Sometimes we've been to a place more than once and we think we've seen it so why go back. But some places try to keep things fresh by adding new things in an attempt to get visitors to come back, indeed to keep coming back, by creating a new thing in an old place. Exhibitions are a good way to do this, an updatable area where new stuff can be curated, ideally several times a year, all of which keeps the shop and the cafe and the donations box ticking over. So it is at Burgh House, an old house in Hampstead which nevertheless always has a programme of new things, indeed more new things than it ever used to have because they've very much slimmed down the 'museum' aspect. It's now much more about local history through local art, and you can't get much more local than beloved landscape painter John Constable who lived in Hampstead for six years and now has a new exhibition here, which is the new thing in an old place I mentioned earlier. What's more the exhibition opened last week on the 250th anniversary of Constable's birth, this of course not in Hampstead but in Suffolk near that pond with the Hay Wain in it, not that it was there at the time.
The exhibition's called Constable in Hampstead and it's in the Wells Room, not the Heath Room where you'll find Women Artists of Hampstead nor the Marie-Louise von Motesickzy Gallery where you'll find the Donald Towner retrospective. Instead you want to head upstairs at the front of the house, not a packed room but with several cases and prints, also one special actually-painted-by-Constable painting. It's Hampstead Heath with Rainbow, although not the actual painting which is at the Tate but an oil study for that painting, and notable for not actually having a rainbow because that was only painted into the final work. The windmill is fictional too, it couldn't have been dramatically lit by cloudbroken sun because it never existed here, it's been transplanted from the Downs near Brighton. Also the Tate doesn't currently have this painting on display so your only chance to see it in all its splodge-painted glory is here in Hampstead where John was no longer living when he painted it.
The room contains other objects like letters Constable wrote when he wasn't very well and couldn't get back to Hampstead near the end of his life, also mezzotints Constable inspired, also a portrait of his doctor's wife in a bonnet, also other objects. It doesn't take too long to look at to be honest but the couple before me managed ten minutes, mostly while critiquing to each other in loud voices before walking through into the adjacent gallery and bitching about the modern art in there. Your trip to Burgh House could still be a long one if you treat the five other exhibitions with the devotion you afford to Constable, for example I liked the bright cheerful takes on Love in the Peggy Jay Gallery out back, but it's also perfectly possible you'll spend most time downstairs in the buttery with a signature fruit scone, indeed it seems most grey-haired Hampstead residents treat Burgh House more as a cafe than a space for culture. To be fair it is a very good cafe but it didn't seem to have changed since last time I frequented it and I was really here to enjoy a new thing in an old place. The Constable micro-retrospective with an NW3 bent continues until mid-September and is free to visit, not every day of the week, if you want to enjoy a new thing in an old place too.
