John Constable R.A.

(East Bergholt 1776-1837 London)

The Vale of Dedham

Footnotes

Provenance
J.T. Smith
Sale, Sotheby's, London, 15 July 1959, lot 57, where purchased by the late Dr. and Mrs W. Katz for £280, and thence by descent to the present owners


Exhibited
New York, Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, John Constable, R.A. (1776-1837): an exhibition: paintings, drawings, watercolors, mezzotints, 9 May- 25 June 1988, cat. no. 55

Literature
C.S. Rhyne, 'Constable Drawings and Watercolors in the Collections of Mr and Mrs Paul Mellon and the Yale Centre for British Art: Part I. Authentic Works', in Master Drawings, no. 2, Summer 1981, pp. 127-8, 140, under cat. no. 7 and p. 140, note 4, ill. fig. 1
G. Reynolds, John Constable, R.A. (1776-1837): an exhibition: paintings, drawings, watercolors, mezzotints exh. cat., New York, 1988, p. 116, cat. no. 55, ill
I. Fleming-Williams, Constable and his Drawings, London, 1990, pp. 50-1, ill., fig. 40
G. Reynolds, The Early Paintings and Drawings of John Constable, New Haven and London, 1996, p. 61, cat. no. 05.12, ill., pl. 252

The present work is one of the few sketches that Constable dated in 1805 and it is in fact the earliest dated study for his 1815 Royal Academy exhibit, The Stour Valley and Dedham Village, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (G. Reynolds, op. cit. 1996, no 15.1, pl 1221). The early months of 1805 were taken up with his first major religious commission, an altarpiece for Brantham Church, but by the autumn he was spending his time painting landscape watercolours around East Bergholt, Langham Church and Dedham Vale.

Vale of Dedham is one of 3 drawings inscribed in very similar manner that Constable gave to his friend J.T. Smith in 1823, the others being Stoke Windmill near Ipswich and a Study of East Bergholt Church (G. Reynolds, op. cit. 1996, nos 05.18 and 06.08). Smith had been a major influence on Constable in his formative years after they met at Edmonton in 1796 when Constable was working for his father, a merchant, and was staying with relatives while visiting London on business. John Thomas 'Antiquity' Smith (1766-1833) was a print maker, topographer, portraitist and drawing master, a larger-than-life figure who knew all the main players in the London art world and whose friendship must have opened a window onto a new world for Constable. Smith encouraged the younger man by sending him drawings and casts to copy as well as books, among which his own 1797 publication illustrated with etchings, Remarks on Rural Scenery, the basic tenet of which – and one shared by Constable - was that artists should find beauty in all forms of nature, no matter how humble. Smith went to stay with the Constable family in the autumn of 1798 and it is probably no coincidence that within months John left the family business and was enrolled as a student at the Royal Academy Schools.