A Carroça de Feno

1819

Sells “The White Horse”: the breakthrough

Constable sold his first important canvas: his friend John Fisher bought The White Horse for 100 guineas, giving him a financial freedom he had never known. Its success helped him become an associate of the Royal Academy and launched the series of monumental Stour landscapes known as the “six-footers”.

1820

“Stratford Mill”: the second six-footer

The second large picture of the series was shown in 1820, and The Examiner thought it looked more exactly like nature than any picture it had seen by an Englishman. Fisher bought it for 100 guineas for his solicitor friend John Pern Tinney, who offered Constable another 100 guineas for a companion piece; the artist did not take up the offer.

1821

“The Hay Wain” at the Royal Academy

The picture, shown as “Landscape: Noon”, found no buyer, but it was seen by the painter Théodore Géricault and the writer Charles Nodier. According to Delacroix, Géricault went back to France quite stunned and invited Constable to Paris, while Nodier urged French artists to look to nature rather than to trips to Rome.

1821

“I should paint my own places best”

In a letter to his friend John Fisher in 1821 Constable wrote that he should paint his own places best, and that painting is but another word for feeling. The Dedham Vale around his home came to be known as “Constable Country”.

1821

Son born: Charles Golding Constable

23 October 1821

To Fisher: “I have done a good deal of skying”

Constable wrote to Fisher that he had done a good deal of skying and was determined to conquer all the difficulties that remained. He made cloud studies, noting the weather, direction of light and time of day on the back, and held the sky to be the key note of a landscape, drawing on the meteorologist Luke Howard’s classification of clouds.