National Gallery of Australia | Audio Tour | Constable

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