The ‘six-foot’ exhibition canvases dating from the second half of Constable’s career lie at the very heart of his achievement as a landscape painter and largely account for his present day fame. They comprise not only the famous series of views on the river Stour such as the Hay-Wain , but also the expressive later works such as Hadleigh Castle and Salisbury Cathedral. The exhibition proposes to re-unite all ten of these mature masterpieces. For they have never before been seen together as a series, nor fully assessed as a group, whether in terms of stylistic and compositional evolution, narrative progression or contemporary critical reception.

As important as the six-footers themselves, of course, was Constable’s decision to paint for nearly all of them a related full-scale compositional sketch. This was a highly innovative procedure that has long been regarded as one of his most original contributions to western art. Indeed the large sketches, with their free and vigorous brushwork, are today often admired more than the six-foot canvases themselves.

Nevertheless, many questions still remain as to the exact role these full-scale studies played - questions which continue to fascinate artists, scholars and the general public alike. Why do these sketches by Constable survive for some exhibition pictures, but not for others? Did they always fulfil the same function as each other? One of the exhibition’s key aims is therefore to re-unite all the full-scale sketches with their corresponding finished pictures in the hope that some of these intriguing issues can be resolved.

Exhibiting at:

• Tate Britain (1 June – 28 August 2006)
• National Gallery, Washington DC (1 October – 31 December 2006)
• Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino (3 February – 29 April 2007)