id: 95253 accession number: 1916.1027 share license status: CC0 url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1916.1027 updated: 2023-12-06 15:01:37.687000 Hampstead Heath, Looking Toward Harrow, c. 1821. John Constable (British, 1776–1837). Oil on paper, mounted on canvas; framed: 39 x 44.5 x 5 cm (15 3/8 x 17 1/2 x 1 15/16 in.); unframed: 25.9 x 31.3 cm (10 3/16 x 12 5/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Wade 1916.1027 title: Hampstead Heath, Looking Toward Harrow title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: c. 1821 creation date earliest: 1816 creation date latest: 1826 current location: 203B British Painting and Decorative Arts creditline: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Wade copyright: --- culture: England, 19th century technique: oil on paper, mounted on canvas department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960 type: Painting find spot: catalogue raisonne: --- CREATORS * John Constable (British, 1776–1837) - artist With Turner (q.v.), his exact contemporary, John Constable defined the parameters of genius for a generation of romantic landscape painters. The son of a prosperous miller and gentleman farmer, he entered into his profession late and was basically self-taught. Between 1796 and 1799 Constable had the advice of several artists and connoisseurs influential in the London art scene, primarily that of Sir George Beaumont (1753-1827), John Thomas Smith (1766-1833), and Joseph Farington (1747-1821). With the grudging consent of his parents, he entered the Royal Academy schools in 1799, the same year Turner was elected an associate member. (Twenty years would elapse before the academy conceded Constable that gesture of recognition.) He emerged publicly as a mature and focused painter of naturalistic landscapes in 1802 with the exhibition of his first oil painting at the Royal Academy.1 Shortly afterward he moved to his family home in East Bergholt with the intention of getting "a pure and unaffected representation of the scenes that may employ me." The tours of 1806 produced an important body of Lake District material, especially studies in watercolor and in graphite, a medium Constable employed with unrivaled ability even at this early date. In 1808 he began a period of intense plein-air oil sketching and by 1814 was painting finished pictures like the magnificent Stour Valley and Dedham Village (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) or Wivenhoe Park, Essex (National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.)2 entirely out of doors. The Stour River, Flatford Mill, and Dedham Vale were the subjects to which he returned repeatedly with brilliant success. With his bride, Maria Bicknell, the artist moved permanently to London in 1816. His repertoire of subjects would expand to include Brighton, Salisbury, and Hampstead Heath, and both his practice and his fortunes also evolved in a significant new direction when he began his six-foot pictures of Suffolk landscape painted in the London studio. The scale of such works as The White Horse (1819, Frick Collection, New York)3 undoubtedly contributed to his successful bid for associate membership in the Royal Academy that year. With Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) and Bonington (q.v.), Constable created a sensation at the 1824 Paris Salon, where he exhibited The Hay Wain (National Gallery, London) and View on the Stour near Dedham (Huntington Art Gallery, San Marino),4 although French artists had known and admired his work since 1820. After the death of his wife in 1828 and his election as full academician in 1829, Constable turned toward consolidating his reputation through writing, lecturing, and the medium of printmaking. He published English Landscape (1830-32) in collaboration with the mezzotint engraver David Lucas, but it was commercially unsuccessful. He never ceased to work from nature, but the later masterworks Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (1831, National Gallery, London), The Opening of Waterloo Bridge (1832, Tate Gallery, London), and Arundel Mill and Castle (1837, Toledo Museum of Art)5 are pictures in which an expressionistic use of the medium struggles against an ever-increasing imaginative formalization of natural motifs. 1. Probably Edge of the Wood (Art Gallery of Ontario); see Reynolds 1996, no. 2.1. 2. Reynolds 1996, no. 15.1; Reynolds 1984, no. 17.4. 3. Reynolds 1984, no. 2:19.1. 4. Reynolds 1984, no. 21.1; Reynolds 1984, 22.1. 5. Reynolds 1984, no. 31.1; Reynolds 1984, no. 32.1; Reynolds 1984, no. 37.1. --- measurements: Framed: 39 x 44.5 x 5 cm (15 3/8 x 17 1/2 x 1 15/16 in.); Unframed: 25.9 x 31.3 cm (10 3/16 x 12 5/16 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: The Silver Jubilee Exhibition opening date: 1941-06-23T04:00:00 The Silver Jubilee Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 23-September 28, 1941). title: Exhibition of the Month: Atmospheric Depth in Painting opening date: 1947-02-10T05:00:00 Exhibition of the Month: Atmospheric Depth in Painting. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 10-March 31, 1947). title: Exhibition of the Month: The Rise of the Landscape in Art opening date: 1948-06-09T04:00:00 Exhibition of the Month: The Rise of the Landscape in Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 9-September 26, 1948). title: 35th Anniversary Exhibition opening date: 1951-06-20T04:00:00 35th Anniversary Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 20-September 30, 1951). title: Landscape opening date: 1962-01-09T05:00:00 Landscape. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 9-April 22, 1962). title: Visions of Landscape: East and West opening date: 1982-02-17T05:00:00 Visions of Landscape: East and West. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 17-March 21, 1982). title: Object Lessons: Cleveland Creates an Art Museum opening date: 1991-06-07T04:00:00 Object Lessons: Cleveland Creates an Art Museum. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 7-September 8, 1991). title: British Gallery Reinstallation (June 2020) opening date: 2020-06-30T04:00:00 British Gallery Reinstallation (June 2020). The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS * The Cleveland Art Loan Exposition under the Auspices of the Cleveland School of Art. Kinney and Levan Building, Cleveland, OH (November 25-December 17, 1913) * Allen Memorial Art Museum. Oberlin, OH (May 1963) --- PROVENANCE Isabel Constable, the artist's daughter; [1822-1888], London, United Kingdom date: footnotes: citations: Tooth and Sons (London, England), purchased by J. H. Wade, 1895. date: 1895 footnotes: citations: Mr. and Mrs. Jeptha H. Wade, by gift to the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1916. date: 1895-1916 footnotes: citations: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH date: 1916- footnotes: citations: --- fun fact: digital description: wall description: --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS Saisselin, Remy. "Art Is an Imitation of Nature." The Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art LII, (1965): 41-42. page number: Mentioned: p. 41-42; Reproduced: fig. 4 url: Talbot, William S. "John Constable: Branch Hill Pond, Hampstead Heath." The Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art LIX (1974): 107. page number: Mentioned and reproduced: p. 107, fig. 11 url: Hoozee, Robert. L'opera completa di Constable. Milano, Italy: Rizzoli, 1979. page number: Reproduced: p. 383 url: Reynolds, Graham. The Later Paintings and Drawings of John Constable. New Haven, CT: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 1984. page number: url: D'Argencourt, Louise and Roger Diederen. The Cleveland Museum of Art: Catalogue of Paintings, Part Four; European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999. page number: Reproduced: p. 53 url: "The Wade Collection." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 4, no. 1 (1917): 3-12. page number: Mentioned: p. 3 url: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25136053 --- IMAGES web: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1916.1027/1916.1027_web.jpg print: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1916.1027/1916.1027_print.jpg full: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1916.1027/1916.1027_full.tif