A boat passing a lock - John Constable Oil Painting for Sale

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A boat passing a lock: John Constable

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John Constable Oil Painting - A boat passing a lock

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Work Overview

A boat passing a lock

1826

John Constable
oil on canvas
101.6 (h) x 127.0 (w) cm
Royal Academy of Arts, London, Diploma work, accepted in 1829

Constable was elected a Royal Academician on 10th February 1829. Although he had at least three major works in his possession, he decided that he wanted to deposit ‘A Boat passing a Lock’ as his Diploma work. The owner of the painting, a friend, James Carpenter, agreed to return the picture to Constable on the condition he received a replacement, preferably a scene of Hampstead Heath. Constable deposited 100 guineas with Sir C. Scott’s banking house as a guarantee that he would paint a picture of the same size by June 1830. He began painting ‘Helmingham Dale’ for Carpenter.

On 2 April, just before he sent the picture to the Royal Academy exhibition he wrote to Carpenter saying that he would not give him the promised painting after all but forfeit the 100 guineas.

This painting of A Boat passing a Lock depicts a boat ascending the River Stour. It is tied to a post while the lock keeper lowers the level, so that it can enter the chamber before being lifted to the upper level of the river.

The landscape is dominated by the threatening weather conditions on the left. Drawing on his studies of weather effects made in Hampstead and Brighton, Constable convincingly correlates the light falling on the landscape with the configuration of the clouds in the sky and recognises the power of a specific weather condition to animate and give emotional charge to an otherwise seemingly humble, everyday rural scene.

This work is currently on display in the Council Room at the Royal Academy of Arts and can be viewed by attending one of the free tours of the John Madejski Fine Rooms. Click here for further information about the tours

Constable first achieved success (and recognition by the Royal Academy) with his large canvases depicting the Stour Valley, which he exhibited between 1819 and 1825. Working on a scale usually reserved for History painting, Constable redefined the notion of a ‘finished’ picture by giving his large paintings something of the spontaneous freedom and expressive handling of a rapidly painted sketch.

During the 1820s Constable was repeatedly occupied with the motif of the Lock – it could be regarded as his favourite subject. In 1824 he exhibited the fifth in his series of six large Stour Valley paintings at the Royal Academy, ‘A boat passing a lock’, which he subsequently called The lock (Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection on loan to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid). It differed from the previous four large canvases in having a vertical format. Constable made at least two other upright versions of the subject in 1824 (Philadelphia Museum and Art Gallery, and private collection). Then, in this painting, he converted the vertical composition into a horizontal one, extending the scene to the right and varying the action.

Here a boat with a sail on its way up the River Stour waits at Flatford Lock. The boat is tied to a post while the lock keeper opens the gates to allow it to enter the lock chamber, to be lifted to the higher water level before continuing its journey up river. Constable created an open composition, with Flatford Bridge and a further lock gate and a barge in the background on the right. He depicted a heavy rainstorm on the left, and included a dog in the foreground at the right.

The composition was based on two drawings with a horizontal format, Flatford Lock 1823 and Flatford Lock c.1826 . Constable took the rainstorm from an oil sketch of 1819, Branch Hill Pond, Hampstead (Victoria and Albert Museum, London), which herepeated with variations on several occasions, including Branch Hill Pond, Hampstead Heath, with a boy sitting on a bank c.1825–28 .

Sarah Cove, who has undertaken a detailed technical examination of this picture, ‘discovered via X-ray that the arms of the lock keeper were originally raised, as in every previous version of the lock keeper’ (Sarah Cove to Anne Lyles, 12 September 2005, NGA file 04/0501–04).

The painting was commissioned in 1826 by the Bond Street picture dealer, print and book publisher, James Carpenter. While working on the commission Constable wrote to Carpenter: ‘I have been at the picture ever since I saw you & it is now all over wet – I was at work on it at 7 o clock this morning – and I should have been at it still’. He added: ‘I wish your picture was as good as Claude Lorraine’ (Beckett IV, p. 138). Two years after painting this work Constable borrowed it back from Carpenter and re-worked it. He then exhibited this painting at the British Institution in 1829 under the title ‘Landscape and Lock’.

When he was elected a full member of the Royal Academy in 1829 Constable was expected to present a work to the Academy. Such was the value he placed on this painting that he took it back from Carpenter and presented it to the Academy, depositing 100 guineas with a banker until he compensated Carpenter with a work of the same size.

The subject of this painting is the same as Constable’s Diploma picture for the Royal Academy, A boat passing a lock 1826 . Both compositions are horizontal and their general structure is identical. Like the Diploma painting there is a rainstorm in the sky. However this work differs in that Constable painted the background in a looser fashion – and he did not include the dog that appears in the right foreground of the Diploma painting. Moreover the lock keeper wears a hat (as opposed to a cap) and has raised arms as in Constable’s original representation of the figure. A pentimento suggests that one of the posts at the entrance to the lock was originally higher than it now appears (W.G. Constable, ‘“The Lock” as a theme in the work of John Constable’, in F. Philipp and J. Stewart (eds), Essays in Honour of Daryl Lindsay, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1964, p. 139).

Scholars have put forward a number of suggestions regarding the relationship of this work to Constable’s Diploma picture and his other versions of the subject. At first it was generally accepted to be a preliminary oil study for the Diploma picture. Then in 1956 W.G. Constable claimed that this painting might be an independent work, as ‘there seems to be nothing lacking that is necessary to a complete and finished picture’ (ibid., p. 138). Following this, in 1976, the fully finished foreground and carefully painted sky of this work led Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams to suggest that it was an unfinished replica of the Diploma picture (Tate 1976, p. 155). Robert Hoozee agreed. Reynolds, however, in his catalogue raisonné of Constable’s work, argued that it was indeed a sketch for the Diploma picture. He pointed out that it was in keeping with Constable’s practice ‘to make a sketch when he was undertaking a major change in an existing composition’. He suggested that in transforming his vertical Lock images into a horizontal format, with an extension of the view to the right, Constable may well have made Study of ‘A boat passing a lock’ as a preparatory sketch. (Constable made at least three versions that had a vertical format: Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection on loan to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Philadelphia Museum and Art Gallery; and private collection). In 1991 Parris and Fleming-Williams revised their earlier opinion to suggest that this painting might be an abandoned work, that Constable may have painted it before his Diploma picture, and even before the upright Lock which he exhibited in 1824 (Tate 1991, p. 289). In 1996 Sarah Cove, in a detailed technical report of the Diploma picture, concluded that ‘this version is the sketch for, or certainly the precursor to, the Royal Academy picture’ (Sarah Cove to Anne Lyles, 12 September 2005, NGA file 04/0501–0).

While it seems most likely that the painting in the National Gallery of Victoria’s collection was the sketch for the Diploma picture, it would appear unlikely that it was a precursor to any of the upright Locks, as in this painting Constable introduced a number of features that he also included in the Diploma picture, but which do not appear in the upright versions – the boat with a sail, willows (rather than oaks), and the rainstorm – and he positioned the vessel as it would be travelling up river, as opposed to down river as in the upright Lock paintings. Although it is possible that Constable chopped and changed in subject and in format, it is more likely that he painted the three upright versions and then the two horizontal versions. The Fitzwilliam drawing of c.1826 acts as a intermediary in the process of working out the compositional ideas with neither the barge in the upper lock chamber (as in the upright versions) or the boat with a sail below (as in the horizontal versions).

Whatever the purpose of this work, in painting it Constable used more finished brushwork and greater definition and coherence than he frequently employed in his full-scale preliminary sketches. He carefully modulated the light in the sky to create a sense of wind and weather, and he depicted the plants on the riverbank and the lock’s wooden structure with considerable attention to detail.

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Constable first mentioned the picture that would be known as The Lock in a letter to John Fisher of October 31, 1822: "I have got an excellent subject for a six foot canvas which I should certainly paint for next year...but I have neither time nor money to speculate with, & my children begin to swarm."1 Family illness (“anxiety--watching--& nursing--& my own present indisposition")2 kept him away from his easel from Christmas to February. But on February 21, 1823, he wrote to Fisher, "I have put a large upright landscape in hand, and I hope to get it ready for the Academy."3
This large upright was almost certainly the Philadelphia Sketch for "A Boat Passing a Lock.” The subject is the opening of sluice gates to lower the level of water in the upper lock, where a barge waits before continuing its journey upstream. The site shown is Flatford on the Stour, with Dedham Church in the distance and Flatford Mill at the spectator's back. The painting's shape was originally horizontal, as were all Constable's other six-foot academy "set pieces" and as later versions of The Lock theme would also be (see horizontal versions The Lock, 1826, oil on canvas, 40 x 50" {101.6 x 127 cm.}, London, Royal Academy and The Lock, c. 1826, oil on canvas, 40 1/2 x 51 1/8" {102.9 x 129.8 cm.}, Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria). But Constable added to the canvas at the top and cut down (by how much we do not know) on the right. The change in shape presumably took place between the letter of October 1822 and the one of February 1823. No preliminary drawings for the Philadelphia Museum of Art full-sized sketch are known, and indeed, the many changes to the shape and the composition of the sketch suggest that the artist worked partly by instinct, drastically rearranging and reshaping as he worked. Staley has suggested that one reason the Philadelphia sketch might not have been developed further is that Constable made too many changes for the alterations not to be noticeable and so decided to start on a fresh canvas.4 On the reverse of this canvas is a fragmentary sketch of a young girl. The differences between the full-sized sketch and the finished version (John Constable, A Boat Passing a Lock, 1824, oil on canvas, 56 x 47 1/2" {142.2 x 120.6 cm.} Gloucestershire, Sudeley Castle, Trustees of the Walter Morrison Pictures Settlement), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1824, bought by the draper James Morrison (1790-1857) and now at Sudeley Castle (henceforth: Morrison version), are instructive.
The Morrison version lacks the additions at the top (and bottom), thus indicating that Constable worked on an intact canvas, making no substantial changes in the composition. X-radiographs show that in the Philadelphia sketch the artist originally included crossbeams over the lock, used presumably to reinforce the sides of the lock. These were painted out almost certainly for purely aesthetic reasons: to include them at close range meant blotting out large areas of tree, sky, and distance. These crossbeams are also omitted in the Morrison version. Constable's touch is surer in the Morrison picture and he brings his details to a high degree of finish: the sky is bright blue, the clouds fleecy white, the waistcoat of the navigator (or navvy) working the lock is bright red; the articulation of foreground, middleground, and distance is much clearer; the plants in the foreground are probably identifiable, which is not true of those in the Philadelphia sketch; and the complicated spatial structure of the lock itself, its intricate architecture, is the chief interest of the left half of the Morrison picture.
In the Philadelphia version the navvy has just put down his fishing rod to attend to his duties. This genre-like incident Constable abandoned in the finished painting for two reasons. First, by eliminating the narrative element, the artist could stabilize the scene, suppressing the particular to emphasize the timeless; and second, the fascinating shape of the wooden lock, which draws the eye from left to right across the foreground of the picture, needed a stronger element than the slim fishing rod to connect it with the right foreground.
What we feel most in the Morrison picture is its freshness. Much more than in the Philadelphia sketch the artist caught the effect with heavy white impasto of water rushing out of the sluice gates at the lower left, so that we all but hear the sound of the creaking wooden gates and bubbling water foam. The artist might almost have intended the Morrison version to illustrate his remarks to Fisher in a letter of October 23, 1821: "The sound of water escaping from Mill dams...Willows, Old rotten Banks, slimy posts, & brickwork. I love such things....As long as I do paint I shall never cease to paint such Places."5 Twice Constable described his lock in similar language. To Fisher he wrote: "It is a lovely subject, of the canal kind, lively--& soothing--calm and exhilarating, fresh--& blowing,''6 and again on April 13, 1825, speaking of the Morrison version which was back in his studio for Samuel William Revnolds (1774-1834) to engrave: "My Lock is now on my easil. It looks most beautifully silvery, windy & delicious--it is all health--& the absence of every thing stagnant, and is wonderfully got together after only this one year."7
The loss of time through illness meant that The Lock was not ready for the Royal Academy exhibition of 1823 but was sent to the 1824 exhibition instead. Even by September 30, 1823, the artist did not know what his large subject for the academy of 1824 would be,8 and only on December 16, 1823, did he tell Fisher firmly that he would work on "my Lock."9 On April 15, 1824, while preparing for the academy, Constable wrote to Fisher, "I was never more fully bent on any picture than on that on which you left me engaged upon. It is going to its audit with all its deficiencies in hand--my friends all tell me it is my best. Be that as it may I have done my best. It is a good subject and an admirable instance of the picturesque."10
On the opening day of the exhibition James Morrison bought The Lock. It was the most popular picture Constable had so far painted, if one excepts the French response to his Hay Wain which would be acclaimed later in 1824 at the Paris Salon. The Literary Gazette compared Constable to Richard Wilson (1713-1782);11 the aged Fuseli (1741-1825), leaning on the porter's arm, visited the picture every Sunday morning.12 On May 8, Constable wrote jubilantly to Fisher: "My picture is liked at the Academy. Indeed it forms a decided feature and its light cannot be put out, because it is the light of nature--the Mother of all that is valuable in poetry, painting or anything else."13 Perhaps the most welcome praise came from the engraver S. W. Reynolds, who offered to engrave the landscape gratis, because "take it for all in all, since the days of Gainsborough and Wilson, no landscape has been painted with so much truth and originality, so much art, so little artifice."14
So deeply did Constable feel about his lock subject that he copied it in an upright format at least once (see upright version Landscape--A Barge Passing a Lock on the Stour, 1825, oil on canvas, 55 x 48" {139.7 x 122 cm.}, Hon. William Hamilton Collection, England) and allowed John Dunthorne to copy it under his supervision (but which of the versions this is is not certain). Then in 1825 he undertook the same subject in a horizontal format for the dealer James Carpenter (b. c. 1760). He never gave this picture to Carpenter but submitted it instead as his diploma work to the Royal Academy (The Lock, 1826, oil on canvas, 40 x 50” {101.6 x 127 cm.}, London, Royal Academy).
Recalling that the artist originally conceived of the Philadelphia version as a horizontal picture with crossbeams on the lock,15 we might visualize his original intentions by looking to an earlier series, the Mill at Dedham (1818-19, 21 x 30 1/2”, London, Tate Gallery).16 In these views of a lock and mill the artist took a long view of the scene, from perhaps a quarter mile away, which enabled him to include the crossbeams over the lock but also forced him to show the mill buildings at the left. The artistic problem presented by the lock series, begun with the Philadelphia sketch, was to depict a similar scene from close by.
In the fall of 1827 Constable revisited the site of Flatford Lock. At that time he executed a drawing on the spot showing the lock with crossbeams and willow tree (not the elm that appears in the Philadelphia and Morrison pictures). This drawing, on paper watermarked 1824, is now in the British Museum, and of all the lock paintings and sketches probably shows the site as it really was (John Constable, Flatford Lock, 1827, pencil on paper, watermarked 1824, 8 3/4 x 12 7/8" {22.2 x 32.7 cm.}, London, British Museum). Slightly earlier than the British Museum sketch is a pen and ink drawing in the Fitzwilliam Museum (John Constable, The Lock, c.1826, pen and sepia wash on paper, 11 1/4 x 14 1/2” {28 x 36.8 cm.} Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum), which is preparatory to the diploma picture. In both the British Museum and Fitzwilliam sketches, Constable wrestled with the problem of depicting the scene as it appeared in reality. The only way to include the crossbeams without throwing off the composition seems to have been to take a longer view of the lock so that the beams would be below the horizon, and this long view could only be achieved by standing (theoretically) in a boat in the river. In what may be the unfinished preparatory oil sketch for the diploma picture, now in Melbourne (John Constable, The Lock, c. 1826, oil on canvas, 40 1/2 x 51 1/8” {102.9 x 129.8 cm.}, Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, Felton Bequest), Constable once again painted in the crossbeams, as in the Philadelphia sketch for the Morrison picture; but once again he found they did not work and painted them out. In the diploma picture the artist was defeated by the problem, and the crossbeams do not appear. The other important difference in the Melbourne oil sketch and Royal Academy diploma picture is that the barge is traveling downstream, waiting for the navvy to raise the level of the water before the boat can enter the lock.

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