id: 147017 accession number: 1972.48 share license status: CC0 url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1972.48 updated: Branch Hill Pond, Hampstead, 1828. John Constable (British, 1776–1837). Oil on canvas; framed: 89 x 105.5 x 11.5 cm (35 1/16 x 41 9/16 x 4 1/2 in.); unframed: 60.6 x 78.1 cm (23 7/8 x 30 3/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1972.48 title: Branch Hill Pond, Hampstead title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: 1828 creation date earliest: 1828 creation date latest: 1828 current location: 203A British Painting and Decorative Arts creditline: Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund copyright: --- culture: England, 19th century technique: oil 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: 89 x 105.5 x 11.5 cm (35 1/16 x 41 9/16 x 4 1/2 in.); Unframed: 60.6 x 78.1 cm (23 7/8 x 30 3/4 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Year in Review: 1972 opening date: 1973-02-27T05:00:00 Year in Review: 1972. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (February 27-March 18, 1973). 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 (organizer) (February 17-March 21, 1982). title: CMA @ Oberlin (second rotation) opening date: 2006-04-03T00:00:00 CMA @ Oberlin (second rotation). Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (April 3-June 5, 2006). 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 * A Century of Progress Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (1933). * Autumn Exhibition. Leggatt Brothers, London, United Kingdom (1961). * English Painting 1750-1850. Leggatt Brothers, London, United Kingdom (1963). * Englische Malerei der grossen Zeit . Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland (October 8-November 6, 1966). * La Pittura Inglese de Hogarth a Turner. Palazzo Venezia, Rome, Italy (November 21-December 20, 1966). --- PROVENANCE Painted by the artist for Henry Hebbert [1783-1864], London, United Kingdom, by descent to his son, Henry Hebbert date: 1828-1864 footnotes: citations: Henry Hebbert [1814-1893], London, United Kingdom date: 1864-1894 footnotes: citations: Cyrus McCormick Jr. [1859-1936], Chicago, IL, . date: 1894 footnotes: citations: (Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York, NY, 1958 sold to Leggatt Brothers) date: 1958-1959 footnotes: citations: (Leggatt Brothers, London, United Kingdom, 1959. date: 1959 footnotes: citations: Earl of Inchcape, London, United Kingdom by 1966. date: by 1966 footnotes: citations: (E. V. Thaw & Co., New York. NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) date: 1972 footnotes: citations: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH date: 1972- footnotes: citations: --- fun fact: In 1820, Constable found a retreat in Hampstead where he completed 100 studies of cloud formations, referring to the process as "skying." digital description: wall description:
An amateur meteorologist, John Constable was most at home painting meticulously observed cloud formations, weather conditions, and natural light effects. He believed an accurate rendering of these constantly shifting elements could convey his vision of the vitality and magnificence of the English countryside. Working from the summerhouse he rented at Hampstead from 1819–26, Constable painted a landscape focusing more on the dark rain clouds than on the laborers in the foreground, keeping the details of their backbreaking work at a picturesque distance. --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. page number: Reproduced: p. 208 url: https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1978/page/n228 "Visions of Landscape East and West." Asia Vol. 4, No. 5 (January/February 1982): pp. 24-29. page number: Reproduced: p. 27 url: Cormack, Malcolm. Constable. Oxford: Phaidon, 1986. page number: Reproduced: p. 173, fig. 168 url: Argencourt, Louise d', and Roger Diederen. Catalogue of Paintings. Pt. 4. European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1974. page number: Mentioned and reproduced: P. 143-145, Vol. I, no. 54 url: --- IMAGES web: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1972.48/1972.48_web.jpg print: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1972.48/1972.48_print.jpg full: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1972.48/1972.48_full.tif