John Constable (1776-1837)
Dedham Vale looking towards Langham, c.1809-14
Oil on millboard laid onto canvas, 31.5cm by 39cm (12 x 15 3/8 inches)

Provenance: Ann Durning Holt (1899-1980), either acquired by her on the art market during her lifetime, or possibly to her by descent from her father Sir Richard Durning Holt (1868-1941), nephew of the distinguished Liverpudlian collector, George Holt (1825-1896); by descent to the current owner.

Dedham Vale looking towards Langham is an impressive and vigorous early plein-air sketch by John Constable which has not previously been recorded in the Constable literature. It bears a close relationship to the painting, Dedham Vale, c.1825, in Munich Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Neue Pinakothek; Graham Reynolds, The Later Paintings and Drawings of John Constable, Yale University Press, 1984, no 25.39; see fig. 001).

Constable is well known for his commitment to making oil sketches in the open air - an exercise he first embarked on in 1802 and continued to practice until as late in his career as 1829. In 1802 he was still a young man undertaking his artistic training in London at the Royal Academy Schools but had already decided that he wanted to specialize in landscape painting. However, that year he decided he no longer wished to imitate the work of earlier landscape artists but rather to turn to ‘Nature herself’. He resolved to return to his home in East Bergholt in Suffolk and make some ‘laborious studies from nature’ (John Constable’s Correspondence II, 1964, Suffolk Records Society, Ipswich, p.32; letter to John Dunthorne, 29 May 1802).

Determined, then, to paint his native Suffolk scenes – being those with which he had the greatest attachment – Constable at first made slow progress with this new procedure. However, by around 1810 he had developed a colourful and highly expressive oil sketching style. Moreover, until 1816 when he married and moved permanently to London, he continued to make many, usually quite small, plein-air sketches of the scenery in and around East Bergholt. These consisted mainly of panoramic vistas over Dedham Vale, more often than not, like this example, looking westwards from the Suffolk side of the Vale, more enclosed views taken in the lanes nearby, or scenes in and around Flatford where his father owned a mill for grinding corn. Occasionally Constable dated these plein-air oil sketches. Otherwise, as is the case with Dedham Vale, they can usually be broadly dated on the basis of style or on the support which Constable used when painting them.

Dedham Vale looking towards Langham is painted on board (and subsequently laid down onto canvas). Constable is known to have started using millboard for plein-air work from around 1809. Although he continued to use this support at intervals during his career, his most frequent use of board for oil sketching was generally in these earlier years, and especially around the period 1809-10. Furthermore, with its relatively smoothly applied brushstrokes, Dedham Vale looking towards Langham is close in style to other oil sketches Constable made around 1809 at Epsom and at Malvern Hall in Warwickshire (see, for example, Graham Reynolds, The Early Paintings and Drawings of John Constable, Yale University Press, 1996, nos. 09.08, 09.18 and 09.19). This sketch, by comparison with the latter examples, is notable for the more dramatic way in which he handles light and shade. Rays of sunlight can be seen bursting through cloud and sharply illuminating stretches of Dedham Vale in the middle and far distance. Meanwhile, a tiny touch of white paint indicates the tower of Langham Church close to the horizon on the right.

These on-the-spot sketches would often prove useful to Constable many years later when he was working in his London studio and planning new pictures for exhibition or sale. Rarely now able to spare time for visits to Suffolk, he would often turn to his earlier sketches for inspiration. Around the mid-1820s Constable used this sketch to serve as the basis of the aforementioned painting of Dedham Vale now in Munich, which shows the same stretch of the Vale, albeit somewhat extended on the left, and the tower of Langham Church in the same position on the far right. The biggest difference between the two works is in the extensive foreground which Constable added to the Munich picture, and into which he inserted a couple of seated figures (one of whom is seen pointing to the view) as well as a few animals such as donkeys and cows. Constable even incorporated into the Munich picture the idea of the sun bursting through cloud, albeit now positioning this feature further to the left. Constable’s expressive use of light and shade (‘chiaroscuro’) lends animation to his landscapes and was something he wrote about in a letterpress accompanying the publication in 1830-32 of a series of mezzotints from his work known as English Landscape. By 1836 he was even arguing (in a draft for a lecture) that chiaroscuro was the very ‘soul and medium of art’.

Note

1. There is another oil sketch recorded in the Constable literature similar to this one, in oil on paper set onto panel, which Graham Reynolds described as being ‘somewhat damaged’ (The Early Paintings, op.cit, no.08.58). Meanwhile, Ian Fleming-Williams referred to this sketch as ‘puzzling in the extreme’, as it shows Langham church in the wrong place (The Burlington Magazine, vo.130. no.1025, August 1988, p.654; review of Constable exhibition at Salander-Reilly Galleries, New York). Given this discrepancy, and also the recent appearance of this sketch from the Holt collection, perhaps the attribution of R.08.58 should now be re-evaluated.

Anne Lyles, 2025

We are grateful to Anne Lyles for her assistance with this catalogue entry.