A Stand of Elm Trees (recto); A Study of East Bergholt with the Church (verso)
John Constable (English, 1776-1837)
c. 1802
- Medium
- Black chalk (recto) and graphite (verso) on pale gray laid paper
- Classification
- Drawing and Watercolor
- Dimensions
- 52 × 44.6 cm (20 1/2 × 17 9/16 in.)
- Culture
- England
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
In a time when landscape painting enjoyed unprecedented popularity in England, John Constable secured a place as a leading artist in the genre. This exploratory sketch by Constable is one of his earliest and largest studies of trees and was probably drawn in Dedham Vale, the area of rolling hills and woods surrounding his home on the border of Essex and Suffolk. Hallmarks of Constable’s technique can be observed here, especially the indistinct description of foliage contrasted with sharply delineated trunks and branches. When viewing one of Constable’s studies of trees, William Blake stated, “Why, this is no drawing, but inspiration.”
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
