating section distinguishes checked snippets from unverified claims."
 ],
 "tests": [
  {
   "claim": "“painted this on the spot, during a sudden spell of stormy weather”, the V&A on its sketch.",
   "result": "The Exeter diary records two squally, rainy spells inside the stay, 26–31 October and 9–14 November 1816, and Howard’s London notes have rain and squalls on several of the same days. The sketch’s own day is not recorded."
  },
  {
   "claim": "“Thick clouds scud across the bright winter sky”, the National Gallery on NG2652.",
   "result": "Fair, cloudy, breezy days run through the diary, among them 20 and 21 November, when Constable dated drawings at Portland and Preston; nothing in the records conflicts with an autumn 1816 sky."
  },
  {
   "claim": "The date of NG2652: painted at Osmington in 1816, or recalled later in London.",
   "result": "The 1819 studio-recollection hypothesis supplies no outdoor session to test. The weather records cannot decide between the dates or explain Constable’s technique."
  }
 ],
 "finding": "Constable’s six weeks at Osmington ran from a mild October into one of the coldest Novembers on record, with two stormy spells and fair, cloudy, breezy days between hard frosts. The broad weather conditions fit that autumn, but the cloud perspective remains untested; the records cannot say whether the larger one was painted then or recalled later.",
 "verdicts": [
  {
   "claim": "The V&A sketch’s storm, on the spot",
   "verdict": "Partially agrees",
   "reason": "Stormy spells are on record inside the stay; the sketch is not dated to a day, and Exeter is 79 km away."
  },
  {
   "claim": "The National Gallery’s bright winter sky",
   "verdict": "Partially agrees",
   "reason": "Fair, cloudy, breezy days are on record in the window; such skies are common in any autumn."
  },
  {
   "claim": "1816 or 1819",
   "verdict": "Unknown",
   "reason": "Weather cannot test a picture recalled in a London studio."
  }
 ],
 "limits": [
  "Central England Temperature describes the English Midlands, not the Dorset coast.",
  "The Exeter diary is transcribed from a worn scan; a few cells are unreadable and are left blank, and its observer and thermometer exposure are unknown.",
  "The National Gallery calls its canvas twice the size of the sketch; the V&A gives the sketch about 20 × 25 cm and the canvas is 53 × 75 cm."
 ]
}