John Constable R.A.

(East Bergholt 1776-1837 London)

Landscape study with cows

Footnotes

Provenance
The Collection of Mrs Richard Griffin, until sold
Sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, 21 March 1969, lot 63 (bt. Wallis, 600 gns) as on panel
James Bruce, and by descent through the family

Literature
G. Reynolds, The Early Paintings and Drawings of John Constable, 1996, p. 243, no. 20.98, ill. no. 1392 (in the section of The Later Paintings and Drawings of John Constable, Additions)

This study of cattle is somewhat unusual among Constable's sketches of the 1820s as he tended not to focus on animals as the subject of his paintings. The two cows are lying down close to some overhanging trees, basking in the slanting rays of what is probably late autumn sunshine, as the air is sufficiently cold to turn their breath to steam and the trees are still in leaf. Graham Reynolds suggests it is one of a group of studies painted en plein air in the early 1820s, for the most part in Hampstead, where Constable and his family were living at the time, and certainly the fact that it is on paper suggests it was sketched on the spot. Working in London on his Royal Academy exhibits, Constable must have been attracted to Hampstead both for its rural setting and for the wide skies its high vantage point afforded him - his sketches in this period included many cloud studies or 'skies' as he called them. His first lodgings in 1819 were at Albion Cottage, Upper Heath, and in 1821 (the year in which he exhibited The Hay Wain at the Royal Academy) he moved his family into No. 2 Lower Terrace, Hampstead.

Reynolds compares the brushwork and colouring of this work to another study on paper, now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, (G. Reynolds, The Later Paintings and Drawings of John Constable, 1984, no. 21.114, ill. no. 313) which shows a figure in sunlight beside a row of trees, which he believes dates from the same period: both sketches look down on their subject from a high view-point and they share a similarly intense, yellow-green palette. The sheet sizes are almost identical, tying in with the measurements of a number of other sketches on paper that Constable painted en plain air during this period.