[1] In 1829 when Constable was elected to full membership of the Royal Academy in London he was required to provide a diploma work.

He chose to present his 1826 landscape A Boat Passing a Lock which was owned by his friend the bookseller James Carpenter.

In exchange for Carpenter giving up the work, Constable promised to produce another landscape for him featuring Helmingham.

[4] Today the painting is in the collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri having been acquired in 1955.

[5] Constable had produced an earlier, smaller version of the same view in 1826, a work now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.