Hadleigh Castle, The Mouth of the Thames--Morning after a Stormy Night

Hadleigh Castle, The Mouth of the Thames--Morning after a Stormy Night

recto, unframed

detail, recto

framed, recto

framed, verso

Creator :
John Constable, 1776–1837, British

Title :
Hadleigh Castle, The Mouth of the Thames--Morning after a Stormy Night

Alternate Title(s) :
Hadleigh Castle
Il Castello di Hadleigh

Date :
1829

Medium :
Oil on canvas

Dimensions :
48 x 64 3/4 inches (121.9 x 164.5 cm) Frame: 59 1/2 × 76 1/4 inches (151.1 × 193.7 cm)

Credit Line :
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

Accession Number :
B1977.14.42

Collection :
Paintings and Sculpture

Curatorial Comment :
In the famous letter of 23 October 1821 to his friend Archdeacon Fisher, John Constable reported: “I have not been Idle and have made more particular and general study than I have ever done in one summer, but I am most anxious to get into my London painting room, for I do not consider myself at work without I am before a six foot canvas” (Constable, “Correspondence”, p. 76). To some extent, the scale of Constable's great “six-footer” landscape paintings reflected both his high aspirations for landscape in general, and his desire for professional recognition and financial security. Yet Hadleigh Castle, which comes relatively late in the sequence of six-footers, in 1829, is among his least characteristic landscape views on a grand scale. Compared with “The White Horse” (1819; Frick Collection, New York), “Stratford Mill”, “The Hay Wain” (1820 and 1821; both National Gallery, London), and other paintings, each with its determined avoidance of heroic elements of the picturesque, each with its affectionate embrace of the seemingly commonplace features of rural life, “Hadleigh Castle” stands apart. The foreground vantage point is elevated and offers no convenient path into the difficult topography that descends toward the river flats to the right. The ruined castle clings to a rocky escarpment that winds into the distance and separates shepherd and cowherd and, presumably, their flock and herd. On the right, the Thames estuary opens out to the east, creating an immense, flat, gleaming distance beneath lowering clouds and theatrical slanting rays of morning sunlight. It is a landscape of revelation, not of domesticity. Constable had visited Hadleigh in the summer of 1814 and in a letter to his wife, Maria, described the place as “a ruin of a castle which from its situation is really a fine place—it commands a view of the Kent hills, the Nore [the stretch of water beyond the mouth of the Thames] and the North Foreland & looking many miles to sea” (Constable, “Correspondence”, vol. 2, p. 127). He drew the place in his sketchbook (Victoria & Albert Museum, London) and appears not to have considered the subject again until fourteen years later, when, in about 1828, he worked up a small oil sketch (Paul Mellon Collection, ycba) and embarked upon the present composition (1829), by way of his accustomed, full-scale six-foot study (ca. 1828–29; Tate, London). He may have been prompted toward the unusually dramatic subject, with its hints at decay and regeneration, by the death from tuberculosis of his beloved wife in November 1828, but it seems that his election, at long last, in February 1829 to full membership of the Royal Academy may also have led Constable to consider the advantages of exhibiting a subject more conventionally picturesque and heroic than might otherwise have attracted him. These two immense changes in his working and personal life obviously went hand in hand. With leaden tact, Sir Thomas Lawrence, the President, had told Constable that he should consider himself lucky to have been elected to the Academy at all, since he had been competing against several talented history painters. Constable's status as an “R.A.” therefore had the effect of raising the stakes, and “Hadleigh Castle” may well reflect his desire to adjust his manner of landscape painting in view of the expectations arising from this new professional challenge, made twice as difficult by the grief he suffered after the death of Maria. To some extent he remained desolate and depressed for the rest of his life—he called himself a ruin of a man. While dwelling on the decay of the medieval building in its pastoral setting and causing the Thames estuary to shine under grand shafts of light, Constable perhaps also alludes to the ancient Christian metaphor of death: all his boats point downstream and, receding, sail out to sea.
Angus Trumble, 2007-01