John Constable

John Constable, East Bergholt House  c.1809

Constable was deeply attached to his birthplace, East Bergholt House, which his father had built when Flatford Mill became too small for his growing family. Although the house no longer exists (it was pulled down in 1840 or 1841), the stable block and an outbuilding survive. Constable painted views from the front and back of the house on many occasions and chose it as the frontispiece for English Landscape (1832). He wrote in the accompanying inscription: ‘This place was the origin of my Fame’.

Gallery label, May 2007

John Constable, Hampstead Heath, with Harrow in the Distance  c.1820–2

This is one of several oil studies Constable made in the early 1820s featuring views from Hampstead Heath towards the town of Harrow. Harrow can be seen on the extreme right. This painting was part of a group given to the nation in 1887 by the artist’s daughter, Isabel Constable. Before then, very few of Constable’s sketches had been exhibited in public. This work proved very popular and became the most frequently copied modern painting in the National Gallery at the time. It was transferred to the Tate in 1897.

Gallery label, September 2019

John Constable, The Church Porch, East Bergholt  exhibited 1810

This view of the church in Constable’s native village of East Bergholt was one of the first works he exhibited. The stillness of a summer’s afternoon is broken only by the voice of an old man, talking to a woman and a girl sitting on one of the tombs.

The inclusion of people from three generations acts as a reminder of the passage of time and of human mortality, whilst the church offers hope of salvation. Pensive figures in churchyards would have reminded contemporaries of Thomas Gray's famous poem, Elegy written in a Country Churchyard 1751.

Gallery label, February 2004

John Constable, Flatford Mill (‘Scene on a Navigable River’)  1816–7

Landscape painting flourished in the 19th century, ranging from the epic, through rustic nostalgia to the naturalism championed by John Constable. He based what he called his ‘natural painture’ on study of nature, experience of his subjects and attention to working life, especially in the Stour Valley where his father was a miller and merchant. When possible, he sketched or worked on pictures outdoors. Flatford Mill shows barges approaching Flatford footbridge after passing through the lock near his father’s mill. Its bright, airy realism was unprecedented at the time.

Gallery label, February 2016

John Constable, Hampstead Heath with a Rainbow  1836

This is Constable’s last treatment of one of his favourite Hampstead subjects. To the usual ingredients of his Branch Hill Pond composition, this time he added a windmill that never existed there, and also a double rainbow. Rainbows are often included in Constable’s late work, either for symbolic reasons or for their associated physical properties. He admired the way Rubens, when painting a rainbow, could combine ‘dewy light and freshness, the departing shower, with the exhilaration of the returning sun’.

Gallery label, May 2007

John Constable, The Mill Stream. Verso: Night Scene with Bridge  c.1810

This study shows the view from the forecourt of Flatford Mill across a side stream of the river Stour in Suffolk, which had been diverted under the mill to work the water-wheel. The water churned up by the water-wheel left the mill through an archway below the forecourt, which explains the turbulence seen in the foreground of the sketch. The house is Willy Lott’s House, named after the tenant farmer who lived there for over 80 years. It appears in several of Constable’s finished paintings, the most famous of which is The Haywain 1821 (now in the National Gallery).

Gallery label, February 2016

John Constable, The Gleaners, Brighton  1824

Rural themes offered nineteenth-century urban art audiences an invigorating view of a healthier way of life. However, many people also escaped the city in reality.

Brighton in particular became a popular resort. John Constable went there with his wife Maria in 1824, for the sake of her health. This sketch of women gathering stray sheaves of corn after the harvest (‘gleaning’) was made outdoors, on the Downs above Brighton in August. The freshness of Constable’s painting style seemed to express perfectly the ideals of robust rural healthiness prevalent at the time.

Gallery label, September 2004

John Constable, Stoke-by-Nayland  c.1810–11

This vigorous sketch shows Stoke-by-Nayland, a village in Suffolk only a few miles from where Constable grew up. Even after he moved to London in 1799, the Stour Valley countryside remained an important feature in Constable’s art. He regularly returned there to sketch from nature. The banks of the River Stour ‘made me a painter’, he later claimed. The bold handling of paint and unusual sweeping brushstrokes of this sketch shows Constable’s confidence in oil. Painted outside, he aimed to capture the natural effects of light and atmosphere.

Gallery label, May 2021

John Constable, A Lane near Flatford  c.1810–11

Constable probably made this vigorous sketch on Fen Lane, which leads down from East Bergholt to Dedham Vale. With its animated brushwork, suggesting the movement of scudding clouds and of trees bristling in the wind, he successfully conveys the impression of a breezy summer's day.

Gallery label, February 2004

John Constable, The Sea near Brighton  1826

In new year 1826 Constable joined his family at Brighton and stayed for a fortnight. This bold study is one of only two paintings he made during this visit. It is also one of the very few oil sketches he executed outdoors in winter. On an earlier visit to Brighton in 1824, Constable had admired ‘the magnificence of the sea’ and he was attracted especially by ‘the breakers and the sky’. He later wrote how seabirds - some of which are included here - ‘add to the wildness and to the sentiment of melancholy always attendant on the ocean’.

Gallery label, May 2007

John Constable, A Windmill near Brighton  1824

Most of the oil sketches and drawings Constable produced during his visits to Brighton were made on the beach. From here he portrayed the sea and storm-filled skies, colliers and other boats, and also the chain pier and the buildings of the still developing summer resort. Constable also painted on the downs above Brighton, sometimes employing a windmill as his focal point. This work was painted on 27 July 1824 on one of Constable’s first visits to Brighton. It was inscribed on the back with the date and a brief note of the weather: ‘very fine morning after rain.’

Gallery label, May 2007

John Constable, Sketch for ‘Hadleigh Castle’  c.1828–9

Constable made full-size sketches like this for many of his six-foot paintings. They allowed him to explore his ideas before committing them to the final canvas. The finished picture in this case was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1829. The composition originated in a minute drawing Constable made on a visit to the ruins of Hadleigh Castle in Essex in 1814, but this painting was not developed until around the time of his wife’s death in 1828. The resulting image of loneliness and decay is now often seen as exemplifying his desolate state of mind at the time.

Gallery label, February 2016

John Constable, Cloud Study  1822

Constable’s oil studies of skies show a remarkable understanding of the structure and movement of clouds. Most also give a good impression of their three-dimensional volume.

The studies vary in size. This is one of only four examples he painted on a larger format. The larger the scale the more difficult Constable found it to balance crispness of detail with speed of execution. This is why the larger cloud studies tend to be more generalised. The inscriptions on the back – ‘11 o’clock’ and ‘Noon’ – indicate that this study took him about an hour to paint.

Gallery label, February 2004

John Constable, Brightwell Church and Village  1815

This painting was commissioned by the Reverend FH Barnwell. He was an antique collector who took particular interest in the village of Brightwell near Ipswich. It shows the view looking north towards the church.On the right is a farm formed from the outbuildings of the demolished Brightwell Hall. Constable rarely undertook commissions of this kind and it is very different to his other works. It is as small as his preparatory oil sketches, but as highly finished as any of his exhibition pictures.

Gallery label, July 2019

John Constable, Maria Constable with Two of her Children. Verso: Copy after Teniers  c.1820

This intimate and rapidly-painted sketch, Constable portrays his wife Maria with two of their children. They appear to be seated at a table near a window which admits only enough light to illuminate the surroundings.

The children shown are probably the couple’s eldest, John Charles (born December 1817) and Maria Louisa (born July 1819), suggesting this portrait was painted around 1820. At this time the family were living in Bloomsbury in London, but from 1819 they also rented houses at Hampstead for the summer. This sketch could have been made at either place.

Gallery label, August 2004

John Constable, The Opening of Waterloo Bridge (‘Whitehall Stairs, June 18th, 1817’)  exhibited 1832

Constable first started to plan a large canvas about the opening of Waterloo Bridge around 1819, but over the years his ideas about how to treat it changed. Originally he intended to focus on the royal embarkation at the foot of Whitehall Stairs. However, in the finished picture, shown here, this recedes into the middle distance, and the sky and river both assume greater importance.

This was the largest of Constable’s exhibition canvases. It owes a debt to the Thames subjects of Canaletto and the great ‘historical’ landscapes painted by the seventeenth-century French artist Claude Lorraine.

Gallery label, August 2004

John Constable, A Cornfield  ?1817

Like Fen Lane, which hangs to the right, this study is thought to be one of the works Constable began outdoors in Suffolk in 1817, but did not finish. It too shows Fen Lane, but from further down.

When Constable was looking for a subject to work up for the 1826 Royal Academy exhibition, he turned to this canvas and from it painted the picture now known as The Cornfield (now in the National Gallery). It was probably while preparing the finished picture that he lowered the trees at the right of this earlier sketch by overpainting them with sky.

Gallery label, August 2004

John Constable, The Glebe Farm  c.1830

Constable painted at least four versions of this composition. This is the most freely painted of all the versions, and was the basis of an engraving which Constable included in his series of prints, English Landscape. On one surviving impression of the print Constable changed the church tower into a windmill. The same change was also made on this painting - traces of mill vanes can still be made out - before Constable decided to retain the tower and add a spire to it.

Gallery label, September 2004