National Gallery of Australia | Audio Tour | Constable

Introduction

Hampstead was popular with artists and writers in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, who sought the refuge of the countryside within close reach of London. This is one of a number of views from Hampstead, with London and the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral visible in the distance, painted after Constable moved with his family to live at Well Walk, Hampstead in 1827. He probably based this work on a smaller outdoor study of the subject (private collection)that he painted soon after his arrival at the Well Walk house.The animated sky in this work complements the uncultivated landscape of the Heath. The energy of the sky and expansive view of the Heath also convey the power of nature. Constable reported to Fisher that the view from the drawing room window of the house in Well Walk was: unequalled in Europe – from Westminster Abbey to Gravesend. The dome of St Paul’s in the air, realizes Michael Angelo’s idea on seeing that of the Pantheon – ‘I will build such a thing in the sky’ (Beckett VI, p. 231).

This was Constable’s last major painting of the Stour Valley, his definitive treatment of a favourite subject, which summed up his personal affection for the place and his lifelong devotion to the example of Claude Lorrain. A relaxing holiday in Suffolk in the autumn of 1827 with his two eldest children had refreshed his associations with the area and may have motivated him to begin painting this work. On 11 June 1828 he wrote to John Fisher that he had ‘Painted a large upright landscape (perhaps my best)’ (Beckett IV, p. 236). Constable depicted the Dedham Vale framed by trees, looking eastwards from Gun Hill, down along the course of the River Stour towards the sea, with the tower of Dedham Church and the village in the middle distance, and Harwich beyond. For this composition he returned to his early painting, Dedham Vale 1802 (Victoria and Albert Museum, London), intensifying the detail of the 1802 study by including the bridge across the river with the Talbooth on the right bank. He added the old stump sprouting new growth in the left foreground as a compositional invention to direct attention to the distant landscape, and as a symbol of regeneration. Constable’s inclusion of the figure of a gypsy mother nursing her child beside a fire has been criticised as a concession to the taste for the Picturesque. Charles Rhyne, however, noted that according to an ordnance survey map a well was located in this area, and that this would have made it a natural camping site for gypsies (C. Rhyne, ‘Constable’s first two six-foot landscapes’, Studies in the History of Art, vol. 24, Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1990, p. 129). Reynolds also noted that gypsies were frequently to be seen in East Anglia and that the inclusion of this detail does not infringe Constable’s rule that only actual or probable figures should appear in his landscape paintings. By including the gypsy mother and child in this painting Constable enlivened the image, with the gypsy’s red cloak providing a contrast to the green of the vegetation. Moreover, Suffolk had been affected by the agricultural depression and social unrest during the 1820s, and the gypsy may reflect the instability of rural life at this time, and Constable’s sympathy with the cause of ordinary people. In his use of a vertical format and in his composition Constable hinted at Claude’s Landscape with Hagar and the Angel 1646, a work he had admired since he first made a copy of it at Sir George Beaumont’s London house around 1800 (Beckett II, p. 24). He saw the way this scene fitted a Claudian pattern and used Claude’s method of suggesting depth through overlapping scenery. In thus paying homage to Claude, Constable also indicated that his own work was worthy of comparison with Claude’s. Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams have suggested that Beaumont’s gift of Landscape with Hagar and the Angel to the newly opened National Gallery, London, in 1826, and Beaumont’s death in 1827, may have inspired Constable to paint this work as a personal tribute to him and to their shared love of Claude Lorrain (Tate 1976, p. 152). Constable looked at landscape through the art of the past to create his own unique vision. He painted the natural detail of the location in a quite original fashion, using paint brush, palette knife and his fingers to give variety to the application of paint. He used translucent colour to give luminosity to the shadows. He created a sense of the feel of the place – the white-topped clouds suggesting summer sunshine, the flickering leaves indicating wind in the trees, and the light glistening on the ground hinting at rain that has just past. As Timothy Wilcox has observed, ‘the work that had begun in deference to Claude now appears designed to rival him, or even to surpass him’ (Liverpool and Edinburgh 2000, p. 108). The painting was well received at the Royal Academy when Constable exhibited it there in 1828 (as ‘Landscape’). The reviewer for the The Sun provided a narrative reading, observing that ‘A shower has just passed over’, and suggesting that ‘The gleaming water in the distance is inimitable’ (The Sun, 5 May 1828, cit. Ivy 1991, p. 127). Constable subsequently exhibited the painting at the British Institution in 1834 (as ‘The Stour Valley’) when one critic commented: We must consider this picture as one of the best which we remember to have seen from Mr. Constable’s pencil. It is a work of great power both of colour and light and shade, and is executed with considerable freedom and dexterity of execution (The Morning Post, 10 March 1834, cit. Ivy 1991, pp.186–87). More recently Michael Rosenthal has described this work as ‘one of Constable’s greatest paintings’ (Rosenthal 1983, p. 188).

Throughout his life Constable was devoted to the work of Claude Lorrain (1604/5–1682) – from around 1800, when he first admired the paintings by Claude in Sir George Beaumont’s collection (Beckett II, p. 24), to June 1836, a year before his death, when he praised ‘the inimitable Claude’ in a lecture he presented to the Royal Institution. He described him as ‘the most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw’, and declared that in Claude’s landscape ‘all is lovely – all amiable – all is amenity and repose; the calm sunshine of the heart’ (Beckett, Discourses, pp. 52–53). In Landscape with goatherd and goats, after Claude Constable painted a faithful copy of one of Claude’s paintings in Beaumont’s collection. He made the copy slightly larger than the original, but conveyed the spirit of Claude’s original – following it closely in composition and colouring. However Constable adopted a personal approach, as Ursula Hoff has noted, when using impasto to paint the waterfall and in his use of tonal contrast and his texture of paint (U. Hoff, ‘A Constable landscape after Claude’, Art Gallery of New South Wales Quarterly, July 1962, p. 112). Constable’s early admiration for the Claude painting was noted in Joseph Farington’s diary, where he recorded that, in around 1800, after studying the painting at Beaumont’s London house, Constable had spoken of his enthusiasm for the work, which he referred to at different times as ‘the little wood scene’ and ‘the little Grove’: ‘[he] prefers the little wood scene of Claude to all others’ (Farington, Diary IV, p. 1527). On 19 October 1823 Constable expressed his intention to make this copy during his stay at Beaumont’s country house, Coleorton, in Leicestershire, writing to John Fisher: ‘If I can find time to copy the little Grove, by Claude Lorraine (evidently a study from nature), it will much help me’ (Beckett VI, p. 139). On 2 November he had begun the painting and wrote again to Fisher: I have likewise begun the little Grove by Claude – a noon day scene – which ‘warms and cheers but which does not inflame or irritate’ … [It] diffuses a life & breezy freshness into the recess of trees which make it enchanting (ibid., pp. 142–43). On 5 November he mentioned the painting again when he wrote to his wife Maria: I have a little Claude in hand, a grove scene of great beauty and I wish to make a nice copy from it to be usefull to me as long as I live. It contains almost all that I wish to do in landscape’ (Beckett II, p. 295) And on 26 November he wrote: ‘My … little copy of Claude is only done this morning & it is beautifull & all wet so that I could hardly bring it with me’ (ibid., p. 305). Constable regarded his copies of Claude’s work as ‘great delights’ that brought him closer to Claude. He saw them as lasting remembrances from which he could ‘drink at again & again’ (Beckett VI, pp. 71 and 142). Sir George Beaumont gave Claude’s original painting, Landscape with a goatherd and goats c.1636, to the National Gallery, London, in 1826.

In the mezzotint, Spring, Constable and Lucas aimed to capture the dry quality of the paint of Constable’s oil sketch of this subject: Spring: East Bergholt Common c.1821 or 1829 . Constable wanted his print to ‘give some idea of one of those bright and animated days of the early year, when all nature bears so exhilarating an aspect’ (Beckett, Discourses, p. 14), and in the list of contents for English Landscape it was called Spring. East Bergholt Common, Hail Squalls. – Noon. In his text for the plate Constable referred to the range of colour of spring foliage and the importance of clouds in forecasting weather. He noted that: the clouds accumulate in very large and dense masses, and from their loftiness seem to move but slowly; immediately upon these large clouds appear numerous opaque patches, which, however, are only small clouds passing rapidly before them … These floating much nearer the earth, may perhaps fall in with a much stronger current of wind, which as well as their comparative lightness, causes them to move with greater rapidity (ibid., pp. 14–15). Lucas had probably begun work on this plate by September 1829 (Beckett IV, p. 322). He made many changes to the plate, making at least eight progress proof variations during the process, before producing the published state.

This is the same state as the previous work, however it has been printed with less ink and the image is therefore lighter. It may have been a later printing after the ink on the plate had been reduced. In this progress proof there are only a few stones in the foreground; the ploughman’s legs, the wheels of the plough, the horses and the mill sails are black; the low hills behind the plough are dark, and the contrasts in the sky are very sharp. All these details changed in subsequent proofs.

Constable touched this proof with Chinese ink to show Lucas that he wanted additional rooks in the sky and foreground, more stones and re-grounding in the foreground and lower windows on the mill.

In this progress proof the rooks are larger and clearer than in previous proofs. The ploughman’s legs have been clearly defined and there is a new shadow in the foreground. The trees have greater definition. Heysen owned a progress proof of Spring (Shirley 7 h) and remarked: ‘I am particularly impressed with “Spring” … – of course I love them all – for each has its own particular merits ... Spring – I have always thought a particularly lovely & happy thing’ (Heysen 1947).

In the mezzotint, Spring, Constable and Lucas aimed to capture the dry quality of the paint of Constable’s oil sketch of this subject: Spring: East Bergholt Common c.1821 or 1829 (cat. 31). Constable wanted his print to ‘give some idea of one of those bright and animated days of the early year, when all nature bears so exhilarating an aspect’ (Beckett, Discourses, p. 14), and in the list of contents for English Landscape it was called Spring. East Bergholt Common, Hail Squalls. – Noon. In his text for the plate Constable referred to the range of colour of spring foliage and the importance of clouds in forecasting weather. He noted that: the clouds accumulate in very large and dense masses, and from their loftiness seem to move but slowly; immediately upon these large clouds appear numerous opaque patches, which, however, are only small clouds passing rapidly before them … These floating much nearer the earth, may perhaps fall in with a much stronger current of wind, which as well as their comparative lightness, causes them to move with greater rapidity (ibid., pp. 14–15). Lucas had probably begun work on this plate by September 1829 (Beckett IV, p. 322). He made many changes to the plate, making at least eight progress proof variations during the process, before producing the published state.

This is one of the earliest of a number of Constable’s 1821 cloud studies in which he included a margin of land or treetops along the bottom of the image. Here he depicted the sunlight catching the tops of the small cumulus clouds, using long, sweeping brushstrokes in the upper right to express the movement of the clouds in the wind. There is good agreement between Constable’s inscription and the weather records for the London area on that day, which suggest it was a fine day with some cloud, warm temperatures and high humidity. The streets of small cumulus clouds are typical of a light westerly wind (Thornes 1999, pp. 224–25). On 17 October 1820 Constable painted his first known dated oil sketch at Hampstead in which he recorded weather effects, Sketch at Hampstead, stormy sunset (Victoria and Albert Museum, London).He continued his systematic study of changing skies over the following two years. On 23 October 1821 he wrote to John Fisher: I have done a good deal of skying– I am determined to conquer all difficulties and that most arduous one among the rest, & now talking of skies – …That Landscape painter who does not make his skies a very material part of his composition – neglects to avail himself of one of his greatest aids.Sir Joshua Reynolds, speaking of the ‘Landscape’ of Titian& Salvator & Claude– says ‘Even their skies seem to sympathise with the Subject’ …It will be difficult to name a class of Landscape,in which the sky is not the‘key note’ – the standard of ‘Scale’, and the chief ‘Organ of sentiment’… The sky is the ‘source of light’ in nature – and governs every thing. Even our common observations on the weather of every day, are suggested by them but it does not occur to us (Beckett VI, pp. 76–77). Constable considered that: ‘Nature is never seen, in this climate at least, to greater perfection than at about nine o’clock in the mornings of July and August, when the sun has gained sufficient strength to give splendour to the landscape, :still gemmed with the morning dew”’, without its oppressive heat; and it is still more delightful if vegetation has been refreshed with a shower during the night’ (Beckett, Discourses, p. 17).Although he painted this sketch a little later in the day – between 10 and 11 am, and in early September – Constable has captured the freshness of the morning sky. As with this work, Constable painted many of his cloud studies in about an hour. His reference here to ‘rain in the night following’ indicates that the inscription was added a day or so after ‘Sepr 11’, and that in making these cloud studies he was not only interested in weather conditions at the time of painting, but also the weather before and after that time. He was interested in changing conditions, in fluctuating moments, shifting effects of light and shade – and how these impacted on a landscape.

This spectacular oil sketch looking directly out to sea is one of the most remarkable open air sketches that Constable painted during his visits to Brighton. He depicted a dramatic sky, capturing the fleeting effect of a rainstorm at sea, with thunderous black clouds, and with a shaft of sunlight breaking through to light up the horizon on the left. Fisher wrote to Constable about his Brighton sketches, comparing them to the writing of William Paley in his Sermons and suggesting that they were ‘full of vigour, and nature, fresh, original, warm from the observation of nature’ (Beckett VI, p. 196). In his biography on Constable, Andrew Shirley observed that Constable’s sketches: ‘convey an extraordinary force of emotion’ and that in this work in particular he captured ‘the transient rainstorm, tremendous but with a gleam of light, seized in a moment’ (Shirley 1949, pp. 22–21).

Constable first achieved success (and recognition by the Royal Academy) with his large canvases depicting the Stour Valley, which he exhibited between 1819 and 1825. Working on a scale usually reserved for History painting, Constable redefined the notion of a ‘finished’ picture by giving his large paintings something of the spontaneous freedom and expressive handling of a rapidly painted sketch. During the 1820s Constable was repeatedly occupied with the motif of the Lock – it could be regarded as his favourite subject. In 1824 he exhibited the fifth in his series of six large Stour Valley paintings at the Royal Academy, ‘A boat passing a lock’, which he subsequently called The lock (Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection on loan to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid). It differed from the previous four large canvases in having a vertical format. Constable made at least two other upright versions of the subject in 1824 (Philadelphia Museum and Art Gallery, and private collection). Then, in this painting, he converted the vertical composition into a horizontal one, extending the scene to the right and varying the action. Here a boat with a sail on its way up the River Stour waits at Flatford Lock. The boat is tied to a post while the lock keeper opens the gates to allow it to enter the lock chamber, to be lifted to the higher water level before continuing its journey up river. Constable created an open composition, with Flatford Bridge and a further lock gate and a barge in the background on the right. He depicted a heavy rainstorm on the left, and included a dog in the foreground at the right. The composition was based on two drawings with a horizontal format, Flatford Lock 1823 and Flatford Lock c.1826 . Constable took the rainstorm from an oil sketch of 1819, Branch Hill Pond, Hampstead (Victoria and Albert Museum, London), which herepeated with variations on several occasions, including Branch Hill Pond, Hampstead Heath, with a boy sitting on a bank c.1825–28 . Sarah Cove, who has undertaken a detailed technical examination of this picture, ‘discovered via X-ray that the arms of the lock keeper were originally raised, as in every previous version of the lock keeper’ (Sarah Cove to Anne Lyles, 12 September 2005, NGA file 04/0501–04). The painting was commissioned in 1826 by the Bond Street picture dealer, print and book publisher, James Carpenter. While working on the commission Constable wrote to Carpenter: ‘I have been at the picture ever since I saw you & it is now all over wet – I was at work on it at 7 o clock this morning – and I should have been at it still’. He added: ‘I wish your picture was as good as Claude Lorraine’ (Beckett IV, p. 138). Two years after painting this work Constable borrowed it back from Carpenter and re-worked it. He then exhibited this painting at the British Institution in 1829 under the title ‘Landscape and Lock’. When he was elected a full member of the Royal Academy in 1829 Constable was expected to present a work to the Academy. Such was the value he placed on this painting that he took it back from Carpenter and presented it to the Academy, depositing 100 guineas with a banker until he compensated Carpenter with a work of the same size.

Throughout his working life Constable was inspired by the work of other artists. Rubens was one of a number whose work he viewed in English collections, and admired. In a lecture delivered late in his life Constable remarked that ‘Rubens delighted in phenomena – rainbows upon a stormy sky, – bursts of sunshine, – moonlight, – meteors, – and impetuous torrents mingling their sound with wind and wave’ (Beckett, Discourses, p. 61). In this small poetic night time view Constable may have been influenced by Rubens’s Landscape by moonlight (Courtauld Institute Galleries, Princes Gate Collection), which he knew through the engraving after this painting by Schelte à Bolswert (of which he owned an impression). He echoed the outline of the trees, the stars, the horse, the moon,but diverted from Rubens’s image in not including the moon’s reflection in the stream. Constablemay have viewed Rubens’s painting in the collection of John William Willett, who owned it from 1801 until 1813. However he presented the scene as in the engraving, with the clump of trees on the left, rather than on the right as in the painting. The reversed image suggests that Constable made his painting after Bolswert’s engraving rather than after the Rubens painting. (H. Braham and R. Bruce-Gardner, ‘Rubens’s “Landscape by moonlight”’, Burlington Magazine, CXXX, August 1988, pp. 588–90).

In 1812 Constable preferred to paint at the day’s end rather than in the bright light of the middle of the day. As he wrote to Maria Bicknell on 10 July 1812: ‘I do not study much abroad in the middle of these very hot bright days. I am become quite carefull of myself, last year I almost put my eyes out by that pastime’ (Beckett II, p. 80). This oil sketch, and Autumnal sunset , are two of a small group of sunsets that Constable painted at this time.

Constable knew this scene well: the Stour Valley from just outside the grounds of Old Hall in East Bergholt, with the churches of Langham and Stratford St Mary villages in the distance. He depicted the ploughmen at work in a manner typical of Suffolk, using a swing plough, which was light and required only a single ploughman and two horses working side by side (rather than a team of four), considered to be an efficient, modern mode of ploughing, contributing to the productivity of the area (Rosenthal 1983, pp. 18–19). And he depicted a ‘summerland’, a field that was ploughed and harrowed in the spring, left fallow over the summer months as part of a two-year crop rotation system, ready for manuring in autumn and sowing in winter (ibid., p. 12). The contemporary farmer or countryman would have appreciated this image of agricultural life of Suffolk (Rosenthal, p. 21). Constable exhibited this first version of the subject at the Royal Academy in 1814 and at the British Institution in 1815, from where it was purchased by John Allnutt, a Clapham wine merchant and collector. As a result of this sale Constable was encouraged to pursue his career as a painter. Beckett has suggested that ‘in Constable’s memory such scenes were gilded with the light of eternal summer and the picture stood for a symbol’ (R.B. Beckett, ‘A Summerland by John Constable’, Art Quarterly, XXVII, summer 1964, p. 176). Constable certainly stressed the poetic aspect of the landscape, linking it to an established literary and pictorial tradition. In the 1814 Royal Academy catalogue, the entry for this work had an accompanying quotation from Robert Bloomfield’s The Farmer’s Boy – a long, 1500-line, four-part poem in heroic couplets composed between 1796–98 and published in 1800. This poem pointed to the solitary nature of the ploughman’s work: But, unassisted through each toilsome day, With smiling brow the Ploughman cleaves his way. In making this reference to poetry Constable implied that the image was not just of a particular place, but also expressed a more general mood and atmosphere, the ‘feel of nature’. Bloomfield was a ‘peasant poet’ of Suffolk, whose work appealed to Constable. He stressed the virtues of honest, hard farming life. Albert Boime has suggested that Bloomfield’s vision of farming life ‘appealed to the gentry, who identified themselves with his nostalgia for a bucolic past and his moralising posture on rural labour’ (A. Boime, Art in an Age of Bonapartism 1800–1815, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990, p. 174). Commentators have questioned whether Constable was sympathetic to the ‘toilsome’ labour of the workers in the field, or whether he had a more conservative view and simply saw them as part of the scene. Certainly, he portrayed this scene from a high vantage point so that the ploughmen seem to merge into the natural elements, small figures within the landscape (Rosenthal 1983, pp. 71–82). In a letter to John Dunthorne senior of 22 February 1814, Constable wrote aboutthis painting: I have added some ploughmen to the landscape from the park pales which is a great help, but I must try and warm the picture a little more if I can. But it will be difficult as ’tis now all of a piece – it is bleak and looks as if there would be a shower of sleet, and that you know is too much the case with my things(Beckett I, p. 101). Constable based this view over the Stour Valley on drawings in his 1813 sketchbook. He also referred to his sketches of ploughmen in this sketchbook. With the inclusion of the figures of the ploughmen he not only added a point of interest but made the scene an agricultural landscape, celebrating country life. This version of A ploughing scene in Suffolk was used as the basis for the mezzotint A summerland engraved by David Lucas .Constable made a second painting of the subject, A ploughing scene in Suffolk (A summerland) c.1824.

Constable painted two cloud studies at Hampstead on 6 September: this one at noon, and another between 12.00 and 1.00 o’clock (private collection). TimothyWilcox hassuggested that it would have been difficult for Constable to paint the two works in such quick succession, and that the hot and fine weather in this work is inconsistent with ‘the look of rain all morning’ inscribed on the second work. He has proposed that ‘noon’ may indicate the afternoon, rather than midday (Liverpool and Edinburgh 2000, p. 84). There is good agreement between Constable’s inscription here and the weather records for the London area on that day, with the temperature in the low 70s and a gentle wind (Thornes 1999, p. 267).

Timothy Wilcox has suggested that ‘the central cloud is one of the most convincingly three-dimensional’ to be found in the sky studies ‘and that it is fully modelled in a range of colours and tones from its warm grey underside to the icy highlights crowning its upper edge’ (Liverpool and Edinburgh 2000, p. 84)

Constable noted the times of day on his drawings and oil sketches throughout his working life. This watercolour is a splendid example of his late work, reflecting his interest in scientific observation and in particular the optics surrounding the appearance of rainbows. His understanding of rainbows is evident in the way he showed the colours of the outer, or secondary arc reversed, with red on the inside and blue on the outside, as these would appear in nature (P. Schweitzer, ‘John Constable, rainbow science, and English Color Theory’, Art Bulletin, vol. 64, no. 3, September 1982, pp. 426–27). Constable was also fascinated by the effects of shafts of sunlight, as C.R. Leslie recorded: I remember that he pointed out to me an appearance of the sun’s rays, which few artists have perhaps noticed … When the spectator stands with his back to the sun, the rays may be sometimes seen converging in perspective towards the opposite horizon (Leslie (1843/45) 1951, p. 282).

When his good friend and patron, Bishop Fisher of Salisbury died in 1825, Constable decided to paint an elegiac work in his memory. He chose to depict the church of St Mary the Virgin at Langham, where Fisher had been rector when Constable met him in 1798. Constable compressed a view of the church with the image of a nearby farmhouse. The picture he called ‘The Glebe Farm’. Constable depicted the view along a valley with water in the foreground, where a cow is drinking, tall trees to the left and the farmhouse beside the church tower on a hill to the right. He based the farmhouse on a small oil sketch from nature he had made around 1811–15, Church Farm, Langham (Victoria and Albert Museum, London). The sketch does not include Langham Church. Although it has been suggested that the church would have been out of sight behind the farmhouse when viewed from this angle, Anne Lyles has recently shown the author that this is not the case.The image of Glebe Farm was a favourite with Constable, and he painted four versions between 1826 and 1830 (the first version now held by the Detroit Institute of the Arts, and the other three held by the Tate, London). Constable wrote to the Bishop’s nephew, John Fisher, on 9 September 1829 about his first version of The Glebe Farm 1826–27: ‘My last landscape [is] a cottage scene – with the Church of Langham – the poor bishops first living … It is one of my best – very rich in colour – & fresh and bright – and I have “pacified it” – so that it gains much by that tone & solemnity’ (Beckett VI, pp. 223–24). This second version of The Glebe Farm once belonged to Constable’s friend and biographer, C.R. Leslie. Leslie told Constable that he liked it so much he did not think it needed another touch, and Constable gave it to him in early 1830 with the foliage, tree trunks and other details ‘unfinished’. Constable had painted in the pitcher beside the pool, but not the country girl who would have been there to fill it and who appears in the third version (Tate, London). The tall thin tree in the foreground is not present in other versions of the subject. On 8 December 1836 Constable wrote to Leslie: ‘This is one of the pictures on which I rest my little pretensions to futurity’ (Beckett III, p. 144).

Malvern Hall, Solihull, Warwickshire, was the home of Henry Greswolde Lewis, a wealthy widower who offered Constable a number of commissions over a period of twenty years. Constable was first a guest at Malvern Hall in 1809, when he painted portraits of his host and of Lewis’s ward, Mary Freer. Constable had met Lewis through Magdalene, the Dowager Countess of Dysart, Lewis’s sister, who had grown up at Malvern Hall. In 1820 she asked Constable to paint views of the house from both sides. He visited the house in September that year and painted this full-size preparatory sketch of the entrance, or garden front of the house as viewed from the east. He painted it with the liveliness of an outdoor sketch created directly in front of the motif, with the support clearly visible in some areas. He also made a pencil drawing of the subject on the spot, dated 10 September 1820. After his return to London he painted a pair of views for Lady Dysart – one (now in the collection of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts) showing Malvern Hall from the garden front, as in this work, and the other as seen from across the park and mirrored in the lake (R.B. Beckett, ‘Constable at Malvern Hall’, Connoisseur Year Book 1959, pp. 81–83). This work is an example of Constable’s ventures into country house portraiture. Yet he did not paint an architectural monument, he painted a work in which the garden dominates and the house is a background feature in the landscape. When he exhibited another painting of a country house, Englefield House, at the Royal Academy in 1833, a colleague remarked that ‘it was only a picture of a house, and ought to have been put into the Architectural Room’. Constable replied that it was ‘a picture of a summer morning, including a house’ (Beckett IV, p. 254). Malvern Hall appears to reflect comparable priorities.

This painting is the second version of A ploughing scene in Suffolk (A summerland). The owner of the first version of 1814 , John Allnutt, a Clapham wine merchant and collector, became unhappy with the sky in his painting and asked another artist, John Linnell, to overpaint it. Some years later, around 1825, Allnutt admitted: ‘I was foolish enough’ to have Constable’s original sky ‘obliterated’ and that, ‘though extremely beautiful’, the new sky ‘did not quite harmonize with the other parts of the picture’ (Beckett I, p. 83). He asked Constable to restore the original sky and, ‘if he could do it without injury to the picture’ reduce the height of the painting to match another work in his collection (Augustus Callcott, Open landscape: Sheep grazing c.1812, York City Art Gallery). Graciously, Constable took back Allnutt’s pictureand painted a second and slightly smaller version for him – this painting. He did this free of charge because he was grateful to Allnutt for ‘buying the first picture he ever sold to a stranger’ (Beckett I, p. 83). Constable, or his assistant Dunthorne, made extensive underdrawing on this canvas, working directly from the 1814 original, following the first version closely. He gave this painting a cooler tonality, and added the rain falling in the distance. Ian St John has suggested that the bird hovering in the sky is ‘a bird of prey such as a kestrel or sparrowhawk, birds still common in the vale’ (St John 2005, p. 31). The work was finished before January 1825 when Allnutt visited Constable’s studio to view the new version. Allnutt visitedagain the following year, when he brought a present of three sorts of a particularly beautiful ultramarine, which was a generous gift, as the pigment was a rare luxury. In October 1826 Constable visited Allnutt at Clapham and spent an enjoyable day with the Allnutt family, viewing their picture collection and taking a walk on Clapham Common. He wrote in his journal on his return that ‘Nothing could be more polite & kind’, and observed that ‘the truth is I could find that he has been much imposed on by artists in general – & that he was pleased with my conduct’ (Beckett I, p. 85). After Constable’s death Allnutt continued to purchase his works, including pictures from the Constable sale in 1838: Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Grounds 1820(National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa) and Helmington Dell 1830 (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Kansas City, Missouri)(Beckett I, p. 85).

Constable was as keen to copy Claude’s drawings as he was to make facsimiles of Claude’s paintings. This is a copy of a drawing by Claude that belonged to the artist and President of the Royal Academy, Sir Thomas Lawrence (its present whereabouts unknown). Constable not only followed Claude’s image but, as Michael Kitson has observed: he ‘mimics the French artist’s handling of the pen … uses the same ink and has executed the drawing on old paper’ (M. Kitson, ‘John Constable at the Tate’, Burlington Magazine, CXIII, April 1976, p. 251).

Constable used expressive brushstrokes to create this lively image of village life. The view is from an upper floor window at the front of his family home. He made a direct and immediate representation of the scene before him, depicting an avenue of stalls lining the street and a troop of travelling players performing on a stage in the middle of the green. This is one of a number of oil sketches from nature that Constable painted in 1811, which are full of energy and present a fresh impression of their subjects. In Constable’s time the East Bergholt fair took place on the village green annually on Wednesday and Thursday in the last week of July. In 1872, however, the fair was abolished by court order because for a number of years stallholders had overstayed their welcome by continuing to trade after the two days of the fair (St John 2002, p. 8).

In this evening view over the fields a man and a woman walk down the ancient path connecting East Bergholt with the neighbouring village of Stratford St Mary. The figure on a horse is about to descend the farm track to Vale Farmhouse (St John 2002, p. 7). Constable has shown the sun glowing across the undulating landscape, but not reaching into the valley, which remains in shadow.He included a flight of rooks to enhance the atmosphere of the evening effect. He later wrote: ‘Autumn only is called the painter’s season, from the great richness of the colours of the dead and decaying foliage, and the peculiar tone and beauty of the skies’ (Beckett, Discourses, p. 15). Constable was fond of this image and in 1829 selected it as one of the works for Lucas to translate into mezzotint: Autumnal sunset.

Constable painted this work for his friend and patron, Dr John Fisher, Bishop of Salisbury. The Bishop is shown in the left foreground pointing out the sunlit Cathedral to his wife, as one of their daughters, Dorothea, advances along the path towards her parents. And as C.R. Leslie noted, Constable included the Suffolk, hornless variety of cow in the grounds (Leslie (1843/45) 1951, p. 96). Constable painted a magical work, a sylvan vista of the Cathedral, viewed from the south-west, with an arch of trees framing the spire. It ranks as one of his major paintings. He captured the light on the foliage, and conveyed the air and atmosphere of a summer morning. He wrote: ‘Does not the Cathedral look beautiful amongst the Golden foliage? its silvery grey must sparkle in it’ (Beckett VI, p. 78). During a visit to Salisbury in 1811 Constable made three drawings of the Cathedral: from the south-east, from the south-west and from the east end. He used the view from the south-west as the compositional basis for his later paintings in oil. He made further drawings, and an open-air oil sketch of the Cathedral and its surroundings (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa), while in Salisbury during July and August 1820 when he stayed with the Bishop’s nephew, his friend Archdeacon John Fisher. In 1823 Constable painted this enlarged version of the scene. It was his most important exhibit at the 1823 Royal Academy exhibition. One critic suggested that ‘the landscape and cows are extremely well managed; and speak of that rich fat country ever to be found about the church’; he remarked that ‘there is great merit in the picture’ and compared it to the work of Hobbema (The London Magazine, June 1823, cit. Ivy 1991, p. 100). Another critic, Robert Hunt, suggested that Constable’s ‘Salisbury Cathedral is so pre-eminent in that “prime cheerer, light”’ (The Examiner, 23 June 1823, cit. Ivy 1991, p. 101). Constable wrote to Fisher after the Academy’s opening on 9 May commenting: My Cathedral looks very well. Indeed I got through that job uncommonly well considering how much I dreaded it. It is much approved by the Academy and moreover in Seymour St. [the Bishop’s London residence] though I was at one time fearfull that it would not be a favourite there owing to a dark cloud – but we got over the difficulty … It was the most difficult subject in landscape I ever had on my easil. I have not flinched at the work, of the windows, buttresses, &c, &c, but I have as usual made my escape in the evanescence of the chiaroscuro (Beckett VI, p. 115). But the passing storm clouds over the Cathedral spire that gave movement and contrast to the scene were never appreciated by the Bishop. In a letter to Constable of 16 October 1823, Fisher recorded the thoughts of his uncle: ‘[If] Constable would but leave out his black clouds! Clouds are only black when it is going to rain. In fine weather the sky is blue’ (Beckett VI, p. 138). The Bishop may have thought that in presenting the Cathedral under a cloud, Constable had created an actual and a metaphorical image of the Church that reflected the changing times and the onslaught of radical ideas. As Michael Rosenthal has suggested, ‘a painting of Salisbury Cathedral is more than just a portrayal of architecture’ (Rosenthal 1983, p. 146). Constable was prepared to invent or change his skies. Later in 1823 he painted a smaller, sunnier version of the subject for the Bishop as a wedding present for his daughter, Elizabeth (Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino), with ‘a more serene sky’ (Beckett VI, p. 125). In July 1824 the Bishop asked Constable to repaint the sky in this work, but rather than do so he decided to paint a second version for the Bishop, a full-scale replica with a sunnier sky, and with the trees thinned out and no longer meeting in an arch above the Cathedral spire (now in The Frick Collection, New York). Constable had not finished this new version by the time of the Bishop’s death on 8 May 1825, after which he sent it to the Bishop’s widow; and he sent this original 1823 version to the Bishop’s nephew, his friend John Fisher. As Reynolds has observed, the latter was presumably a sale as Constable repurchased the picture in 1829 when Fisher was so hard pressed for money that he had to relinquish the work he greatly admired. He had written to Constable on 1 July 1826 that: The Cathedral looks splendidly over the chimney piece. The picture requires a room full of light. Its internal splendour comes out in all its power, the spire sails away with the thunder-clouds (ibid., p. 222).

Spring was one of Constable’s favourite seasons (summer was the other), and it inspired some of his most delightful paintings. He wrote: ‘I love the exhilarating freshness of Spring’ (Beckett III, p. 103), and that spring has perhaps more than an equal claim to the painter’s ‘notice and admiration’, because of the great variety of the tints and colours of the living foliage, besides having the flowers and blossoms. The beautiful and tender hues of the young leaves and buds are rendered more lovely by being contrasted, as they now are, with the sober russet browns of the trees and hedges from which they shoot … The ploughman ‘leaning o’er the shining share’, the sower‘stalking with measured step the neighbouring fields’, are conspicuous figures in the vernal landscape; and last, though not least in interest, the birds, whose songs again cheer the labourer at his work, and complete the joyous animation of the new season (Beckett, Discourses, p. 15). In this oil sketch Constable used his paint expressively to capture his feelings for spring. He showed ploughing on East Bergholt Common, with its windmill – after the common had been enclosed (in 1816) and ploughing allowed there (I. Fleming-Williams, ‘A runover dungle and a possible date for “Spring”’, Burlington Magazine, vol. 114, June 1972, pp. 390–91). He portrayed an expansive flat land with a low horizon under a cloudy sky suggestive of squally weather. The cool shadows of the large clouds reflected on the ground strengthen the greens and yellows of the fields. As in his two versions of A ploughing scene in Suffolk (A summerland),painted in1814 and c.1824 , he depicted the ploughman with two horses working side by side rather than in a team of four – the efficient, modern mode of ploughing in this area. The windmill had belonged to Constable’s father and Constable had worked there as a boy. Constable probably painted this work in the studio, using a drawing made in a small sketchbook on 19 April 1821, but he followed the drawing closely. This is the oil painting that Lucas used as a basis for the mezzotint, Spring(cats 89–92), and it is possible that Constable painted it especially for the mezzotint. If so, he may have painted it in 1829, when Lucas began to work on the mezzotint. In Constable’s text for the mezzotint, he quoted lines of the eighteenth-century poet Mark Akenside, ‘Light and shade alternate, warmth and cold …’ (Beckett, Discourses, p. 14).

Old Sarum is an ancient mound one and a half miles north of Salisbury. It was an Iron Age hillfort, later occupied by the Romans, the Saxons and the Normans. The Normans built a castle within the perimeter of the mound and a cathedral below it, but disputes between soldiers and priests, plus inadequate water supplies, led to the building of New Sarum (the present city of Salisbury) in 1226. The cathedral was dismantled and a new one built at Salisbury, and the old settlement began to fade away. In Constable’s time Old Sarum was still an impressive feature on the skyline to the north of Salisbury, but to Constable it was a desolate and deserted place. He described it as a ‘once proud and populous city… traced but by vast embankments’ that had become a barren waste, ‘tracked only by sheepwalks’, and that ‘every vestige of human habitation, [had] long since passed away’ (Beckett, Discourses, pp. 24–25). Constable depicted a solitary shepherd in the foreground, in front of an expansive open plain and the mound of Old Sarum beyond. He presented the scene under a dramatic and powerful sky, with light breaking through the ‘dark, cold and grey’ thunder clouds, suggesting ‘the grander phenomena of Nature’ (ibid.). This is one of Constable’s most significant watercolours, and the first work of the kind that he ever showed at a Royal Academy exhibition (in 1834 under the title ‘The Mound of the City of Old Sarum, from the south’). It is ambitious in scope and reveals Constable as a master of the watercolour medium. He conceived it as an exhibition piece, uniting his direct personal vision of landscape with a broader, historical idea suggesting destruction and oblivion. Constable captioned the Lucas mezzotint of this subject: ‘here we have no continuing city’.

This watercolour and The Castle Rock, Borrowdale 1806 (cat. 3) are examples of Constable’s work during his only visit to the Lake District from 1 September to 19 October 1806 – encouraged and supported by his maternal uncle, David Pike Watts. Constable drew and painted around Kendal, Brathay, Skelwith, Thirlmere, Windermere, and spent at least three weeks in the Borrowdale area. He made almost one hundred drawings and watercolours during this sketching trip, working on the spot, and showing for the first time his interest in atmospheric phenomena, noting on the back of a number of his works the time of day and observations on the weather, a practice he continued throughout his life. He captured the way the terrain altered in appearance with the changeable weather and light conditions. In this view of Lake Windermere Constable painted freely in a restricted palette, overlaying washes of colour, using very little pencil outlining, to capture the moisture laden atmosphere of the scene. He depicted a natural, uncultivated landscape. C.R. Leslie, Constable’s friend and biographer, commented on Constable’s Lake District images: They abound in grand and solemn effects of light, shade and colour, but from these studies he never painted any considerable picture, for his mind was formed for the enjoyment of a different class of landscape. (Leslie (1843/45) 1951, p. 18) Subsequent writers have questioned the truth of Leslie’s claim that the solitude of the mountains oppressed Constable’s spirits, pointing out that he stayed in the region for about two months, and exhibited at least ten Lake District scenes between 1807 and 1809. Moreover, his inscriptions on the back of his Lake District works are often enthusiastic. Thus, as Charles Rhyne has observed, ‘far from being depressed by the solitude of the mountains’: Constable was inspired to paint watercolours which may capture the fluid atmosphere and rich chiaroscuro of mountain scenery more successfully than those of any previous western painter’ (C. Rhyne, ‘The drawing of mountains: Constable’s 1806 Lake District tour’, in The Lake District: A sort of National Property: Papers presented to a symposium held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, 20–22 October 1984, 1986, p. 68).

In this pure sky study Constable painted streets of cumulus clouds that lacked sufficient vertical depth to produce rain. He showed blue sky to the left with flakes of cirrostratus that suggest fine weather would follow. There is good agreement between Constable’s inscription and the weather records for the London area on that day, which noted a westerly air stream (Thornes 1999, p. 264).

In this pure sky study Constable painted streets of cumulus clouds in a blue summer sky. As well as portraying the clouds, he captured the light at noon and its effects. There is good agreement between Constable’s inscription and the weather records for the London area on that day, which suggest it was a showery day (Thornes 1999, p. 252). For this study and a number of others in 1822 Constable worked on a larger painting support than he had used for his 1821 sky studies.

In October 1822 Constable wrote to his friend John Fisher that he had painted ‘about 50 careful studies of skies tolerably large’ (Beckett VI, p. 98).

A man and two women in elegant dress promenade towards us, a local fisherman with his rod walks away, some boats are beached on the shore, other figures are hastily sketched in. Constable’s real interest was in capturing the broad expanse of beach and cloud filled sky and in suggesting the freshness of the air. His use of a relatively low horizon gives emphasis to the sky and the movement of the cloud masses in it. Nonetheless, the presence of the figures on the beach and the houses on the cliffs make the sea and sky seem less ‘wild’. Although this is a cabinet picture and not a sketch, Constable painted rapidly to create an impression of the scene, capturing the atmospheric conditions, the play of light on the sea and beach and the uncertainty of the weather. It has a freshness and luminosity that anticipates the paintings of Eugène Boudin.

Constable spent the summer and early autumn of 1814 in Suffolk, painting directly from nature. In this work he depicted a panoramic view over the Stour Valley from an elevated position on the road from Flatford to East Bergholt,showing Dedham Church and the village to the left of centre. By including labourers shovelling manure in the foreground Constable created a down-to-earth image of the landscape around his home at East Bergholt – and a realistic record of Suffolk farming practice, emphasising the value of honest rural labour. The men would have cleared the manure from the stockyards in summer and deposited it beside the fields to dry, before manuring the fields in early autumn (I. Fleming-Williams, ‘A runover dungle and a possible date for “Spring”’, Burlington Magazine, vol. 114, June 1972, pp. 386–93). Not long after he painted this work Constable wrote: ‘This charming season … occupies me entirely in the feilds and I beleive I have made some landscapes that are better than is usual with me – at least that is the opinion of all here‘ (Beckett II, p. 131). Constable painted this work as a preparatory study for a painting commissioned by Thomas Fitzhugh as a wedding present for his bride, Philadelphia Godfrey: The Stour Valley and Dedham Church c.1815 (Boston Museum of Fine Arts). Philadelphia was the daughter of the local squire, Peter Godfrey, and the painting was intended as a memento of the view of the valley she knew well and was leaving behind – a view of Dedham Vale from just outside the grounds of her home, Old Hall, East Bergholt.

‘The Quarters’ in the grounds of Alresford Hall, near Colchester, was used as a picnic, fishing and boating lodge by Constable’s friend and patron, Major-General Francis Slater-Rebow and his family. Slater-Rebow’s father-in-law built the lodge during the 1760s in the fashionable Chinoiserie style at a time when garden pavilions were frequently used for informal parties. Slater-Rebow commissioned this cabinet picture and a larger companion picture, Wivenhoe Park, Essex (National Gallery of Art, Washington) during Constable’s visit there in July 1816. He returned to paint both works in late August–September. In a letter of 21 August 1816 to Maria Bicknell, Constable mentioned the ‘two small landscapes for the General’ and that one was a ‘scene in a wood with a beautifull little fishing house, where the young Lady (who is the heroine of all these scenes [Mary Rebow]) goes occasionally to angle’ (Beckett II, p. 196). He wrote again to Maria on 30 August describing his reception by the Slater-Rebows, who made him feel ‘quite at home. They often talk of you, because they know it will please me … I am going on very well with my pictures for them’ (ibid., pp. 198–99). Constable first made a detailed drawing of the subject (Royal Institution of Cornwall, Truro), which he used as a basis for preparing the painting. He showed the contrast between the natural landscape of the woodland and the artificiality of the oriental pavilion. He closely observed details during a late summer afternoon, such as the shadows of the trees, the reflections on the still water and the swallows in the sky (A. Inglis, ‘“The Quarters” behind Alresford Hall’,European Masterpieces: Six centuries of paintings from the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia, Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2000, p. 136).

Constable painted two cloud studies at Hampstead on 5 September 1822: this one at 10 am, and another about two hours later (Victoria and Albert Museum, London). He noted on both works that it was ‘bright & fresh’, and that the clouds were moving fast. There is good agreement between Constable’s inscription and the weather records for the London area on that day, which noted that there was a lot of cloud and that the wind was ‘very high’ (Thornes 1999, p. 265). Although Constable suggested that this sky would be suitable for a painting of the coast at Osmington, he did not use it in any known Osmington painting.

The subject of this painting is the same as Constable’s Diploma picture for the Royal Academy, A boat passing a lock 1826 . Both compositions are horizontal and their general structure is identical. Like the Diploma painting there is a rainstorm in the sky. However this work differs in that Constable painted the background in a looser fashion – and he did not include the dog that appears in the right foreground of the Diploma painting. Moreover the lock keeper wears a hat (as opposed to a cap) and has raised arms as in Constable’s original representation of the figure. A pentimento suggests that one of the posts at the entrance to the lock was originally higher than it now appears (W.G. Constable, ‘“The Lock” as a theme in the work of John Constable’, in F. Philipp and J. Stewart (eds), Essays in Honour of Daryl Lindsay, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1964, p. 139). Scholars have put forward a number of suggestions regarding the relationship of this work to Constable’s Diploma picture and his other versions of the subject. At first it was generally accepted to be a preliminary oil study for the Diploma picture. Then in 1956 W.G. Constable claimed that this painting might be an independent work, as ‘there seems to be nothing lacking that is necessary to a complete and finished picture’ (ibid., p. 138). Following this, in 1976, the fully finished foreground and carefully painted sky of this work led Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams to suggest that it was an unfinished replica of the Diploma picture (Tate 1976, p. 155). Robert Hoozee agreed. Reynolds, however, in his catalogue raisonné of Constable’s work, argued that it was indeed a sketch for the Diploma picture. He pointed out that it was in keeping with Constable’s practice ‘to make a sketch when he was undertaking a major change in an existing composition’. He suggested that in transforming his vertical Lock images into a horizontal format, with an extension of the view to the right, Constable may well have made Study of ‘A boat passing a lock’ as a preparatory sketch. (Constable made at least three versions that had a vertical format: Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection on loan to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Philadelphia Museum and Art Gallery; and private collection). In 1991 Parris and Fleming-Williams revised their earlier opinion to suggest that this painting might be an abandoned work, that Constable may have painted it before his Diploma picture, and even before the upright Lock which he exhibited in 1824 (Tate 1991, p. 289). In 1996 Sarah Cove, in a detailed technical report of the Diploma picture, concluded that ‘this version is the sketch for, or certainly the precursor to, the Royal Academy picture’ (Sarah Cove to Anne Lyles, 12 September 2005, NGA file 04/0501–0). While it seems most likely that the painting in the National Gallery of Victoria’s collection was the sketch for the Diploma picture, it would appear unlikely that it was a precursor to any of the upright Locks, as in this painting Constable introduced a number of features that he also included in the Diploma picture, but which do not appear in the upright versions – the boat with a sail, willows (rather than oaks), and the rainstorm – and he positioned the vessel as it would be travelling up river, as opposed to down river as in the upright Lock paintings. Although it is possible that Constable chopped and changed in subject and in format, it is more likely that he painted the three upright versions and then the two horizontal versions. The Fitzwilliam drawing of c.1826 acts as a intermediary in the process of working out the compositional ideas with neither the barge in the upper lock chamber (as in the upright versions) or the boat with a sail below (as in the horizontal versions). Whatever the purpose of this work, in painting it Constable used more finished brushwork and greater definition and coherence than he frequently employed in his full-scale preliminary sketches. He carefully modulated the light in the sky to create a sense of wind and weather, and he depicted the plants on the riverbank and the lock’s wooden structure with considerable attention to detail.

Constable viewed this scene at Bowleaze Cove in Weymouth Bay as expressive of his own feelings and personal associations. He connected the tempestuous weather with the death of Captain John Wordsworth, the poet’s brother and his friend Mary Fisher’s cousin, who drowned near this cove with all two hundred of his crew in 1805. C.R. Leslie’s wife saw the mezzotint at Constable’s home in Charlotte Street, London, and asked if she could have it. Constable sent it to her the following day suggesting that she should: apply to it the lines of Wordsworth – ‘that sea in anger/ and that dismal shoar’. I think of ‘Wordsworth’ for on that spot, perished his brother in the wreck of the Abergavenny (Beckett III, pp. 28–29). In the list of contents for English Landscape this mezzotint was called Weymouth Bay, Dorset. – Tempestuous Evening. Lucas had begun work on this plate by January 1830 – as an impression in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, is dated ‘30 January 1830’ (Tate 1991, p. 349), – basing it on the large oil painting Weymouth Bay c.1819/1830 . He made at least five progress proof variations before the published state, of which this is the third. During the proofing, highlights on the waves and boat were added and the sky lightened above the cliff and on the left. This proof was printed before three gulls were added on the left. Heysen wrote: ‘The news of the two prints – … Weymouth Bay – excited me and you may be sure I shall await their arrival with impatience’ (Heysen, 1948?, NLA MS 5073/1/7190); and now for the Weymouth Bay which is an extremely fine & rich early proof – I like it immensely & am glad to have it. Looks as if its just come off the press – later on I must have a complete proof with its final … with the driving rain which completes the compos & so [relieves?] the large dark space to the left – and the big space of dark dividing the composition in two is somewhat relieved by the introduction of more forms & yet this would also – lessen the dramatic moment (ibid., 23 February 1948, NLA MS 5073/1/5594).

Lucas began the plate for A summerland before 26 December 1829 when Constable requested four proofs of it (Beckett IV, p. 323). He based it on the first version of A ploughing scene in Suffolk (A summerland) 1814 . He made at least eight progress proof variations before the published state, of which this is the seventh. During the proofing the sky and the middle ground were reworked. In the list of contents for English Landscape this mezzotint was called A Summerland, Rainy Day; Ploughmen. – Noon. Heysen wrote: ‘I feel elated at the inclusion of … A Summerland’ (Heysen, 30 September 1948, NLA MS 5073/1/7182).

Lucas based this mezzotint on the oil sketch, Autumnal sunset c.1812 . Constable decided to include this subject in English Landscape after talking to C.R. Leslie on 14 September 1829. The next day he wrote to Lucas: ‘we have agreed on a long landscape (Evening with a flight of rookes), as a companion to the “Spring”’ (Beckett IV, p. 322). Lucas had already begun work on the plate in March 1830 when Constable was anxious to see a first proof of it (Beckett IV, p. 326), but it was not published until July 1832. During the proofing the sky was reworked, a line of low-lying clouds added, a tree on the left and corn stooks and stubble in the foreground field were introduced. The towers of Langham Church and Stoke-by-Nayland Church were also added. On 2 June 1832 Constable wrote to Lucas, criticising his poor transcription of the flight of rooks: the Evng – is spoiled owing to your having fooled with the Rooks – they were the chief feature – which caused me to adopt the subject – nobody knew what they are – but took them for blemishes on the plate (Beckett IV, p. 376). Lucas subsequently reworked the image to Constable’s satisfaction. In the list of contents for English Landscape this print was called Sunset. Peasants returning homeward. Shirley describes six progress proofs (a–e), whereas Harold Wright describes this one as ‘h’: we are therefore recording it as ‘undescribed’.

As a boy Constable often passed by this cottage, at the end of Fen Lane, when he walked down the lane on his way to school at Dedham. The cottage belonged to Peter Godfrey of Old Hall, East Bergholt, and one of his workmen probably lived in it. It had been demolished by 1885 (St John 2002, p. 29). Constable made two versions of this subject, the first painted largely outdoors in the vicinity of East Bergholtduring the summer of 1815 and completed in 1833(Victoria and Albert Museum, London), and this second version painted in his studio in London towards the end of 1816 or the beginning of 1817. He made a number of changes to the image, showing the scene at high summer with the field full of ripe corn, changing the quality of the light, adding the figure beside the cottage on the left, and the donkey and foal standing to the right of the gate. He probably relied on the drawing he had made of this subject around 1815 . As Ian Fleming-Williams and Leslie Parris have shown, the most marked difference between the painting of 1815/1833and this work is the way in which Constable painted the trees on the right. In this painting he appears to have based his trees on those in Martino Rota’s engraving after Titian’s Martyrdom of St Peter Martyr (destroyed), a work Constable greatly admired (Fleming-Williams and Parris 1984, pp. 138–41). Thus, even during a period when he was working close to nature, Constable combined different elements in his paintings in order to improve his composition. In his biography of Constable, Andrew Shirley perceptively remarked that it was ‘a picture compact with the true sentiment of observation, playing the contrast of the remoteness of human habitation against the thick, ripening, jungle life of the corn surging up to the walls of the cottage’ (Shirley 1949, p. 105).

Constable painted several oil sketches of the view towardsEast Bergholt rectory, showing the fields where he walked with his beloved Maria Bicknell. He painted this lively impression of the rising sun glowing over and through the fields from an upper floor window at the back of his family home. His response to the scene is expressed through energetic brushstrokes and the use of intense reds and greens – the expanded chromatic range that Constable was using in his oil sketches at this time (Rosenthal 1983, p. 45). Constable’s description of East Bergholt appeared in the letterpress to the second edition of Lucas–Constable mezzotints, English Landscape: East Bergholt, or as its Saxon derivation implies, ‘Wooded Hill’, is thus mentioned in ‘The Beauties of England and Wales’ … It is pleasantly situated in the most cultivated part of Suffolk, on a spot which overlooks the fertile valley of the Stour, which river divides that county on the south from Essex. The beauty of the surrounding scenery, the gentle declivities, the luxuriant meadow flats sprinkled with flocks and herds, and well cultivated uplands, the woods and rivers, the numerous scattered villages and churches, with farms and picturesque cottages, all impart to this particular spot an amenity and elegance hardly anywhere else to be found (Beckett, Discourses, pp. 12-–13). East Bergholt is now a twin town with the village of Barbizon, in the Forest of Fontainebleau, France. Given that East Bergholt was Constable’s birthplace, and that his work was much admired by Eugène Delacroix, Paul Huet, Jules Dupré, Théodore Rousseau and other artists associated with the area around Barbizon, this is a most appropriate association.

This impressive painting is beautifully painted with jewel-like precision and shows Constable’s ability to capture the immediate sensations of light and atmosphere; it is one of Constable’s most natural depictions of the landscape around his home, reflecting his interest in portraying rural harmony. It is notable in the way the figures are more conspicuous and more particularised than in his other early landscapes. Although based on a number of sketchbook drawings, the work was probably painted in large part in front of the motif. The field depicted here is the same one seen in the right foreground of the The Stour Valley and Dedham Village 5 September 1814 . Constable depicted a traditional farming community harvesting wheat, with harvesters, gleaners, a boy with a dog and a distant ploughman. The woman and two girls in the foreground are poor, gleaning the ears of wheat missed by the reapers. The boy with the dog is guarding the workers’ food and drink, draped in discarded clothes to provide shade from the sun. Constable presented life before the changes that occurred in rural society with the enclosure of the common fields in 1816 – before the poor had been largely barred from taking part in their age-old practice of gleaning. Constable exhibited this painting at the Royal Academy in 1816 and at the British Institution the following year, when he included with the catalogue entry lines from Robert Bloomfield’s The Farmer’s Boy (1800): Nature herself invites the reapers forth; No rake takes here what heaven to all bestows: Children of want, for you the bounty flows! His inclusion of this text suggests that Constable too believed that the rural poor, in this instance the gleaners, were deserving of nature’s bounty. As Michael Rosenthal has noted, the Napoleonic wars saw an increase in rustic subjects at the main London exhibitions. Around the time Constable painted this scene a number of other British artists were painting similar subjects, such as Peter de Wint’s A cornfield c.1815 (Victoria and Albert Museum, London) and George Robert Lewis’s Harvest field with reapers, Haywood, Herefordshire 1815 (Tate, London). Such farming scenes portrayed the happy Britain, which invasion – or revolution – would have destroyed (Rosenthal 1983, p. 200).

Constable painted this fourth version of The Glebe Farm more freely than any of the other three versions. Using both palette knife and brush, he gave this painting a warm tonality, with flickering highlights. He included a spire in the upper right, rather than the square tower of Langham Church of the other three images – although the spire sits on a Langham Church-style square tower. He first introduced a windmill in place of the tower, and traces of its sails are still visible beneath the spire. Reynolds has suggested that Constable is likely to have painted this work in the autumn of 1830. The glebe was traditionally land farmed to support the living of the church, but the farm in this picture was not in fact on glebe land. Michael Rosenthal has noted that in depicting a cottage landscape in a woodland Constable was working in the Picturesque tradition of Hobbema and Gainsborough (Rosenthal 1983, p. 180). He was moreover painting a ‘landscape of memory’ – the rural world he depicted had since changed as a result of reforms, and had been replaced by something with which Constable was less comfortable (ibid., p. 213). However, the changes in agricultural approach, the division of the Common lands and other such ‘advances’ would have had little direct impact on this particular scene. Lucas made a mezzotint ) from the third and largest version of The Glebe Farm 1830 that was bequeathed to the Tate Gallery by Constable’s family in 1888.

Constable lovingly depicted the garden and fields behind his family home, a place he described to Maria Bicknell as ‘the sweet feilds where we have passed so many happy hours together’ (Beckett II, p. 78). He drew the scene from above, from a first floor window at the back of the house, enlivened by the activity taking place. In the foreground he showed the flower garden that he associated with his mother and the adjacent kitchen garden that he connected with his father. He included the figure of a woman (perhaps his mother) in the flower garden and two gardeners tending the rows of vegetables in the kitchen garden. He depicted a cowherd and cattle beside his father’s barn on the left, and on the extreme right he showed the East Bergholt rectory where Maria stayed at times during their courtship. The mill where he had once worked is shown on the horizon in the centre. Constable’s pride in his family’s successful and well-organised farm is evident. He depicted an ordered and harmonious landscape, and because of his personal connections and his deep affection for the place, he created an emotionally charged scene. but ultimately, this dynamic image transcends the personal and the local, as well as time and place. This is one of two carefully detailed drawings that Constable may have exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1815.

Throughout his working life Constable copied the work of other artists, doing so both as quick sketches and in facsimile. He copied artists as diverse as Cozens, Cuyp, Reynolds, Rubens, Titian, Willem van de Velde the younger and Richard Wilson. But the artists he copied most frequently were Claude Lorrain and the seventeenth-century Dutch landscape artist Jacob van Ruisdael (1628/9–1682). In this drawing, which is an almost exact copy of Ruisdael’s etching The wheatfield 1648, Constable showed his understanding of Ruisdael’s technique and vision. He reproduced details of the etching such as the uppermost twigs of the front tree. He also faithfully imitated Ruisdael’s signature and feigned the plate mark, which led Ian Fleming-Williams to suggest that Constable, rather than just showing off his technical ability, may also have been making ‘an elaborate leg-pull’ (Fleming-Williams 1976, p. 64). Constable frequently mentioned Ruisdael in correspondence with his friend John Fisher; on 28 November 1826 he wrote enthusiastically about another work by Ruisdael: ‘I have seen an affecting picture this morning, by Ruisdael. It haunts my mind and clings to my heart – and has stood between me & you while I am now talking to you. It is a watermill, not unlike “Perne’s Mill” – a man & boy are cutting rushes in the running stream (in the “tail water”) – the whole so true clear & fresh – & as brisk as champagne’ (Beckett VI, p. 229). Constable first mentioned his interest in making a copy of a work by Ruisdael in 1797 when he wrote to J.T. Smith announcing that he planned to copy one of Ruisdael’s etchings, and asking Smith to send him one which was not too scarce or expensive. His last copy, Landscape with windmills, after Jacob van Ruisdael, which Constable painted in 1832, was of a Ruisdael painting now in the Dulwich Collection (Fleming-Williams 1976, p. 64).

While staying at Brighton Constable made a number of excursions along the coast, to places such as nearby Hove. Hove was less populated than Brighton, without the bustle of tourists, and gave Constable the opportunity to concentrate on the beach, sea and sky. In this painting, and Hove Beachc.1824 , Constable handled his paint expressively and used the figures on the beach, the buildings and boats to provide a contrast to the natural elements. There are numerous pentimenti, which indicate that Constable altered the position of the boats on the skyline.

This portrait commemorates Constable’s friendship with Ramsay Richard Reinagle when they were students together at the Royal Academy, and Reinagle’s stay with Constable and his family at East Bergholt during the summer of 1799. It shows Constable very much as his first biographer, C.R. Leslie, described him, ‘the tall and well formed handsome miller, with a fresh complexion and fine dark eyes’ (Leslie (1843/45) 1951, p. 4).

During his honeymoon in 1816 Constable painted a number of oil sketches of the Dorset coast, including two sketches of Bowleaze Cove in Weymouth Bay. He later worked up this exhibition picture based on one of those outdoor sketches (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London). He showed the curve of the bay, with a cliff in the foreground and hills beyond, and depicted a dense mass of cloud over the sea nearing the coast. Passages of sunlight in the sky light up the hills and the bay. Some time between 1819 and 1830 Constable extended his original painting by adding strips of canvas at the top and left to give a greater expanse of sea and sky. It was this version of the oil painting that Lucas used as a basis for the mezzotint, Weymouth Bay, Dorsetshire . In his biography of Constable, Andrew Shirley remarked: He recorded a dramatic moment at Weymouth … broken storm-clouds pass over an unquiet sea, where the earth’s safe helmet of grass ends abruptly at the bright cliffs. Years later, in a mezzotint, he transformed the scene into a parable of his life; he discarded from the first picture the certainty that light will return, and left instead a storm that dulled the pleasant green of the land, obliterated the cliffs, and denied the possibility of hope (Shirley 1949, p. 103). George III visited Weymouth in 1789, when it was recorded that on viewing the bay for the first time the king exclaimed: ‘I never enjoyed a sight so pleasing.’ The king’s regular visits to Weymouth established the town as a flourishing health and pleasure resort. This painting has been the subject of controversy. In 1907 P.M. Turner questioned its authenticity (P.M. Turner, ‘The representation of the British School in the Louvre I’, Burlington Magazine, X, March 1907, p. 341), as did Robert Hoozee. However Reynolds, in his 1984 catalogue raisonné, made a good case for this painting being the work that Constable exhibited at the British Institution in 1819 as Osmington Shore, near Weymouth.