Flatford Mill (Scene on a Navigable River)

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Flatford Mill (Scene on a Navigable River): John Constable

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John Constable Oil Painting - Flatford Mill (Scene on a Navigable River)

Keywords: Flatford, Mill, Scene, Navigable, River

Work Overview: Flatford Mill (Scene on a Navigable River)
Artist John Constable
Year 1816
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 1331 mm × 162 mm × 1583 mm (52.4 in × 6.4 in × 62.3 in)
Location Tate Britain
Owner Tate

Flatford Mill is a Grade I listed watermill on the River Stour at Flatford in East Bergholt, Suffolk, England. According to the date-stone the mill was built in 1733, but some of the structure may be earlier. Attached to the mill is a 17th-century miller's cottage which is also Grade I listed. The property is in Dedham Vale, a typically English rural landscape.

Flatford Mill (Scene on a Navigable River) is an oil painting by English artist John Constable, painted in 1816. It is Constable's largest exhibition canvas to be painted mainly outdoors, the first of his large "six-foot" paintings, and the first in the Stour series which later included The Hay Wain. It is owned and exhibited at the Tate Britain gallery in London.

Flatford Mill (Scene on a Navigable River) is painted in oil on canvas. It depicts a working rural scene from Suffolk, as two lighter barges and their crew progress up the River Stour in Suffolk from Dedham Lock. Lighter barges were towed along the river by ropes attached to a horse, which had to be disconnected to allow the barges to be poled under Flatford bridge, which the barges are approaching. In the picture, a boy is disconnecting a rope and another sits astride a tow-horse. The rear scenery depicts the wider view of East Bergholt village, set under a towering trees and a dramatic, cloud-filled sky.

Constable had adopted a routine of spending the winter in London and painting at East Bergholt in the summer. In 1811 he first visited Anglican bishop John Fisher and his family in Salisbury, but from 1809 onwards his childhood friendship with Maria Bicknell developed into a deep, mutual love. Their engagement in 1816 was opposed by Maria's grandfather, Dr. Rhudde, rector of East Bergholt, who considered the Constables his social inferiors and threatened Maria with disinheritance.

Maria's father, Charles Bicknell, a solicitor, was reluctant to see Maria throw away this inheritance, and Maria herself pointed out that a penniless marriage would detract from any chances John had of making a career in painting. After the death of his parents in the same year, Constable inherited a fifth share in the family business. The couple's marriage in October 1816 at St Martin-in-the-Fields (with Fisher officiating), was followed by time at Fisher's vicarage and a honeymoon tour of the south coast, where the sea at Weymouth and Brighton stimulated Constable to develop new techniques of brilliant colour and vivacious brushwork.[2]

Before 1814, Constable produced his exhibition pictures in the studio, working from oil sketches and drawings. But that year he publicly declared his intention to make finished paintings from nature. The summers of 1816 and 1817 were the last which Constable spent any length of time at East Bergholt, and the last in which the artist painted directly from the scenery of his Suffolk childhood.

Constable began the picture a few months before his marriage to Maria Bicknell, writing to her on 12 September 1816:[1]

“ I am now in the midst of a large picture here which I had contemplated for the next exhibition – it would have made my mind easy had it been forwarder – I cannot help it – we must not expect to have all our wishes complete ”
Constable made several drawings and oil sketches of the subject from various angles. Although the final painting was executed largely on the spot, various details were added in the studio later: the boy and the horse; the timberwork in the foreground; the mooring-post on the left.[1] It is known from later x-rays that Constable painted out a horse on the tow-path, and substituted the figures of the two boys.[1]

Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1817 under the title Scene on a Navigable River,[2] Constable repainted the tops of the trees and the entire sky afterwards. This was in time for the picture's second showing at the British Institution in January 1818, where it was given the title Flatford Mill.[1]

Although he had scraped an income from painting, it was not until 1819 that Constable sold his first important canvas, The White Horse, which led to a series of "six footers", as he called his large-scale paintings.[2]

Constable never sold the painting during his lifetime, and as a result it became part of the inheritance to his daughter Isabel. In 1888, she bequeathed it on behalf of herself, her sister Maria Louise and their brother Lionel Bicknell to The Tate gallery in London, where it has been displayed ever since.

Constable began this picture, his largest exhibition canvas to be painted mainly outdoors, a few months before his marriage to Maria Bicknell (see Tate Gallery T03900). He wrote to Maria from Bergholt on 12 September 1816: 'I am now in the midst of a large picture here which I had contemplated for the next exhibition - it would have made my mind easy had it been forwarder - I cannot help it - we must not expect to have all our wishes complete' (in R.B. Beckett, ed., John Constable's Correspondence, II, Ipswich 1964, p.203). Prior to 1814, the artist produced his exhibition pictures in the studio, working from oil sketches and drawings, but in that year he declared his intention to make finished paintings from nature. The summers of 1816 and 1817 were the last occasions upon which Constable spent any length of time at East Bergholt, and the last in which the artist painted directly from the scenery of his Suffolk childhood.

Constable frequently depicted the scenes of his 'careless boyhood' which, he wrote to his friend Archdeacon Fisher, he associated with 'all that lies on the banks of the Stour. They made me a painter (& I am gratefull)' (letter of 23 October 1821; in Beckett, VI, 1968, p.78). The Constable family business was at Flatford, about a mile from East Bergholt. The family had a watermill on the Stour for grinding corn, and a dry dock for building the barges to transport grain to Mistley for shipment to London, as well as a watermill upstream at Dedham. The passage up and down the river required the use of horse-drawn barges; the ropes had to be disconnected in order to allow the barges to be poled under Flatford bridge. In this picture, a boy is disconnecting a rope and another sits astride a tow-horse. Constable painted the inscription to appear as if it had been scratched in the earth with a stick.

Although the painting was probably executed largely on the spot, various details were almost certainly added in the studio, such as the boy and the horse, the timberwork in the foreground and the mooring-post on the left. It is known from x-rays that the artist painted out a horse on the tow-path and substituted the figures of two boys. Constable evidently experienced difficulty painting outdoors on such a large canvas as this one, for after showing it at the Royal Academy in 1817, he repainted the tops of the trees and the entire sky, presumably in time for the picture's second showing at the British Institution in January 1818.

Constable made several drawings and oil sketches of the subject from various angles, but the only certain preparatory studies for the picture are an oil sketch in the collection of David Thomson and two drawings, one in the Tate (Tate Gallery T05493). This is a pencil tracing of an image made with a brush on a sheet of glass held on an easel in front of the subject itself. The tracing was made by placing a piece of paper over the image on the glass, and was squared for transfer to the canvas. It contains the two barges but none of the figures seen in the painting.

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John Constable always chose compositions which not only showed the beauty of his native Suffolk, but also incorporated people working on the land. This human interest not only makes his work more visually interesting but also tells us something of the world Constable grew up in, and his idea of an idyllic countryside.

Flatford Mill shows men working on the River Stour, work which would have helped bring coal and other goods to and from London, ensuring the successful running of the Constable family mills.

Hard work and prosperity went hand in hand in Constable's world. His father worked all his life running Flatford Mill and later Denham Mill. Constable was exposed to the tough lives of the country workers from an early age and along with the happiness many people derived from this life, such experiences helped to shape his view of an idyllic England.

Harmony with nature:
Constable was known to be a very religious man and he lived at a time when the Anglican Church was at its strongest within England. All members of society would have gone to church regularly and not attending would have been frowned upon.

Certainly in Constable's merchant class world, a strong moral code was vital and no-one more than the artist himself preferred God's own creation over the idle frivolities of the day.

John Constable always chose to paint nature as it was and was particularly disdainful about his contemporaries who chose to ignore or enhance its virtues for their own gain. This attitude is evident in Flatford Mill, where the artist's incorporates all aspects of country life.

John Constable is famous for painting the Suffolk countryside as it presented itself, and Flatford Mill is no exception. A view which would have been well known to the artist throughout his childhood, it demonstrates the beauty of the countryside and the workers which were part of it.

This close bond with the landscape can only have helped Constable choose his compositions for his later works. A vanguard landscape painter in his own right, Constable did draw inspiration from other artists but also employed his own very distinctive techniques.

Childhood landscapes:
Constable never completed a painting in Suffolk itself; instead he created preliminary sketches and finished the paintings in his London studio. These sketches were used as a basis for his work and were followed very closely by the artist so that he could capture the real beauty of nature which he so admired.

Other artists:
Thomas Gainsborough:
Also from Suffolk, Gainsborough would have grown up in and painted the same landscapes as Constable.

Claude Lorrain:
This artist was a master of Baroque landscape painting and a pioneer of a genre that was not deemed proper in the portrait painting art world of the time. Lorrain's landscape painting helped to make it popular in the centuries to come.

Constable esteemed Claude as 'the most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw'.

Peter Paul Rubens:
As one of the earliest and most well respected painters to produce landscapes Rubens helped to make them desirable and drew inspiration from his surroundings in his Chateau de Steen in the outskirts of Antwerp, much as Constable did from his beloved Suffolk.

Constable completed Flatford Mill in 1817 and as with most of his other works it has become a classical scene of 19th century England. Although it's an idyllic scene it is also one which embodies the hardworking countryside which Constable witnessed firsthand at his father's mill.

The artist uses a number of techniques which were quite radical at the time and many of them were developed for use in Constable's great six-foot Stour scenes.

Composition:
Constable makes the focus of this painting the workers in the forground with the river and path leading off into the distance towards the mill in the background. By doing this he creates a broad vista within which he can contain all the detail he wanted to.

The canal to the left and the stream to the right lie at either side of the path and create symmetry along with the blue sky which is reflected in both.

Techniques:
Constable was one of the first artists to use the impasto technique and this thick application of paint allowed him to create movement and depth in the piece which previously may have seemed flat.

Highlighting and lowlighting also gave Constable's paintings a realistic edge, with red lowlights in the trees and white upon the water.

Use of light:
Constable was a crusader for using natural light in paintings, something which many of his contemporaries did not indulge in. The artist was passionate that with natural light the countryside could be seen in all its glory.

He particularly hated the used of foiled lighting for the classical and biblical scenes which were popular with 18th century patrons and critics.

Color palette:
The natural palette used in Flatford Mill is highlighted by Constable's use of red to compliment the greens of the trees and add depth to the greenery which may have otherwise seemed lifeless.

The artist's otherwise neutral tones are also brought to life by the beautiful summer day's setting which Constable often favoured in his countryside scenes, as well as the realism in the clouds.

Method:
Although Constable is renowned for painting classic scenes of Suffolk, he often spemt time in the countryside making sketches prior to starting the final canvas.

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In the course of the 18th century, almost all of the rivers and streams of England had been canalized with dams and mills. This was especially true of the Stour, which flows rather listlessly through a flat, swampy landscape. In order to make the river "useful," therefore, man had everywhere interferred with its flow, deepening and straightening its course so that river boats and barges could carry the land's produce to the sea-port of Harwich. By the first decades of the 19th century, these early works had become obsolete as the new railroads worked more efficiently and rapidly.

The result was a sort of gentile decay, which provided marvelously beautiful scenes such as this abandoned mill at Flatford. In his childhood, the mill had been owned by Constable's father, and John had worked there for a number of years. The scene is one of Constable's most beautiful. A young boy sits astride a horse (with that characterstic touch of red on the bridle) while his employer (father?) removes the line to a flat boat which the horse had pulled up to this point. Now it will have to be poled under the low bridge to the left. The boy has dropped his hat and whip and waits eagerly for the rope to be discharged, so he can "gallop" his horse for a few feet beyond the bridge, where again it will have to be hitched up. In the distance is a lock through which the boat will have to be drawn.

But such details are only the setting for what is one of Constable's masterpieces. He aimed at presenting minutely details of people, trees, river, and water plants with loving accuracy, and, at the same time, capture the play of light and shade of a summer's day. The result is a world of beauty and harmony rarely equalled in any work of art.

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