The White Horse 1818-1819

This is a full-size oil sketch of one of the artist's first large-scale landscape paintings. The final version, now part of the Frick Collection in New York, was first exhibited in 1819 at the Royal

Academy and was the beginning of a series of works that became famously known as the "six footers" for their grand size. The scene is a view from the south bank of the River Stour in the countryside around Suffolk, England, where the artist was born. The barge in the lower left corner is carrying a horse from the towpath on the near side of the river to the opposite bank.

The Hay Wain 1821

One of the most popular attractions at the National Gallery in London, The Hay Wain is now perhaps the most famous of English landscape paintings. But there’s an irony here, for it failed to find a buyer when shown at the Royal Academy in 1821 and was feted not in Britain but in France, where it won the Gold Medal from Charles X after being exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1824, and inspired the French Romantics Delacroix and Gericault. A wain is an old name for a wagon, which we see crossing the Stour. In the distant meadow are workers making hay, and on the left is the cottage of Willy Lott which today still stands unspoilt, much as Constable would have known it.

The Valley Farm, 1835

This work shows a view of Willy Lott's House at Flatford from the River Stour. The farmer lived continuously in the same house for over eighty years and for Constable it came to represent an important part of the Suffolk landscape, a nostalgic symbol of the 'natural' way of life. The building features prominently in earlier works by Constable, including The Mill Stream (circa 1810, Tate N01816) and The Hay Wain (1820-1, National Gallery, London

The Cornfield, 1826

A boy has paused from the thirsty work of herding sheep at noon to lie flat on the bank of a pool and drink its cool water. This vision of a Suffolk lane in high summer was painted in January to March 1826 in Constable’s studio in London. The lane winding into the cornfield is based on Fen Lane, along which Constable had often walked as a boy from his own village of East Bergholt to Dedham, where he attended school. The lane still exists but the countryside shown beyond it was largely invented. Constable exhibited the painting at the Royal Academy in 1826, and it failed to sell.

Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, 1831

Acquired by the Tate Collection in 2013, this had been part of a private collection since 1983. Constable called it 'The Great Salisbury' and showed at the Royal Academy in 1831. It’s a much more dramatic and turbulent work than his earlier Salisbury pieces. The sky is more varied and wild, an image of his feelings in the years after his wife’s death. But there is hope in the painting too – the Cathedral stands for hope and resurrection, its spire haloed by a circle of blue sky in amongst the dark clouds above. The horses in the foreground are revivifying themselves by drinking the waters of the River Avon, and a rainbow – a meteorological impossibility given the sky – suggests optimism for the future.

The Lock, 1824

Another scene of rural labour on the Stour, Constable

shows a man in red waistcoat struggling to open the lock at Dedham to let a boat pass along the river. On the far side of the lock, we can make out another man, apparently digging with his horse and dog, and across the fields in the distance is Dedham Church. Stretching its branches up into the sky is a great tree, whilst the sky is beginning to bruise slightly and darken.

The Lock realised £22.4 million achieving a world record price for the artist at auction in the Old Master & British Paintings Evening Sale at London, King Street on 3 July 2012. Originally exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1824.

Stonehenge, 1835

Constable painted this watercolour at a sad time in his life. Both his wife, Maria, and his closest friend, John Fisher, had died, and his two eldest sons had left home. He is perhaps expressing his personal unhappiness in the watercolour, for the image is certainly a melancholy one. The painting was exhibited in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1836. Some of the lines that accompanied this painting in the catalogue describe 'The mysterious monument of Stonehenge, standing remote on a bare and boundless heath...'. Constable himself probably wrote them..

Cloud Study, 1822

Constable’s oil studies of skies show a remarkable understanding of the structure and movement of clouds. Most also give a good impression of their three-dimensional volume.

The studies vary in size. This is one of only four examples he painted on a larger format. The larger the scale the more difficult Constable found it to balance crispness of detail with speed of execution. This is why the larger cloud studies tend to be more generalised. The inscriptions on the back – ‘11 o’clock’ and ‘Noon’ – indicate that this study took him about an hour to paint.

Gallery label, February 2004