exhibition microsite e-learning resources

Intro | Points Of View | North | South | Highlands | Midlands | East | West | Conclusion

The Flatlands  (The East)

Creating One's Own Heaven | In Focus: John Constable

In Focus: John Constable

Flatford Mill ('Scene on a Navigable River') 1816-17 is the kind of paradisiacal image that we may dream about when we are exiled from England. It, along with A Cornfield ?1815, was painted by the artist as he was about to move away from his childhood home in the Stour valley to establish himself as an artist in London. In other words, he was himself going into voluntary exile from a place which contained many precious memories for him.

John Constable Flatford Mill ('Scene on a Navigable River') 1816-17 View in Tate Collection Oil on canvas, 1016 x 1270 mm © Tate 2005 Bequeathed by Miss Isabel Constable as the gift of Maria Louisa, Isabel and Lionel Bicknell Constable 1888

Perhaps that is why such views exclude any reference to the unrest in the country, even though he knew about this instability. "My brother is uncomfortable about the state of things in Suffolk," he wrote in 1822. "They are as bad as Ireland - never a night without seeing fires". The real subject of his art was his 'careless boyhood', expressed by scenes he had enjoyed when he was young.

Both Turner in Norham Castle, Sunrise and Constable in Flatford Mill and A Cornfield paint images of nature which in some sense relate to their dreams rather than to reality because they are painting places nostalgically in connection with their youth. They would perhaps have agreed with Marcel Proust that "les vrais paradis sont les paradis qu'on a perdus" ("the only paradise is paradise lost".)