The Hay Wain (1821)
National Gallery, London
Hay cart crossing the Stour by Willy Lott's Cottage; won a gold medal at the 1824 Paris Salon
Image: John Constable · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Art
John Constable
1776–1837 · English
Romanticism
John Constable was the great painter of the English countryside, above all the Stour valley on the Suffolk–Essex border now called 'Constable Country'. His fresh, direct studies of weather, light and clouds made The Hay Wain a national icon and influenced the French Romantics and, later, the Impressionists.
How to spot them
- ▸Rural Suffolk scenes: the River Stour, mills, locks, hay carts, cottages and big cloudy skies
- ▸Flecks of white paint ('Constable's snow') to catch light glinting on leaves and water
- ▸Large 'six-footer' canvases and oil sketches of clouds made on Hampstead Heath
- ▸Quiz clue: East Bergholt, Flatford Mill, Dedham Vale, Willy Lott's Cottage
Key works
Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds (1823)
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Commissioned by the Bishop of Salisbury, John Fisher; the cathedral spire framed by trees
Image: John Constable · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
The Cornfield (1826)
National Gallery, London
A boy drinking from a stream in a sunken lane near East Bergholt
Image: John Constable · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Flatford Mill (Scene on a Navigable River) (1816–1817)
Tate Britain, London
View near his father's mill on the Stour, with a boy riding a tow-horse
Image: John Constable · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
The White Horse (1819)
Frick Collection, New York
The first of his 'six-footers'; a tow-horse ferried across the Stour
Image: John Constable · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Quick-fire facts
- •Born in East Bergholt, Suffolk, in 1776, the son of a prosperous mill owner.
- •Unlike Turner, he never travelled abroad.
- •His large Stour-valley canvases are known as the 'six-footers'.
- •He made a famous series of cloud studies ('skying') on Hampstead Heath in 1821–22.
- •The Hay Wain won a gold medal from Charles X at the Paris Salon of 1824.
- •He was elected a full Royal Academician only in 1829, aged 52.
- •His wife, Maria Bicknell, died of tuberculosis in 1828.
- •In 1832 Turner famously upstaged him at the Royal Academy by adding a single red buoy to a seascape hung beside Constable's 'Opening of Waterloo Bridge'.
Drill it — 9 cards
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Sources
- National Gallery, London — The Hay Wain – John Constable
- Victoria and Albert Museum — John Constable: an introduction