his son Theyre Smith 1878 1 Theyre Smith's brother, Revd Clarence Smith (later Theyre) 1912 his daughter Mrs Violet Becket Williams 1918 purchased from her through Ernest Marsh by Leggatt's 1930, and sold by them to Percy Moore Turner purchased from Turner in 1935 by the National Gallery with aid from the Claude Phillips Fund transferred to the Tate Gallery 1956. Prov: Executors of John Constable, sold Foster and Sons (31, ‘Sketch of Hadleigh Castle’), bt. Oil on canvas, 48 1/4×65 7/8 (122.5×167.4), including strips added at the left and bottom (see text below). N04810 Sketch for ‘Hadleigh Castle’ Circa 1828–9 Andrew Shirley, Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, R.A., London 1937, p.234).įurther reading: Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1991, pp.243,ĭoes this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.

In a letter of 19 December of that year, he wrote to his brother Golding: 'I shall never feel again as I have felt, the face of the World is totally changed to me' (in C.R. The work is generally assumed to reflect his mood at this time. The Tate's large oil sketch introduces cows in the middle-distance and gulls flying above the sea.Ĭonstable's wife Maria died in November 1828, and the sombre, desolate tone of A dog has replaced the shepherd'sįlock, and a tree has been added beside the castle's left-hand tower. In a pen and ink drawing made at around the same time (collection David Thomson), the composition has become decidedly more horizontal, having been extended on the right to include the distant Kent shore. He made a small preparatory oil sketch, probably in 1828 (Paul Mellon Collection, Upperville, Virginia), based on the drawing, but with the addition of a shepherd and his flock at theīottom left. Pencil sketch fifteen years later, to develop the six-foot painting.

Beckett, ed., John Constable's Correspondence, II, Ipswich 1964, p.127). The oil sketch would be made either prior to, or simultaneously with,Ĭonstable made a small pencil sketch of Hadleigh Castle near Southend in Essex in 1814, on his only visit to the area, when he wrote to his future wife Maria: 'At Hadleigh there is a ruin of a castle which from its situation isĪ really fine place - it commands a view of the Kent hills, the Nore and North Foreland & looking many miles to sea' (letter of 3 July 1814 in R.B. Turned increasingly to invention, and these large studio sketches enabled him to work out the compositional problems he was encountering in the preparation of his exhibition pieces. Unable to paint from nature on this scale, he He saw these large pictures as a means to gain further recognition as an artist, and to elevate what many considered the mundane subject matter of rural scenery. Landscape such as Claude, Poussin and Rubens. He began painting six-foot canvases in 1818, in emulation of the works of the past masters of Constable submitted the finished work to the Royal Academy exhibition in 1829, the year in which he was elected an Academician. This is a full-size oil sketch for the painting now in the Paul Mellon Collection at the

Castle osketch