Signed, lower right: "John Constable. R. A. | London"
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1983.18
Classification:
Paintings
Collection:
Paintings and Sculpture
Subject Terms:
trees | texture | recreation | water | river | fishing | wood | boys | dark | mill | boat | light | house | landscape | clouds | paper mill | sky | riverbanks | fishing rod
Associated Places:
Stratford St. Mary | Suffolk | Europe | United Kingdom | England | Stour
Currently On View:
On view at the Yale University Art Gallery
Exhibition History:
YUAG European Galleries (Yale University Art Gallery, 2023-12-01 - 2025-01-15)In a New Light: Paintings from the Yale Center for British Art (Yale University Art Gallery, 2023-03-24 - 2023-12-03)The Critique of Reason : Romantic Art, 1760–1860 (Yale University Art Gallery, 2015-03-06 - 2015-07-26)Constable - The Great Landscapes (Tate Britain, 2006-06-01 - 2006-08-28)Constable - The Great Landscapes (National Gallery of Art, 2006-10-01 - 2007-01-02)Constable - The Great Landscapes (The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, 2007-02-03 - 2007-04-29)This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1998-05-01 - 1998-07-05)This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Queensland Art Gallery, 1998-07-15 - 1998-09-06)This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Art Gallery of South Australia, 1998-09-16 - 1998-11-15)John Constable (Tate) (Tate Britain, 1991-06-13 - 1991-09-15)John Constable (The Yomiuri Shimbun, 1986-01-30 - 1986-06-17)
Publications:
Acquisitions : The First Decade 1977-1986, Yale Center for British Art , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1986, pp. 5, 9, 12, no. 9, col. pl. 7, N590.2 A7 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Nina Amstutz, Landscape and the Architecture of Light: John Constable's Clouds at the Yale Center for British Art, Oxford University Press, London, 2017, p. 2, fig. 1, V 2736 (YCBA)John Baskett, Paul Mellon's Legacy: a Passion for British Art: Masterpieces from the Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, pp. 34, 35, 288, fig. 8, N5220 M552 P38 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Ronald Brymer Beckett, Constable and his critics, Apollo, vol. 82, London, July 1962, pp. 365-371, N1 A54 82 OVERSIZEMalcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 58-59, N590.2 A83 (YCBA)Malcolm Cormack, Constable, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK & New York, NY, 1986, pp. 33, 113..., pl. 110, NJ18 C74 C75 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Martina Droth, Britain in the world: Highlights from the Yale Center for British Art in honor of Amy Meyers, Yale University Press, New Haven, London, p. 108, N6761 .Y33 2019 (LC) (YCBA)H. G. Fell, Constable's Stratford Mill for the Nation, Connoisseur, vol. 118, September 1946, p. 53, N1 C75 117-118 OVERSIZEIan Fleming-Williams, Constable and his drawings, Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd, London, UK, 1990, pp. 290-91, fig. 265, NJ18 C74 F53 1990 (YCBA)Charles John Holmes, Constable and his influence on landscape painting, Archibald Constable and Company, Limited, Westminster, UK, 1902, oop. p. 92, Folio A N80 (YCBA)John Constable's correspondence, H. M. Stationery Off., London, vol. 6, p. 76, NJ18 C74 A2 1962 (YCBA)George Dunlop Leslie, John Constable, R.A., Art Journal, Virtue, London, January 1903, p. 8, British PeriodicalsAnne Lyles, Constable : the great landscapes, , Tate Publishing, London, UK, 2006, pp. 37, 23,48,, no. 30, NJ18 C74 C77 2006 + (YCBA)Julia Marciari-Alexander, This other Eden : Paintings from the Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1998, pp. 18, 132, 134, no. 53, fig. 17, ND1314.3 Y36 1998 (YCBA)Leslie Parris, Constable : pictures from the exhibition, , Tate Publishing, London, UK, 1991, pp. 40-41, NJ18 C74 P373 1991 (YCBA)Leslie Parris, Constable, Tate Publishing, London, UK, 1991, pp.199, 200..., no. 99, NJ18 C74 P372 1991 + (YCBA)Leslie Parris, The Later Paintings and Drawings of John Constable, Book Review , Burlington Magazine, vol. 127, March 1985, pp. 165, 167, N1 B87 + (YCBA)Paul Mellon's Legacy : a passion for British art [large print labels], , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, v. 3, N5220 M552 P381 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Graham Reynolds, Constable, the natural painter, Panther, St. Albans, UK, 1976, pp. 15..., NJ18 C74 R48 1976 (YCBA)Graham Reynolds, Stratford Mill by John Constable, R.A., Art at Auction, 1983, pp. 48-53, fig. 1, N8640 S62 A7+ (LSF - MUDD)Graham Reynolds, The later paintings and drawings of John Constable, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1984, p. 45 (v.1), no. 20.2, pl. 130 (v.2), NJ18 C74 R485 + (YCBA)Duncan Robinson, Acquisitions : The First Decade 1977 - 1986, , Burlington Magazine, vol. 128, October 1986, pp. 5, 9, 12, no. 9, col. .pl. 7, N1 B87 128:3 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Michael Rosenthal, Constable, Thames and Hudson, London, UK, 1987, pp. 109, 111, NJ18 C74 R683 (YCBA)Andrew Shirley, The published mezzotints of David Lucas after John Constable, R.A., a catalogue and historical account , Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1930, p. 201, no. 38, NJ18 C74 S5 + (YCBA)Ian St. John, Dedham : Constable country, Suffolk Walker, East Bergholt, 2005, p. 21, fig. no. 28, V 2535 (YCBA)The Royal Academy, The Graphic, London, Saturday, January 9, 1886, p. 31, Available online at 19th Century Brit Newspapers Article retrieved from 19th Century British NewspapersIzaak Walton, The compleat angler, or, The contemplative man's recreation. Being a discourse of fish and fishing, not unworthy the perusal of most anglers ..., T. Maxey for Rich. Marriot, London, pp. 16-17, Ig W175 653 (BEINECKE)John Wilmerding, Essays in honor of Paul Mellon, collector and benefactor, Essays , National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC & Hanover, NH, 1986, pp. 70-8, N7442.2 M455 1986 (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
Around 1818–19, John Constable began creating large-scale paintings (known as “six-footers”) that were intended for the annual exhibitions at the Royal Academy. The challenges of painting on this new monumental scale encouraged him to adopt the unusual practice of creating full-sized sketches to guide his work. This is one of those sketches, made for a landscape now in the National Gallery, London, and derived from a small oil study made en plein air in Suffolk in 1811. These full-size sketches were never meant for a public display and reveal Constable working out aspects of his final composition, such as the placement of the standing boy holding a fishing pole. In the final painting, Constable removed the figure, giving the fishing rod to one of the kneeling children on the right. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016-present
Provenance:
Created by John Constable (1776-1837), the artist; acquired by Wynn Ellis (1790-1875), 30 Cadogan Place, Middlesex; purchased by "Renson" at Christie, Manson & Woods, London, England, July 15, 1876 (lot 44, 'Young Waltonians'), in "The Celebrated Collection of…Wynn Ellis, Esq." [1] [a]; … ; acquired by Alice Seligson (née Mayer, formerly Schoenfeld, 1883-1972), Zurich, Switzerland, and Berkeley, California, ca. 1920 [2] [b];… ; purchased at auction by John Baskett Ltd. at Sotheby Parke Bernet & Co., London, July 6, 1983 (lot 267, "The Young Waltonians - Stratford Mill - The Full-Scale Sketch") in “Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century British Paintings” as Property of a Gentleman, on behalf of the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven [c] [d]. Notes: --- [1] Described in the 1876 sale catalog as being after Constable. Only the buyer's last name appears in the catalog as an annotation in cursive script. May possibly be the collector Ernest Renson, although no works by Constable are auctioned at Ernest's sale at Galerie Georges Giroux in 1924: https://bibliotheque-numerique.inha.fr/idurl/1/60900. [2] See label on work’s reverse (top right corner of the frame), which reads: “Mill in Essex attributed to J. Constable / Owner: Mrs. Alice Schoenfeld SELIGSON”. Another label on the reverse (top left corner of the frame) reads in German “Sammlung Alice Schoenfeld / Mill (?) von Essex”, which suggests that she only bought the work after 1907 when she married her first husband, Morris Schoenfeld, but before her second marriage to Albert Seligson in 1942. [3] Alice appears to have brought the work with her to America when she emigrated in 1940. She evidently kept it with her during her residence in Berkeley, CA and lent it to the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum (now the de Young Museum) in San Francisco, CA in 1968. Citations: --- [a] Christie, Manson & Woods. July 15, 1876. The Celebrated Collection of Pictures and Watercolor Drawings, Formed by that Well-Known Amateur Wynn Ellis, Esq., Deceased. Art Sales Catalogues Online (Brill: 2000), https://doi.org/10.1163/2210-7886_ASC-36734 [b] Graham Reynolds, The Later Paintings and Drawings of John Constable (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 1:45, https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/orbis:582470 [c] Sotheby Parke Bernet & Co. Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century British Paintings. July 6, 1983. https://worldcat.org/en/title/171369707 [d] Malcolm Cormack, Constable, Japan: The Yomiuri Shimbun, 1986, pp.154, no.27