John Constable

3. A Varied Landscape on One Side, and a Flat Country or Water on the Other

c.1823

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Artist: John Constable 1776–1837
Part of: Sketches after Cozens’s ‘Various Species of Landscape’
Medium: Graphite, ink and watercolour on paper
Dimensions: Support: 113 × 186 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Purchased as part of the Oppé Collection with assistance from the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund 1996
Reference: T08097

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In late 1823 Constable went to stay with his patron Sir George Beaumont at Coleorton Hall in Leicestershire. Beaumont was an important connoisseur, collector and amateur artist, and had been taught drawing by Alexander Cozens when a pupil at Eton College. He seems to have owned impressions of the etchings depicting the sixteen landscape 'compositions' which Cozens had been planning for an unfinished treatise called the 'Various Species of Composition of Landscape, in Nature', c.1770 (see no.17). Constable made copies of all sixteen compositions, fifteen of which are in this album. He also knew of Cozens's 'blot' technique, making some especially expressive blot drawings himself in the 1830s.

Gallery label, September 2004

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