National Gallery of Australia | Audio Tour | Constable

‘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