John Constable, R.A.

Art market, Oxford, by 2012;

Where acquired by the present owner.

This charming sketch captures an intimate and fleeting moment shared presumably between the artist's three eldest children: John Charles (1817–1841), Maria Louise (1819–1885) and Charles Golding (1821–1879). The scene is probably set in the artist's residence on Charlotte Street and shows the eldest son entertaining his younger siblings with a toy boat in a basin of water being blown by bellows. Constable's third child, Charles, is known to have developed a nautical obsession from a young age, probably after playing with toy boats with his siblings. Charles would later turn this obsession into a career and departed for the East Indies and China when he was only 14 years old, much to his father's dismay. He would later become a Commander in the Indian Navy and retire with the honorary rank of Captain.

This rapid sketch resembles a painting completed by Constable in c. 1820, showing Maria Constable with her two eldest children,¹ and another small sketch, also executed in 1820 and in the same fluid style as the present work, of Maria Louise as Bo-Peep.²

¹ Oil on mahogany panel, 16.6 x 22.1 cm. Tate Collection, no. T03903.

² Oil on millboard, 17.5 x 10.5 cm.; G. Reynolds, The Early Paintings and Drawings of John Constable, 2 vols, London 1996, p. 242, no. 20.88A (text), reproduced in colour fig. 1388 (plates).