John Constable, R.A. (1776-1837)

This important early drawing can be grouped with other drawings and watercolours, one dated 4 November 1805 (see Parris and Fleming-Williams, loc. cit., examples repr.). They can be seen as an important stage in Constable's development, in part reflecting the influence of Dr. William Crotch, Professor of Music at Oxford and a drawing-master who taught his pupils to base their landscapes on simple geometric principles, and in particular to see each individual tree as a conglomerate of overlapping ovoidal forms contained within a single rounded whole. These characteristics are found in the dated watercolour of 1805 of The Stour Valley (repr. in colour, op.cit., no. 228) and a drawing similar in size and medium to A Dell, the Wooded Landscape in the Paul Mellon Collection, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Conn. (repr. op. cit., fig 120 and, larger, I. Fleming-Williams, Constable: Landscape Watercolours of Drawings, 1976, pl.4).
The early provenance to John Dunthorne, the amateur artist and friend of Constable, derives from Gerald S. Davies, a later owner (see Parris and Fleming-Williams, op. cit., p.394 no.227).