Search results
By Angie Jones. It seems strange – walking the path that the young John Constable took to school. It seems strange too standing on the spot where ‘The Hay Wain’ was painted, but that’s what happens when you explore East Bergholt and the beautiful countryside around it.
Birth to 1797: Suffolk Years. On June 11, 1776, at East Bergholt in Suffolk, John Constable was born the second son to Golding and Ann Constable. John Constable first attended a boarding school fifteen miles from East Bergholt when he was seven-years-old, then moved to a school in Lavenham, and finally ended up at Dedham, where he stayed until ...
People also ask
Who was Constable Bergholt & what did he do?
What is East Bergholt?
Who was John Constable?
Where did Constable Bicknell go to school?
East Bergholt is a historical jewel in Suffolk, hosting a staggering 180+ Constable locations and 100+ listed buildings. This site helps tourists, researchers and residents learn more about our very special village. Explore and Learn. JOHN CONSTABLE. Comprehensive archive of over 180 Constable Landscapes in the East Bergholt area. Map List.
The son of Golding Constable, a landowning farmer, miller, and corn merchant, Constable grew up along the Stour River in East Bergholt, Suffolk. Although his family hoped that he would join his father’s business, they permitted him to enter the Royal Academy Schools at the age of twenty-two.
Nov 22, 2021 · John Constable, R.A., View of Dedham Vale from East Bergholt (Neue Pinakothek, Munich) It was also here, in this small area of Suffolk, that Constable met and befriended many of the people that would shape his later career.
- Overview
- Beginnings
- Early maturity
John Constable (born June 11, 1776, East Bergholt, Suffolk, England—died March 31, 1837, London) major figure in English landscape painting in the early 19th century. He is best known for his paintings of the English countryside, particularly those representing his native valley of the River Stour, an area that came to be known as “Constable countr...
The son of a wealthy miller and merchant who owned a substantial house and small farm, Constable was reared in a small Suffolk village. The environs of his childhood and his understanding of its rural economy would later figure prominently in his work. As he would write in 1821, “I should paint my own places best…I associate my ‘careless boyhood’ to all that lies on the banks of the Stour.”
Constable was meant to enter his father’s business, but, after meeting the famous connoisseur Sir George Beaumont in 1795, and then a circle of antiquarians and connoisseurs at Edmonton in 1796, he was inspired to pursue art. In February 1799 he made himself known to the influential academician Joseph Farington, and in March he entered the prestigious Royal Academy schools, with the grudging approval of his father. At the time, art academies stressed history painting as the most appropriate subject matter for their students, but from the beginning Constable showed a particular interest in landscape.
In 1802 Constable refused the stability of a post as drawing master at a military academy so that he could instead dedicate himself to landscape painting and to studying nature directly in the English countryside. That same year he exhibited his work at the Royal Academy for the first time. Despite some early explorations in oil, in the first part of this decade he preferred using watercolour and graphic media in his studies of nature. He produced fine studies in these media during a trip to the famously picturesque Lake District in autumn 1806, but his exhibitions of these works in both 1807 and 1808 were unsuccessful in attracting public notice.
Britannica Quiz
Although based in London during this period, Constable would frequently make extended visits to his native East Bergholt to sketch. (On one such stay in 1809, he fell in love with Maria Bicknell, who was visiting her grandfather, the rector there.) Constable had been regularly sketching in oil since 1808, and by 1810 he had achieved extraordinary deftness with the medium (he would often be associated with his oil sketches in the future). His art became far more focused about this time: his sketches were either discrete studies, or, befitting academic practice, they were made in preparation for preconceived easel paintings. The most significant large easel painting of the period was Dedham Vale: Morning (1811), which married closely observed naturalistic effect to a scene composed according to the academic criteria established by 17th-century French painter Claude Lorrain.
In September 1811 Constable stayed in Salisbury with an old family friend, the Bishop of Salisbury, and grew close to the bishop’s nephew, John Fisher. Their correspondence is a hugely informative source on Constable’s art: he explains his aims and aspirations, reacts candidly and sometimes aggressively to contemporary criticism, and reveals himself to be driven, ambitious, and prey to gnawing self-doubt.
Exclusive academic rate for students! Save 67% on Britannica Premium.
Learn More
The daily walk between his home in East Bergholt and Dedham School instilled in him a deep knowledge of and love for the Suffolk countryside which was to inspire his art and become the hallmark of his paintings in later in life. The beginnings of his career.
