Flatford Mill
John Constable
between 1810 and 1811
These two small studies, painted on wood panels, show Flatford Mill from different views. Constable once wrote, “I should paint my own best places,” and he knew Flatford Mill intimately. Inherited by his father in the 1760s, it was the birthplace of Constable’s eldest siblings and an important source of the family’s prosperity. The loose, gestural brushwork of the wider view conveys the immediacy of a bright and blustery summer day, as two figures and a horsewade through the water.
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven · Image: Yale Center for British Art, Public domain · Text: Yale Center for British Art, CC0