Helmingham Dell

Certain subjects prove infinitely inspiring for artists, prompting investigation, reinvention and refinement throughout their careers. In Constable’s case, Helmingham Dell was evidently such a landscape. Situated on the Helmingham estate in Suffolk, only a few miles from his family home in East Bergholt, Constable made his first drawings of the wooded valley in 1800, towards the beginning of his career. However, it wasn’t until the 1820s, when the present work was completed, that he began to work the composition up into oil sketches and finished paintings, returning to the subject until the 1830s. This atmospheric work is a full-size oil sketch for a finished painting in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (fig. 1). It demonstrates the inventiveness and freedom of the artist’s oil sketches and gives us an insight into the inner workings of Constable’s creative process, as he worked up a composition from drawing to finished painting.

The development of the full-size oil sketch in Constable’s artistic process has been called his ‘most original contribution to landscape art’ (J. Gage, in The Great Landscapes, exhibition catalogue, London, 2006, p. 25). They not only allowed him to experiment spontaneously and creatively with his composition, but also gave Constable complete freedom of expression: ‘no longer shackled by the rigours of academic ‘finish’, [Constable] could express his personal vision by engaging in a more physical way with the act of painting’ (S. Cove, in The Great Landscapes, op. cit., p. 52). In the present work, this freedom and spontaneity is particularly evident in the free handling of the medium, visible pentiments, and application of colour, which all combine to convey the atmosphere of the wooded clearing.

Inland from Southwold, Helmingham Hall and its park were the property of the Tollemache family, the Earls of Dysart. In 1807, Constable was introduced to Wilbraham, 6th Earl of Dysart, who was to become an important patron of the artist, but in 1800 he would have needed special permission to work on the estate. In the Summer of 1800, Constable stayed in a parsonage at Helmingham and it is clear from his letters that he was immediately drawn to the site, writing excitedly to his friend John Dunthorne on 25 July 1800:

'Here I am quite alone amongst the Oaks and solitudes of Helmingham Park. I have taken quiet possession of the parsonage finding it quite emty [sic]…I am left at liberty to wander where I please during the day. There are an abundance of fine trees of all sorts… I have made one or two…drawing that may be useful [sic].’
(R. B. Beckett, ed., John Constable's Correspondence II: Early friends and Maria Bicknell (Mrs Constable), Ipswich, 1964, p. 25)

A drawing from this stay was sold in these Rooms in 2013 (fig. 2), in which we find the artist describing the sinuous forms of the trees for the first time. Twenty years later, Constable translated the drawing into at least two sets of oil sketches and finished paintings. The present work relates to a finished painting in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, whilst a sketch in the Louvre, Paris, is a preparatory work for a painting in the Nelson Atkins, Kansas City. Although opinions on the dating of the sketches and paintings varies, the present work is thought to be the first painted version Constable made, probably circa 1823-6. A comparison with the drawing reveals some changes, including the position of the figure on the bridge, and the omittance of trees at far-left and far-right. On the left, the tree on the edge of the bank in the drawing has been replaced by a decayed stump in the oil sketch, suggesting a passage of time. On the right, a trunk running almost the full height of the drawing is missing from the oil sketch, but a pentiment suggests that Constable may have originally included it and changed his mind.

The painting in Philadelphia was probably finished 1825-1826 but was later retouched by Constable in 1833. In it, the tree on the far-right has re-appeared, and the weather appears to have closed in, darker and stormier than the present work, with even less sky visible. As Graham Reynolds identified, the lack of sky anticipates later works such as Cenatoph to the Memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds (London, National Gallery), exhibited in 1836 (Reynolds, Constable’s England, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1983, p. 170). The idiosyncratic twisting oak tree can still be appreciated in the park today, but the wooden footbridge was replaced by a stone one in 1815; despite this, it still appears as a wooden structure in the paintings, suggesting that Constable was relying on memory and the original drawings he made.

Constable’s affection for the composition is indicated by the provenance of the two finished paintings. The Kansas painting was originally commissioned by John Carpenter, but Constable reneged on the agreement and kept it for exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1830. The Morning Post reviewed the painting fulsomely, describing that it possessed ‘all the richness of truth of Gainsborough’s best efforts without his tameness, and in brilliance and variety of colour it may view with many of the landscapes of Rubens’. The Philadelphia painting was originally purchased by another of the artist’s friends, James Pulham, but Constable later bought it back from his widow. The present work was in the collection of Thomas Walter Bacon at Ramsden Hall, a friend of Sir Charles Holmes, former Director of the National Gallery and an expert on Constable, who perhaps influenced the purchase of this, and six other oil sketches by the artist.