Helmingham Dell is an 1830 landscape painting by the British artist John Constable featuring a view of a dell in the grounds of Helmingham Hall in Suffolk, with a young woman in red about to cross a bridge. It appears to have been based on a sketch made as early as 1800 when he first visited Helmingham.[1]

In 1829 when Constable was elected to full membership of the Royal Academy in London he was required to provide a diploma work. He chose to present his 1826 landscape A Boat Passing a Lock which was owned by his friend the bookseller James Carpenter. In exchange for Carpenter giving up the work, Constable promised to produce another landscape for him featuring Helmingham.[2] As the work progressed Constable chose to keep it and instead paid Carpenter for the loss of his original painting.[3]

It was exhibited at Somerset House for the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition of 1830.[4] Today the painting is in the collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri having been acquired in 1955.[5] Constable had produced an earlier, smaller version of the same view in 1826, a work now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.[6] As well as being considerably larger, the 1830 work added a stag and a cow to the composition. Both paintings are unusual in his work for only featuring a small glimpse of sky.[7]

See also

References

  1. ^ Reynolds p.168
  2. ^ Bailey p.215
  3. ^ https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/work-of-art/a-boat-passing-a-lock
  4. ^ Thornes p.141
  5. ^ https://art.nelson-atkins.org/objects/29226/
  6. ^ https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/102701
  7. ^ Reynolds p.170

Bibliography

  • Bailey, Anthony. John Constable: A Kingdom of his Own. Random House, 2012.
  • Reynolds, Graham. Constable's England. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1983.
  • Thornes, John E. John Constable's Skies: A Fusion of Art and Science. A&C Black, 1999.
Allikas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmingham_Dell
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