The Artist As A Young Man

Today we find ourselves on the Suffolk/Essex border, walking part of the way in the footsteps of a schoolboy who regularly passed through these meadows over 200 years ago.

From what we can learn the lad was no great scholar and had been beaten in his previous school. However his father had great hopes that he would one day take over the family business, though it turned out that his talents lay in a different direction - and it appears that his daily walks to and from school, as he perhaps idled along gazing all about him, had a more profound effect than the wise words, or reprimands, of any schoolmaster.

That boy was called John Constable and he went on to become England's most famous painter of rural landscapes. 

You sometimes read that he was the son of "a humble miller", but nothing could be further from the truth. Golding Constable was a wealthy landowner who owned Flatford Mill and, later, also Dedham Mill and a small ship too. The Grammar School at Dedham was built to educate the sons of the well-to-do citizens of the area and it was there that the young Constable made his reluctant way each morning.

The river here is the Stour, which we've met before on our rambles, and a very artistic river it is too. Thomas Gainsborough was born and lived in Sudbury, which was also the birthplace of Maggi Hambling. John Nash lived at Bottengoms Farm in Wormingford (later home to the writer Ronald Blythe). Cedric Morris and Lett Haines lived and taught in Dedham, which was also home to Sir Alfred Munnings. And now Grayson Perry has his astonishing dream house/art installation/shrine to "Julie Cope" on the Stour Estuary near Wrabness.

But today we are quite definitely in what the tourist boards have named "Constable Country" and it attracts bus-loads of sightseers to the National Trust property at Flatford Mill, which is where we must also go if we are to complete our pedestrianised pilgrimage.

Above is the hump-backed footbridge leading to Bridge Cottage and the hamlet of Flatford, all looking very much as it must have in Constable's day - though I'll bet he never had to wait for a group of tourists and their long-winded guide to move before crossing over!

Paintings like "The Haywain" and "Dedham Vale" are so ubiquitous today, appearing in books, magazines, on calendars or chocolate boxes, that it's hard to imagine that in his day Constable was something of innovator. Landscape painting at that time had become a search for an almost dream-like perfection but Constable was in love with the reality of the world around him. "The sound of water escaping from mill dams etc., willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork, I love such things".

Much of the vigorous roughness of his painting is lost as his work is miniaturised for modern consumption. The original paintings are about six feet (2 m) across. Lets have a look at "The Haywain"....

At first glance we have a nostalgic, pastoral scene - even with the artist's forceful brushwork. But lets look at the composition. Those of you who know a little about the "rules" for taking photographs will notice that he's done something very odd: not only has he placed a light-coloured object (Willy Lott's cottage) at the edge of the frame but he's cut it in half! In other works people and animals face out of the picture. He is, I think, trying to make his scenes look more natural and uncontrived.

I contrived to do the same thing when photographing the scene today. (And who would have guessed that there'd be more trees now than there were in the past). Anyway, here's a view of Willy Lott's cottage that's much less familiar...

Back briefly to "The Haywain": Although it is to some extent a nostalgic scene from the artist's childhood, painted when he was a mature man, the world was already changing and industry was rearing its unattractive head. And there's one detail which is often missed - take a look at the sky in the painting. If he'd wanted to paint an idyllic scene surely it was not beyond his powers to paint a blue sky with fluffy clouds. Instead we have people going unhurriedly about their business - you can make out the men haymaking in the far distance,....

....the carter and his lad carry on a conversation, the horse waits patiently in the stream (soaking the wooden wheels to tighten them up, I'm fairly sure), a man is fishing and a woman gathers water (both almost hidden in shadows) while all the time the clouds are building up for rain. I interpret it as a metaphor for the turmoil that's about to hit the countryside. And Constable's original title was "Landscape: Noon" which to me, at least, suggests a tipping point in the fortunes of the day and perhaps of history.

I'm not sure if the group gathered before Flatford Mill were thinking such thoughts or whether they were looking forward to the National Trust's tearooms and gift shop!

Or maybe after viewing the stunning half-timbered Valley Farm....

....they were going for a boat ride. Either rowing themselves or....

....taking a trip on the electric boat - looking here like a journey up the Orinoco!

As for us, we're about to walk back to Dedham where we can visit John Constable's old school, as well as seeing one of his few religious paintings, which hangs these days in the church.

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So you thought I'd forgotten....

Congratulations to Rosie ("Corners Of My Mind") for being the closest with her guess, "a roost for bats". It's actually a "bat hibernaculum", so a place where bats hibernate, rather than just roost. What we see here is the entrance to a long tunnel. It was partly funded by National Lottery money and seems to be working; many different bat species have been recorded on the reserve.

Take care.