National Gallery of Australia | Audio Tour | Constable

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 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).

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

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 o

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 t

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 la

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 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).

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).

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

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 betwee

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 –

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).

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

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

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 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 hi

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 lea

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.

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).