John Constable, Flatford Mill (‘Scene on a Navigable River’) 1816–7. Tate.
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Today John Constable is recognised alongside JMW Turner as a great British landscape painter. While his work was just as radical as Turner’s, it took him much longer to find fame
Constable’s paintings of rural life in the early 1800s have shaped how the English countryside is imagined and romanticised. Even at the time, his work was powerfully nostalgic. Britain was changing – cities were growing and industry was booming. Rural life was changing, too, and bad harvests plus falling wages created challenges not evident in the pictures you see here.
Constable loved his native Stour Valley, which lies between the counties of Suffolk and Essex in south-east England. At 23 he moved to London but returned home regularly to sketch. The Stour Valley ‘made me a painter’, he said. It inspired paintings that first got him noticed and so strong was his association with the area that even before his death in 1837 it was called ‘Constable country’, a name still used today.
Sketching outdoors in oils was the basis of Constable’s art. He sought ‘freshness’ in his work and to capture fleeting light effects. Unlike Turner, he didn’t travel abroad, although his paintings were hugely praised at exhibitions in Paris.
Frustrated by his lack of recognition in London, he started to paint larger canvases. These so-called ‘six footers’ show off his bold painting technique and knowledge of Old Master painters he admired, like Canaletto, Claude and Rubens. They depict landscapes beyond ‘Constable country’, too – London, Salisbury and Brighton – and show his ability to bring landscape to life.
John Constable, Flatford Mill (‘Scene on a Navigable River’) &²Ô²ú²õ±è;1816–7
Typical of the kind of painting for which Constable became famous, this is a snapshot of working life at his father’s business premises on the River Stour. It shows a barge being disconnected from a tow horse, ready to be ‘poled’ under Flatford bridge, in the lower left-hand corner. It is the largest painting Constable worked on outdoors. X-rays show us that he changed it significantly in the studio, painting out a horse on the towpath and replacing it with the two boys in the distance. Can you see where Constable has signed his name as if it has been written in the dirt track?
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John Constable, The Mill Stream. Verso: Night Scene with Bridge c.1810
Painted quickly outdoors on a bright day, this study is the setting for one of Constable’s most famous paintings, The Hay Wain (now in the National Gallery). It shows the view from the forecourt of Flatford Mill across a side stream of the River Stour in Suffolk. The stream had been diverted under the mill to power the waterwheel. The white house is Willy Lott’s House, named after the tenant farmer who lived there for over 80 years.
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John Constable, A Lane near Flatford &²Ô²ú²õ±è;³¦.1810–11
Constable’s studio was full of oil sketches made outdoors like this one. Working quickly, Constable would have mixed together colours on the sketch itself – as seen in the white streaks in the lane. His aim was to capture fleeting effects like the movement of wind through trees. He may have liked this spot on a lane near his father’s mill because of the way the view opens up in two directions around the central mass of trees. He used the figure of the boy drinking from the stream in his painting The Cornfield, which is now in the National Gallery.
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John Constable, Yarmouth Jetty after 1823
In the early nineteenth century the seaside town of Yarmouth became a favoured middle-class holiday destination. Constable may have only visited Yarmouth once, in the 1790s. He used the sketches he made on that visit when painting this work in the 1820s. The subject of Yarmouth was so popular with collectors that Constable made two other versions. This painting was acquired by Constable’s doctor, Robert Gooch. According to the artist, Gooch used to place it on his sofa at breakfast to feel as though he were ‘on the seashore enjoying its breezes’.
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John Constable, Cloud Study 1822
In 1821 and 1822, Constable studied clouds and the sky intensively, mainly over Hampstead Heath, north of London. He often inscribed the date, time of day, wind direction and general weather conditions on the back of the painting, indicating an interest in meteorology. In this instance, the inscription on the back includes the time of day ’11 o’clock’ and ‘noon,’ suggesting Constable painted this in an hour. Capturing the changeability of clouds as they drifted above him was a challenging exercise. Constable’s lively brushwork, colour tones and understanding of the structure and movement of clouds made him adept at expressing mood in landscape painting.
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John Constable, The Opening of Waterloo Bridge (‘Whitehall Stairs, June 18th, 1817’) exhibited 1832
This River Thames view is the largest painting Constable exhibited. He worked on it, and worried about it, on and off for 13 years. Constable wanted to show he could paint a grand cityscape, but it proved a challenging subject. He struggled with the composition, calling it a ‘blister’. A puzzling element is the group of industrial towers above the Lord Mayor’s barge on the right – these were not yet built when Waterloo Bridge opened. Whatever his reasons for including them, they signal the rapid industrialisation of the Thames’s south bank.
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John Constable, A Cornfield ?1817
We think that Constable began this painting outdoors. He did so because he wanted to faithfully capture light, texture and atmosphere. He may have added details like the carefully-painted ears of corn above the bank on the left-hand side in his studio. Look carefully and you will see that the trees on right were once higher. Constable probably lowered them, increasing the space given to sky, when working up this sketch for a painting he exhibited in 1826, The Cornfield, which is now in the National Gallery.
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John Constable, East Bergholt House c.1809
This was the house in which Constable was born. It no longer exists but is recorded in many drawings and paintings by the artist. In 1832 Constable published a volume of prints after his work, titled ‘English Landscape Scenery’. He chose an image of his house as the lead image (the frontispiece), and wrote beneath it: ‘This place was the origin of my Fame’.
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John Constable, Hampstead Heath, with Harrow in the Distance &²Ô²ú²õ±è;³¦.1820–2
Constable wrote that living in Hampstead, then a small village north of London, allowed him to ‘unite a town & country life’. He rented a house there almost every summer from 1819 to 1826. From 1827 he rented a house there year-round, keeping a studio in central London. With its clean air, green heath and wide, expansive views, Hampstead delighted Constable. He made several outdoor oil sketches of this view. Harrow church can be seen on the extreme right. When this work was first exhibited in the 1880s it became the most popular painting for artists to make copies of.
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John Constable, Hampstead Heath with a Rainbow 1836
Constable was proud of this painting. He called it ‘one of my best bits of Heath’, ‘so fresh – so bright... & sunshiney’. It depicts Branch Hill Pond on Hampstead Heath, north of London. The Hampstead Heath ponds were dug as reservoirs to meet the growing water demand of a rapidly expanding city. Sand was extracted for building works and the flooded pits became watering holes for animals, as seen here, and swimming. Constable’s late work often featured rainbows. He admired the way Old Master painter Rubens had painted them and saw in them a sign of hope.
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John Constable, The Glebe Farm c.1830
From around 1828, Constable’s paintings became darker. He conjured turbulent skies and applied paint using dabs and dashes. He grew obsessive about white highlights, believing they created ‘freshness’. The critics, however, called this effect ‘Constable’s ‘snow’. ‘Glebe’ means church-owned land. Constable’s supporter, the Bishop of Salisbury, had lived in this house during his time in Suffolk. Constable painted at least four other versions of this view after the Bishop’s death in 1825. He experimented on this one, adding a spire to the church and a rainbow on the right. He also tried changing the church into a windmill.
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John Constable, Maria Constable with Two of her Children. Verso: Copy after Teniers c.1820
This rapidly painted sketch captures a tender family moment. Constable and his wife Maria had seven children. The two seen here sitting on her knee are probably the eldest, John Charles (born December 1817), and Maria Louisa (born July 1819). Constable and Maria had struggled to be together. Anxious that he made so little money from his paintings, Maria’s family only gave their blessing when Constable inherited money from his father. They married in 1816, seven years after falling in love. Tragically, Maria’s pregnancies weakened her fragile health and she died of tuberculosis in 1828, aged 41. Constable became a single father to their children.
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John Constable, The Church Porch, East Bergholt exhibited 1810
Three figures sit and talk outside the church in East Bergholt, the village in Suffolk where Constable was born. A man, wearing a red cloak and tricorn hat, and a woman lean on the tombs while a younger girl sits opposite. These figures, old and young, and their placement in the graveyard may have been a deliberate way to build a deeper meaning into the scene, about the passage of time and our mortality. Though it is small, this was an important work for Constable – we think it was the first painting he submitted himself for exhibition at the Royal Academy.
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John Constable, Stoke-by-Nayland &²Ô²ú²õ±è;³¦.1810–11
Using fewer and broader brushstrokes than in other of his sketches, Constable quickly captures the stark contrast between the bright sky and shaded copse. A figure in white carrying a bundle on her head stands out against the shadows. The scene is Stoke-by-Nayland, a village in Suffolk only a few miles from where Constable grew up. Even after he moved to London in 1799, he regularly returned to the Stour Valley to sketch outdoors and gather material for large exhibition paintings. The banks of the River Stour ‘made me a painter’, he later claimed.
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John Constable, Brightwell Church and Village 1815
This view of the village of Brightwell near Ipswich shows the winding road that leads past houses and fields to the church above the trees on the horizon. Typically, Constable pays close attention to the light and colour of the landscape. White flowers and red poppies stand out against the fields and dusty bank in the foreground while pools of sunlight catch the golden fields in the distance. The Reverend FH Barnwell commissioned Constable to paint the view, as he had a special interest in the village.
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John Constable, Chain Pier, Brighton &²Ô²ú²õ±è;1826–7
This blustery coastal scene was part of Constable’s attempt to prove that he could paint different kinds of subjects on a large scale. From 1824, Constable regularly spent summers in Brighton in the hope that the sea air would restore the health of his wife, Maria. Brighton was then the fastest growing and most fashionable town in Britain. Tourists flocked to attractions like the Chain Pier, which opened in 1823 to receive steamboats from France. Constable has silhouetted the pier on the horizon here. Around it we see fishermen and ladies huddled under their parasols as well as rows of newly built terraces lining the seafront.
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John Constable, The Gleaners, Brighton 1824
With his back turned to Brighton, Constable captures a blustery sky above the downs that surround the town. Two women, the gleaners, gather wheat ready for milling in the windmills nearby. It was typical of Constable to be so interested in the everyday work that happened on the edges of the fashionable resort. As he often did, Constable wrote the time of day the sketch records on the back: ‘Brighton – Noon, looking N.E. Augst 20, 1824’. Later on, he extended the sketch to include the right-hand windmill and added clouds above the figures of the gleaners.
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artworks in John Constable
Art in this room
John Constable
Flatford Mill (‘Scene on a Navigable River’)
1816–7
John Constable
The Mill Stream. Verso: Night Scene with Bridge
c.1810
John Constable
A Lane near Flatford
³¦.1810–11
John Constable
Yarmouth Jetty
after 1823
John Constable
Cloud Study
1822
John Constable
The Opening of Waterloo Bridge (‘Whitehall Stairs, June 18th, 1817’)
exhibited 1832
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