Stratford Mill

Based on its size, this work could easily be mistaken for a finished painting, but it is a preparatory sketch for a landscape now in the National Gallery, London. The composition of Stratford Mill derives from a small oil study (now in a private collection) painted en plein air in 1811, at which time the artist was residing in his native Suffolk. By the time John Constable had developed the motif into a finished painting, he had relocated to London. In London, Constable began creating larger-scale paintings, which led him to rethink the typical size of his compositional sketches. The resulting full-size sketches, such as the present one, may have served as aids of recollection or as working documents, but they were never meant for a public audience. They reveal an expressive and material dimension to Constable’s practice, however, that is carried through to his exhibition pictures.