This important, recently rediscovered study for The Glebe Farm is one of the most significant additions to the canon of Constable’s work in recent times. Thought to date to circa 1828, it provides a vital link between the artist’s first version of the subject, exhibited at the British Institution in 1827 (Detroit Institute of Arts) and his later versions of the painting, one of which he gave to his close friend, fellow artist and biographer, Charles Robert Leslie, and the other of which he retained in his own collection and exhibited at the Worcester Institution in 1835 (both Tate Gallery, London). It is the critical study upon which these and other variations of the composition are all ultimately based.

One of the titans of British painting, John Constable is perhaps one of the most recognisable and influential of all English romantic landscape painters. His most famous works are among some of the best-loved and most celebrated images in all British Art. So evocative are they, that to many his paintings have become synonymous with his native landscape and represent the quintessential vision of the English countryside the world over.

The Glebe Farm was a subject of particular importance to Constable. In his youth it had been the parish lodgings of his lifelong friend, mentor and early patron, John Fisher, later Bishop of Salisbury, when he was Rector of Langham – a small village on the south side of the Stour Valley, on a shallow hill overlooking Dedham Vale. They first met there in 1798, when Constable was in his early 20s, and it was from close to this spot that Constable painted many of his early Dedham views, including three views of Dedham from Langham painted circa 1812–13 in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; and the Tate Gallery, London, respectively (Reynolds, nos 12.27, 12.50 and 13.15). Gun Hill, another favourite spot from which to paint, is close by and the house was just across the vale from East Bergholt, where Constable’s parents lived, and where the artist was born and grew up.

The scene depicts a cottage – Church Farm (the Glebe Farm) – on a rise of ground on the right, with the tower of Langham Church behind and to the right. A muddy lane, with a stream running beside it, runs diagonally between wooded banks from the lower right, penetrating into the centre of the composition and leading the eye towards the distant vista beyond. In the foreground a single cow drinking from the stream on the right is offset by a fallen log and a pitcher beside a deeper pool of water on the left. Beyond a figure in a scarlet red coat and top hat, crosses a rickety wooden bridge over the stream; whilst on the horizon, far right, a windmill catches the breeze. Despite being obviously a working study, the artist has captured incidental details that speak of an intimate knowledge of the scene: the ruddy, patchy stonework of the church tower; washing hanging from the louvred windows of the cottage; and the curling wisps of smoke emitting from the chimney.

Until now the canon of Constable’s known Glebe Farm paintings consisted of five pictures, including an early plein air sketch of circa 1810 in the Victoria and Albert Museum and a later, more fantastical variant of the composition formerly in the collection of Sir Edwin Manton (Tate, London, T12293). However, the possibility of the existence of other, untraced versions of the composition, particularly a preparatory sketch which formed the basis for the later versions of the subject, has long been known. This luminous and engaging painting is that lost preparatory sketch and its discovery is one of the most significant and exciting developments in Constable scholarship in modern times.

Constable first painted the scene in a plein-air sketch of circa 1810 (fig. 3, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 161-1888). It was not until after Bishop Fisher’s death in 1825, however, that the artist returned to the subject of the farmhouse and Langham Church as a memorial to him. He first referred to it in a letter of 9 September 1826 to the Bishop’s nephew, his close friend John Fisher, Archdeacon of Berkshire. Constable wrote ‘My last landscape [is] a cottage scene – with the Church of Langham – the poor bishops first living… it is one of my best – very rich in colour - & fresh and bright – and I have “pacified it” – so that it gains much by that in tone & solemnity’.¹

Constable exhibited this first version of the composition at the British Institution in 1827, from which he sold it to the collector George Morant. That painting, which the artist gave the title The Glebe Farm and is now in the Detroit Institute of Arts (64.117), follows the composition of the 1810 sketch relatively closely, except for the addition of a view of Langham Church inserted to the right and just behind the cottage (see fig. 4). Constable also added a dog and a pair of donkeys in the foreground, as well as a peasant girl in a red coat walking along the path between the banks of trees. It is from these details, unique to this picture, that we can distinguish the painting from other versions of the composition in later descriptions. Langham Church cannot in fact be seen from this viewpoint, as it is over the brow of the hill behind the house. As he alluded to in his earlier letter, Constable included it in the composition to make it more of a full memorial to the Bishop and, as Reynolds commented, in the same picturesque spirit in which he included Higham Church in The Cornfield (National Gallery, London). At just 18 ¼ x 23 ½ in., it is the smallest of the known versions of the composition.

© With the inclusion of the church Constable thus established the basic compositional structure upon which all later interpretations of the composition would depend. In or before 1830 Constable was at work on another, larger version of the composition, which he gave as a present to his close friend and fellow artist Charles Robert Leslie (now Tate Britain, London, fig. 5). That painting, which measures 23 ½ x 30 ¾ in. (the same size as the present work), is unfinished, though more highly worked than the present picture. The entry for it in the catalogue of Leslie’s sale at Foster’s in April 1860 explains why, as well as the circumstances of the gift: ‘Mr. Leslie saw Constable at work on this picture, and told him he liked it so much he did not think it wanted another touch. Constable said, “Then take it away with you that I may not be tempted to touch it again.” The same evening the picture was sent to Mr. Leslie as a present.’² Whilst it is unclear exactly when Constable painted this version, the picture was certainly in Leslie’s possession by August 1831, when Constable wrote to him proposing it as a subject for engraving, though it is likely to have been given to him well before.

A third, final, more elaborate and extensive version of The Glebe Farm, measuring 25 ½ x 37 ¾ in., was exhibited by Constable at the Worcester Institution in 1835 and was certainly in existence by 1832, when Lucas made a mezzotint engraving, published that year, from the picture. Despite several possible attempts by both George Constable of Arundel and John Sheepshanks, a significant patron, to buy the painting, it remained in Constable’s personal possession until his death and was included in his posthumous sale at Foster’s in May 1838, lot 70 (also now Tate Britain, London, N01274, fig. 1 above). At the Constable sale the painting was bought by a consortium of the artist’s friends, headed by C.R. Leslie, in order to be returned to the artist’s eldest son John Charles, from whom it passed to his younger siblings. In 1888 the painting was bequeathed to the National Gallery as the gift of Maria Louisa, Isabel and Lionel Bicknell Constable and in 1919 transferred to the Tate Gallery. Traditionally dated by Parris and Reynolds to 1830, Sarah Cove has more recently suggested an earlier dating of circa 1828 for this and the Leslie version, as well as the present work. Whatever the date, it was evidently a painting with a significant professional and personal resonance for Constable. Not only did he retain the painting and refuse to sell it but, during the second round of negotiations to get him to part with it in 1836, the artist wrote to Leslie, just one year before he died, saying: ‘Sheepshanks means to have my Glebe Farm, or Green lane, of which you have a sketch. This is one of the pictures on which I rest my little pretensions of futurity.’³

The present work is almost certainly the crucial compositional study that links the early, smaller Detroit painting, exhibited at the British Institution in 1827, with the two larger versions of the composition at the Tate. Gridded up in pencil on top of the ground layer, it shows the artist transferring the composition from the Detroit picture onto a larger scale and working out new ideas and alterations for the composition. Following extensive technical analysis by Sarah Cove at the Constable Research Project, it is clear that the painting has undergone several reworkings by the artist. The full technical report is published for the first time together with this catalogue entry by kind permission of the author (please see above). A brief summary of the findings, however, are as follows.

A number of pentimenti demonstrate that this picture must have been painted before both of the Tate versions of the composition and demonstrates the artist’s crucial thought process in evolving the composition. The spindly sapling in the centre of the composition, for example, which appears in the Leslie painting but not in the final version, was added after the initial composition had been laid-in and fully worked up. Constable may have been trying to replicate the effect he had achieved with a similarly delicately painted tree in Dedham Vale: Morning of 1811 (Private collection, United Kingdom), which Leslie had so much admired for being ‘touched with a taste to which I know nothing equal in any landscape I ever saw’.⁴ In addition, a second sapling was painted in to the left, and then removed (now only visible using Infrared reflectography). The upper part of the church tower, equally, was painted over the original lay-in layers of the sky, whilst what appears to be the remnants of a pointed gable roof survive as white impasto showing through the warm grey paint just above the lower window in the tower. This suggests that the artist initially intended a different building for that spot, later changing his mind and reverting to the church tower as in the 1827 version. The windmill to the right was also painted over the initial lay-in of the sky, with no detectable underdrawing beneath it (in contrast to the rest of the main structural elements of the composition, the outlines of which were drawn in using a fluid dark brown medium applied with a fine brush), strongly suggesting it was an after-thought. All these indicate changes of mind on behalf of the artist during the creative process.

Significantly, this is the only version of the composition in which a windmill – a common sight in the Suffolk landscape at the time, as well as a favourite motif of Constable’s – remains extant. In both the Tate versions of the composition the area occupied by the windmill in the present painting is replaced with a screen of trees (slightly different in each). However, beneath the trees in the Leslie version of the composition is the remnants of a windmill which follows exactly that in the present work, though it was later painted out and replaced by the trees. This clearly indicates that the present painting must have come before the Leslie version, with the artist changing his mind about the inclusion of the windmill in the midst of painting that picture. A change that he then carries through into the final version of the composition, which he exhibited at Worcester in 1835. Interestingly, Constable also experimented with the motif of a windmill in a later variation of the composition, previously mentioned. Bequeathed to the Tate by Sir Edwin Manton in 2006 (Tate, T12293), the painting has visible pentimenti which demonstrate that the artist converted the tower of Langham Church into a windmill (with the sails evident through the increasingly opaque paint layers), before again changing his mind reverting to a church tower, but topped with a spire.

Further changes to the balance and contrast of light are clearly evident upon close inspection and analysis under the microscope shows that the artist built the composition up in at least three stages – sometimes working rapidly, wet-in-wet, sometimes letting the paint become well dry before returning to the composition. Scientific examination also shows the artist’s use of rubbing back and toning down of the lively impasto in the foliage and foreground details, techniques that are typical of Constable’s practise in the 1820s and 30s and evidence of his close study and admiration for the work of Sir Peter Paul Rubens in particular and Dutch seventeenth-century landscape painting in general. So too is his use of a modulated tonal ground, a practice with which he experimented extensively during his period of ‘skying’ in the early 1820s. This he has then rubbed back to create a coarse and absorbent surface, giving good tooth to the brush, the combined effect of which enabled him to create such intense luminosity of light.

The Leslie version of The Glebe Farm (Tate, London) by contrast, exactly follows the composition of the present work (with the exception of the removal of the windmill already referred to), but without any evidence of the artist’s reworkings mentioned above. Rather than being a working study or sketch, as is the case with this picture, it appears to be a relatively highly worked autograph version of the present composition – originally intended to be worked to full ‘finish’ before Leslie intervened. Having given this, first version of the larger Glebe Farm paintings away to Leslie unfinished, Constable then used this sketch again in order to work up his second, final and properly finished version of the composition – the painting for which he refused two offers from major patrons, but lent to the Worcester Institution in 1835. He retained this final version in his personal collection for the rest of his life and it was upon this painting that he wished to rest his ‘little pretensions to futurity’. It too follows closely the composition of the present sketch, with the addition of a girl seated between the log and the pitcher in the foreground. It is significant to note, however, that the screen of trees to the right of the church follows the alteration made by Constable in the Leslie version, in which he had removed the windmill in favour of the trees. Thereby demonstrating a continuity of thought which places the present work before both the Tate versions.

A potential seventh painting in the Glebe Farm canon, was deaccessioned by the Metropolitan Museum, New York, in 1956 and sold through Parke-Bernet Galleries, 27 March of that year, lot 33.⁵ More fully finished than either the present sketch or the Leslie version, from photographs it appears that it could be an autograph, later version, possibly painted circa 1834–35, that Sarah Cove has suggested Constable could have worked on with a view to sending to the Worcester exhibition in 1835. After the highly negative critical reception he received at the Royal Academy that year for The Valley Farm, which was lambasted in the press for appearing ‘powdered over with the dredging-box’ and ‘devil’d with pepper and salt’, he might have had a change of heart and decided to send an earlier, more conventional work from his own collection.⁶ Alternatively, he may have simply been distracted by other commitments, of which there were many, and been unable to complete the picture in time for the exhibition, necessitating it being replaced with the existing earlier work. It also seems possible that the ex-Met picture could have been painted for George Constable of Arundel, a prosperous brewer and maltster, who was a collector and amateur artist himself. Constable wrote to his engraver, David Lucas, on 16 December 1834: ‘My Glebe farm is going away – sold to Mr Constable of Arundel – the picture is a favourite but it chose its possessor.’⁷ It has previously been assumed that Constable was referring to the finished picture now at the Tate and that the deal fell through (previously referred to), as it did in 1836 when Sheepshanks tried to buy that painting. However, the date would fit with the proposed production of the ex-Met painting.

Interestingly, the composition of that picture follows the finished Tate version of the composition in the screen of trees to the right of the church, rather than the windmill, though it re-introduces the spindly sapling growing from the bank in the foreground, which partially obscures the distant vista, which is absent in that painting but features in the present sketch. The extent of the composition is also closer to that in the present sketch, rather than the more expansive finished Tate painting; as is the formation of the principal tree on the left, which in both the present sketch and the ex-Met painting have a distinct arch in the trunk, with a leftward lean, compared to the straighter trunk found in the finished Tate painting. This would all suggest that Constable was still referring back to this earlier painting as the source of the composition, even though he still had the finished painting in his possession.

John Fisher (1748–1825), Bishop of Salisbury, was a close friend of Constable’s and presided over the artist’s wedding to Maria Bicknell in 1816. Having been chaplain to King George III in the early 1780s and served as a canon at Windsor, in 1790 Fisher was appointed Rector of Langham, on the other side of Dedham Vale from East Bergholt, where Constable’s parents lived and where the artist grew up. Having travelled in Italy and Switzerland on sketching tours and known to contemporaries for his ‘taste for drawing, and love of the fine arts’,⁸ Fisher was a highly cultured prelate and a generous patron to both authors and artists. He taught drawing to Princess Elizabeth, served as chaplain to the Royal Academy in 1807, having helped set up the British Institution the previous year, and was later elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1819.

It was at Langham, in 1798 when he was in his early 20s, that Constable was first introduced to Fisher by the local curate, the Revd. Brooke Hurlock – a meeting that, as the artist himself noted, ‘entirely influenced his future life.’⁹ Fisher nurtured the young painter’s talents and, over time, became one of his most important patrons. In 1803 he was chosen by the King to succeed Henry Reginald Courtenay as Bishop of Exeter and two years later the King also put Fisher in charge of the education of his daughter, Princess Charlotte of Wales. As Bishop of Salisbury from 1807, Fisher was ex officio Chancellor of the Order of the Garter. According to Hester Thrale, these close ties to the Royal Family earned him the sobriquet ‘King’s Fisher’ in high society, and such elevated social connections proved of much benefit to Constable throughout his career. The artist became a regular visitor to the Bishop’s palace at Salisbury and was on intimate terms with Fisher’s wider family. He gave drawing lessons to Dorothea, Fisher’s eldest daughter, and befriended the Bishop’s nephew and domestic Chaplain, another John Fisher, later Archdeacon of Berkshire, who became one of Constable’s closest acquaintances and another important patron in later life. So intimate was the relationship between Constable and the younger John Fisher that, following the artist’s death, his first biographer, C.R. Leslie based a large proportion of his narrative on the mutual correspondence between the two. It is consequently from his written conversations with the younger John Fisher that we get much of our knowledge of the development of Constable’s art.

It is for this reason that the The Glebe Farm composition holds such a special and poignant resonance within Constable’s œuvre. It is the artist’s personal memorial to his great friend and patron – the man who did so much to nurture and support the artist, both professionally and personally, his great friend and mentor. It is also for this reason that the finished painting (Tate, London, N01274) remained in Constable’s personal possession until his death – despite two major patrons trying to acquire it – and why it was bought back by a consortium of friends at his posthumous studio sale to be returned to Constable’s eldest son, John Charles. The present painting, newly rediscovered and returned to its rightful place in the canon of the artist’s work, is the crucial preparatory study for this important work – the painting upon which the artist himself wished to rest his ‘little pretensions to futurity’.

Until now the canon of Constable’s known Glebe Farm paintings consisted of five pictures, including the early 1810 plein air sketch (Victoria and Albert Museum) and the later ‘Manton’ variation of the composition (Tate, London, T12293). However, both Parris and Reynolds noted that two paintings which appear in Constable’s posthumous studio sale as lots 10 and 13 remained untraced, though one of these came to light following the publication of Reynolds' 1984 catalogue of The Later Paintings and Drawings of John Constable and was bequeathed to the Tate by Sir Edwin Manton in 2006 (fig. 10).¹⁰ In 2008 Douglas Congdon-Martin, who has most fully explored the sometimes confused provenance of this canon in an article for Tate Papers, made a convincing case for the Manton painting being lot 10 in the artist’s studio sale, having successfully traced its full provenance. He also commented, however, that ‘at least one other Glebe Farm belongs to the canon, though its whereabouts is not known’ and made a compelling case for this study being part of lot 13 in the studio sale.¹¹

Described as ‘Two – Salisbury Cathedral and the Glebe Farm’, lot 13 in Constable’s posthumous studio sale was bought by Carpenter. Reynolds assumed this to be William Hookham Carpenter (1792–1866), a well-known antiquary, collector and Keeper of Prints at the British Museum, allowing that it may also have been his father, James Carpenter, a bookseller in Old Bond Street. Whoever was the actual buyer, both the Salisbury and Glebe paintings that formed this lot certainly belonged to the younger Carpenter and reappeared in the sale of his collection at Christie’s in 1867 as lot 77, Salisbury Cathedral, bought by the dealer Halstead for £63 (now National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; fig. 11); and lot 79, Study for the picture of the ‘Glebe Farm’, bought by Joseph Hogarth, another London dealer, for £91.

Due to a misprint in the Christie’s catalogue for the Carpenter sale in 1867, the circumstances of which were fully explained by Congdon-Martin, this connection had previously been missed.¹² The confusion led Reynolds to tentatively associate lot 13 in Constable’s sale with the later Manton variant of the composition now in the Tate – which we now know to have been lot 10. The Glebe Farm composition sold as part of lot 13 has therefore, until now, remained untraced. It seems highly likely, however, that the present painting can be associated with that lot and that it is the preparatory work for both the later Leslie and Worcester versions.

The earliest certain provenance for this painting is in the collection of Edward William Edwards (1874–1956) and his wife Eleanore Zimmerman (d. 1973). Born in Pittsburgh, Edwards later moved to Cincinnati where, in 1901, he founded and became president of The Edwards Manufacturing Company. With numerous business interests in Ohio and across the Mid-West, in 1930 he also became president of the Fifth Third Union Trust Company of Cincinnati – one of the largest banks in the United States of America at the time. A confirmed Francophile, he was awarded the Legion d’Honneur by the French government in recognition of his aid to French refugees during the First World War. A major collector of both Old Masters and Impressionist paintings, Edwards was a leading patron of the arts in Cincinnati, serving as a Trustee of the Cincinnati Institute of Fine Arts (now the Cincinnati Art Museum) and also of Berea College, Kentucky – one of the first non-segregated and co-educational colleges in the USA.

Mr and Mrs Edwards travelled extensively in Europe buying paintings, acquiring from Agnews in London and Bottwiesser in Berlin, among others, as well as Knoedler and the Levy Galleries in New York. The collection they put together included two panels by Hans Memling, depicting St Christopher and St Stephen; a Madonna and Child with the Infant St John the Baptist by Antonio del Ceraiolo; and Philippe Mercier’s The Italian Comedians, all of which were later bequeathed to Cincinnati Art Museum. Their version of Leonardo de Vinci’s Madonna of the Yarnwinder was lent to the major exhibition of paintings and sculpture from American collections at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1933, and again in 1949 to the Leonardo exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Perhaps the most significant Old Master in their collection, however, was Rubens’s oil sketch of Mars and Rhea Silvia, now in the Liechtenstein Collection at Vaduz (fig. 12).

Although it is at present unclear where or when they acquired Constable’s Glebe Farm, the painting was certainly in the collection by January 1922, when it was reported in the society pages of The Cincinnati Enquirer on the 23^rd of that month hanging in the Sun Room at their house on Observatory Avenue at a reception for Sir Paul Dukes (1889–1967), the famous British spy known as the ‘Man of a Hundred Faces’ for his time infiltrating Bolshevik organizations in Russia during the First World War. The Edwardses were also using the occasion to unveil a new Gainsborough they had recently acquired to Cincinnati high society – the artist’s Portrait of John, Viscount Maitland, later 8th Earl of Lauderdale (Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Centre for Visual Arts at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California). Other paintings mentioned hanging in the house include landscapes by Monet (also hanging in the Sun Room with the present work) and Corot; a portrait of a dark haired girl by Bouguereau and another painting of a girl by Renoir; a seascape by Léon Augustin Lhermitte; and a portrait of a boy by Frans Hals, as well as another portrait by Gainsborough – the artist’s Portrait of Sarah, Lady Blackstone (Private collection, United Kingdom). In 1927 Mr and Mrs Edwards donated $50,000 to the fund established by the Taft family for the creation of the Cincinnati Institute of Fine Arts and in 1946 they lent another Constable, entitled Lock on the Canal Near Newbury, Berkshire (untraced), to an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Edward Edwards died in 1956 and, after Mrs Edwards died in 1973, the collection was divided between their two heirs; their youngest daughter Eleanor Wood Prince (1911–2008), wife of William ‘Billy’ Wood Prince of Chicago; and their grandson, Thomas Edwards Davidson (1928–1994), the son of their eldest daughter Helen (1903–1944) and her husband Thomas Davidson (1895–1940). William and Eleanor Wood Prince added to their inheritance significantly and were major collectors in their own right – Turner being a particular passion. Billy Wood Prince bought Turner’s great view of Venice, Giudecca, La Donna della Salute and San Giorgio, from Agnews in 1959 – sealing the deal over a bottle of champagne at Claridges with Dick Kingzett.¹³ The sale of their collection at Christie’s in 2009 included five watercolours by Turner, as well as an oil sketch by Constable of Salisbury Cathedral. Paintings inherited from the Edwards collection that featured in the Wood Prince sale in 2009 included the previously mentioned version of The Madonna of the Yarnwinder, a tondo from the studio of Botticelli and a portrait by Tintoretto.

Constable’s The Glebe Farm went to the other side of the family and was inherited by Mr and Mrs Edwards’ grandson, Thomas Edwards Davidson. Davidson died in 1994 and the painting remained in the possession of his family until acquired by the present owner.

We are grateful to Sarah Cove and Anne Lyles for endorsing the attribution to Constable following first-hand inspection and scientific analysis. We are also grateful to them both and to Dr Peter Bell for their assistance in the cataloguing of this lot. The full technical report, produced by Sarah Cove of the Constable Research Project, is published here with the kind permission of the author.

The painting is displayed in a loan frame from Paul Mitchell Antique Framers. Should you be interested in buying the frame, please contact the Old Masters department.

¹ Quoted in Reynolds 1984, text vol., p. 180.

² Reynolds 1984, text vol., p. 181.

³ Reynolds 1984, text vol., p. 181.

⁴ Reynolds 1984, text vol., p. 181 – Corr. III, p. 144.

⁵ Reproduced in S.P. Noe, The Mentor: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, vol. 6, no. 9, serial no. 157, New York, 15 June 1918.

⁶ Critiques from the Literary Gazette and Blackwood’s Magazine, quoted in L. Parris, The Tate Gallery Constable Collection, London 1981, pp. 162–63.

⁷ L. Parris, The Tate Gallery Constable Collection, London 1981, p. 146.

⁸ Carolina Knight, Autobiography, 1.232–3, quoted in N. Aston, ‘Fisher, John (1748–1825), Bishop of Salisbury’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online

⁹ L. Parris, The Tate Gallery Constable Collection, London 1981, p. 145.

¹⁰ Tate, London.

¹¹ D. Congdon-Martin, ‘Sir Edward Manton’s Glebe: Completing the Provenance of Constable’s Glebe Farm Sketch, c. 1830’, in Tate Papers, no. 9, Spring 2008.

¹² Congdon-Martin 2008, pp. 7–11.

¹³ As recorded in Kingzett’s introduction to the sale of their collection – Christie’s, New York, Important Old Master Paintings and Sculpture, 28 January 2009.