John Constable & the Hampstead Romantics – Artist-guided Anniversary Walk  New Walk!

John Constable painting of Branch Hill Pond, Hampstead, with dramatic sky, rainbow arching over a rural landscape and distant windmill

There’s something about anniversaries. We pretend they’re arbitrary. Just dates on a calendar. But they’re not.

They’re returns. The year comes round. The light is the same. The air feels the same. And something in us answers to it.

Which is why marking an occasion on its day doesn’t feel like an indulgence. It feels… right.

Ok, some nuts and bolts now.

The period of cultural history we call the Romantic era in the first half of the nineteenth century produced artists and writers with a passionate individualism for which a love of nature was often the catalyst. Many lived and worked in Hampstead.

John Constable, looking out at us as a young man – the great painter of the English landscape, who taught us, in his own way, that we don’t just look… we see

June the 11th 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of Constable’s birth.Though born in rural Suffolk, Hampstead, this village on the outskirts of London became his home from home. The walk will revisit many of the actual locations  that inspired  some of John Constable’s  greatest paintings. Compare the portfolio of reproductions of his masterpieces (provided by your guide Matthew Devereaux, who is also a landscape painter) to the actual scenes today.

Hampstead Heath on a winter morning – a winding path, bare branches etched against the sky, and London shimmering in the distance, the city never far from its countryside edge

“How did he achieve that dramatic angle?” – “Is that the town of Harrow- on-the-hill in the blue distance?”  A chance to be an art detective.  (A “3-D” immersive  experience!)

An August afternoon on Hampstead Heath – light lingering on the water, sky opening out above the fields, and London held at a quiet, contemplative distance

And then later this summer – August 25th – we’ll be marking the breakthrough moment in John Constable’s career. It’s the anniversary of The Haywain being exhibited at the Paris salon and winning admiration from the likes of Delacroix and a gold medal from the King of France. And, splendidly, wonderfully, there’s an important Hampstead connection. It’s almost a secret. But Matthew unearthed it. And he’ll put you in the picture, so to speak.

Haverstock Hill, Hampstead – Constable’s London seen from the country, a carriage on the rise, village life in the foreground, and St Paul’s floating on the horizon beyond

And for good measure – let’s call it the third panel in this walk’s tryptich – we’ll walk over Hampstead Heath in the footsteps of visionary poet and painter, William Blake. And hear John Keats‘  Ode To a Nightingale recited in the leafy grove where it was conceived. Learn about the lives of these phenomenal people, and why Hampstead became their muse.

We predict it may become yours too!

It ALL COMES DOWN TO THE GUIDING