In winter 2024‒25, as part of our Bicentenary celebrations, the National Gallery will stage the exhibition Discover Constable and The Hay Wain focussing on John Constable’s masterpiece The Hay Wain (1821).
This will be the first loan exhibition held at the National Gallery on this artist and the first to explore the social, political and artistic context of the English landscape at the time of The Hay Wain’s production.
An exhibition on The Hay Wain in the National Gallery’s Bicentenary year is apt as 1824 was the key international moment for Constable (1776–1837), when the painting garnered great acclaim at the Paris Salon, receiving a gold medal from the French King Charles X.
This exhibition is part of the ‘Discover’ series, staged in the National Gallery’s Sunley Room, which explores well-known paintings from fresh and unexpected perspectives. This will be the fourth in the series after Manet & Eva Gonzalès, Liotard & The Lavergne Family Breakfast, and Degas & Miss Lala.
Visitors will enter the Hay Wain exhibition through a display of works in Central Hall by Old Masters that influenced Constable, drawing on the rich collection of the National Gallery.
The exhibition will explore how the English landscape was changing physically and politically at the turn of the 19th-century, and how this was understood and represented (or not) by artists at this time. The spiritual landscape will be examined through the works of William Blake (1757 –1827), the poetic landscape through contemporary writings about the rural landscape by the peasant poets such as Robert Bloomfield (1766 –1823) (whose work was quoted by the artist), and the political landscape through satirical contemporary prints that address topical issues, such as the corn laws.
The exhibition will look at where Constable was in his career in 1821 when he produced The Hay Wain and his process of building final works from sketches and studies produced over many years. It will demonstrate the impact of this work, when it was displayed at the 1824 Paris Salon, on contemporary French and British artists who drew inspiration from the artistic style of Constable.
One of the principle aims of the exhibition is to show how Constable came to be established as a master in the history of British art, as his work entered the collections of major galleries and museums. It will introduce the major donations from John Sheepshanks, Henry Vaughan, and Isabel Constable to the national collections of the V&A (South Kensington Museum), and the National Gallery, a number of which are now held in the collections of Tate Britain.
This free exhibition will include works by John Constable, George Morland (1763-1804), and John Linnell (1792-1882) among others.
The exhibition is curated by Christine Riding, Director of Collections and Research and Dr Mary McMahon, Acting Associate Curator 1600-1800 at the National Gallery.
