The idyllic English countryside with green grass, blue skies, and picturesque cottages was indelibly captured by the artist John Constable (1776—1837). A foremost Romantic landscape painter, his carefully observed, highly detailed paintings reflect his abiding connection with nature.
Early English Romantic
Albert Museum, London. (Stephencdickson/CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED)
The circumstances of Constable’s birth gave no hint of his destined artistic greatness. Born into a prosperous landowning family of corn and coal merchants, he joined the family business in his youth. Painting was initially a gentlemanly leisure pursuit until he made the acquaintance of a prominent art collector. Upon viewing the man’s Old Master paintings, he desired formal artist training and to enter the profession. His family consented and Constable studied at the Royal Academy Schools. Throughout his career, his practice was influenced by the previous generation’s landscape artists, especially the British Thomas Gainsborough; the Dutch Jacob Ruisdael and Jan van Goyen; and the Flemish Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Siberechts.
His early works reflect his travels in Derbyshire and the Lake District. Although he spent most of his adulthood living in London—in fact, he never left England—it was the landscape of his native Suffolk to which he returned again and again. Constable wrote to a friend, “I should paint my own places best—Painting is but another word for feeling.” Specifically, it was the region of Stour Valley and Dedham Vale, known today as “Constable country,” that became the most used subject for his ‘six-footer’ paintings.
‘The Hay Wain’
“The Hay Wain” is Constable’s third ‘six-footer’ canvas. Painted in 1821 in his London studio, he completed it in under five months. He had moved to London after his 1816 marriage but continued to summer in his hometown of East Bergholt, Suffolk. The setting of “The Hay Wain” is down the road from there; however, Constable was unable to paint the work onsite. Instead, he relied on his detailed drawings and oil sketches of the area, some dating back over 10 years, for initial sketches of the intended composition of “The Hay Wain.” Unusual for the time, he produced a full-size oil sketch before painting the final canvas.
The central part of the picture shows an empty wain, or wooden wagon, on its way to be used to transport hay, cut and dried meadow grass used as animal feed during winter. The wagon’s front wheel turns right as it crosses at a ford in the millpond. It is on its way to the meadow in the background. Haymakers can just be made out in the distance. Some use pitchforks to hoist hay into a wagon, and one person sharpens a scythe. The everyday scene of a cart rolling through a ford was a popular subject for 17th-century Dutch and Flemish artists. An example Constable studied, now also part of the National Gallery’s collection, is Peter Paul Rubens’ “A View of Het Steen in the Early Morning.”
The real-life location of “The Hay Wain” is Flatford on the River Stour. At the right of the painting is a sliver of red bricks indicating Flatford Mill. This watermill for grinding corn was operated by the Constable family. The artist’s parents lived in the millhouse before he was born.
The canvas’ more prominent building is on the left. This cottage with a red roof, whitewashed walls, and chimney smoke was occupied in Constable’s time by the tenant farmer Willy Lott. Constable featured this man’s farmhouse in many of his works. Today, it is owned and preserved, along with Flatford Mill, by the National Trust and is a popular tourist attraction.
A Vanishing Atmosphere
At first glance, one might assume this painting was made in a conventional manner and that it was representative of a typical bucolic summer day. It may come as a surprise that Constable’s working methods and artistic vision were radical in his day. Furthermore, “The Hay Wain” immortalizes a pastoral lifestyle already uncommon by the 1820s.
In addition to Constable’s choice of scale, the painting is unique for its color and texture. Typically, artists inspired by viewing Old Master landscapes copied their brownish tonal palette. However, the Old Masters had not originally used such muddy colors. Exposure to fires and smoke over time had discolored the pictures. Constable’s landscapes are realistic because he painted them in bright green. The artist employed loose brushstrokes on the canvas and even broadly scraped paint in certain areas to make the landscapes more authentic.
A Crown Jewel
Upon exhibition, “The Hay Wain” met with favorable reviews but went unsold. Two Frenchmen visiting England, one of whom was the Romantic artist Théodore Géricault, were astounded by its naturalism. They returned home and praised Constable and his art. The picture grew in fame, and Constable sold it to an Anglo-French dealer who exhibited it at the 1824 Paris Salon. For this work and two others displayed, Constable was awarded a gold medal by King Charles X of France.
“The Hay Wain” is one of the National Gallery’s crown jewels. Emily Burns, former Vivmar Curatorial Fellow at the Museum, said the painting is “a quiet, relaxing, gentle scene that really shook the landscape painting world.”
