(1776-1837)
Flatford Mill on the River Stour
It was left for Constable to give landscape painting its final dispatch. For the first time the vivid green of nature invaded the domain of landscape painting.
“Flatford Mill on the River Stour”, painted in 1817, shows that even then he had developed a style that was conspicuous for its intimate naturalism. He had brought painting out of doors. Flatford Mill is unusual in that the painting was worked on out of doors as well as in the studio.
The scene is typically English. In the near foreground a horse with a boy on its back is being attached to the towing rope of a barge floating idly on the stream. In the distance is a lock and the buildings of the mill. To the right of the picture stretches a level expanse of pasture, interspersed with trees. The time is early summer, when the foliage is heaviest and the grass has not lost the freshness of spring. Green shadows dapple the sunlit sward, and over all is a soft and tranquil sky.
Constable’s early work is full of the most accurately observed detail, such as the flowers in the hedgerow, the swallows at the foot of the elm, and the cows in the distant field.
Constable has written his signature in the foreground, as if he had scratched it into the earth with a stick. The gesture symbolizes his deep attachment to his native countryside.