The Hay Wain, Study

Artist: John Constable

This landscape painting, depicting the lush countryside of south-east England, is focalized around the image of a hay wain – a horse-drawn cart for transporting hay – crossing a forded stream. A range of figures, including one on horseback accompanied by a black-and-white dog, populate the scene, but the emphasis is on the landscape as a whole, with human activity presented as integrated elements of the overall scene. Constable’s approach to en plein air painting involved creating full-scale oil sketches such as this one, which has been compared favorably to the finished painting, The Hay Wain, which is based upon it . As the art historian C. K. Kauffmann puts it: “the finished picture in the National Gallery differs hardly at all in composition…It is by far the better known of the two, yet in some ways it is the sketch, with its rapid brush strokes, its flecks of white and green skimming the surface, and its generally broader treatment that accords more with modern taste.” Painting en plein air allowed Constable to cultivate a rapt attention to the natural world. This approach was influenced by Claude Lorrain’s scientifically detailed studies of landscapes. Like Lorrain, Constable would often spend days on sketching trips in the countryside. His father owned the cottage depicted in this sketch, located on the River Stour dividing the counties of Sussex and Essex. Indeed, Constable had grown up within sight of the setting. Such familiar scenes, he remarked, “made me a painter, and I am grateful,…the sound of water escaping from mill dams etc., willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork, I love such things.” For Kauffmann, Constable’s approach combines “two tendencies: he portrayed his native Suffolk and one or two other areas in a manner both more naturalistic than that of any of his predecessors and yet imbued with a deeply Romantic spirit.” Shown at the 1824 Paris Salon, Constable’s landscapes had a profound impact on French artists, including Corot and Rousseau and other leading artists of the subsequent Barbizon School.

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Oil on canvas – Victoria and Albert Museum, London

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