Latest news with #JohnConstable
Yahoo
15-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Constable's 250th anniversary set to be marked
A town is set to host a set of exhibitions and events to mark the anniversary of one of the UK's most renowned painters. Christchurch Mansion, in Ipswich, Suffolk, is set to host the events in 2026 to mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of John Constable. The Constable 250 will showcase work by the artist, who was born in East Bergholt in 1776, featuring paintings on loan from a number of museums. Carole Jones, Ipswich Borough Council's portfolio holder for planning and museums, said: "These once-in-a-lifetime loans will tell the story of our own Suffolk-born artist whose radical approach revolutionised landscape painting." Constable, who died aged 60 in 1837, is best known for his depiction of the English countryside, particularly his native Suffolk. He is best known for his 1821 oil painting The Hay Wain which became a sensation in the art world when it was exhibited at the Louvre in Paris in 1824. Constable 250 will feature three exhibitions which will be led by Colchester and Ipswich Museums, which is jointly run by Colchester City Council and Ipswich Borough Council. The National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund, Arts Council England, and other key partners, are set to work alongside them. The year-long programme of exhibitions and events will be showcased at Christchurch Mansion. The authority said the exhibitions would include work on loan from the Tate, National Galleries of Scotland, Victoria & Albert Museum, Royal Academy and the Government Art Collection. The showcase will feature three exhibitions - Constable: A Cast of Characters; Constable: Walking the Landscape; and Constable to Contemporary. Ms Jones added: "We are very grateful to all the organisations supporting Constable 250 and partnering with us to make it possible." Local workshops and artist-led sessions will be held for families and school across school holidays, the council added. Follow Suffolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X. Constable sketch expected to fetch up to £200k Iconic Constable artwork focus of new exhibition Unrecorded Constable work sells for £300k Tests to discover if paintings are by Constable Ipswich Borough Council
BBC News
15-06-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Ipswich to host 250th anniversary celebration of John Constable
A town is set to host a set of exhibitions and events to mark the anniversary of one of the UK's most renowned Mansion, in Ipswich, Suffolk, is set to host the events in 2026 to mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of John Constable 250 will showcase work by the artist, who was born in East Bergholt in 1776, featuring paintings on loan from a number of Jones, Ipswich Borough Council's portfolio holder for planning and museums, said: "These once-in-a-lifetime loans will tell the story of our own Suffolk-born artist whose radical approach revolutionised landscape painting." Constable, who died aged 60 in 1837, is best known for his depiction of the English countryside, particularly his native is best known for his 1821 oil painting The Hay Wain which became a sensation in the art world when it was exhibited at the Louvre in Paris in 250 will feature three exhibitions which will be led by Colchester and Ipswich Museums, which is jointly run by Colchester City Council and Ipswich Borough National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund, Arts Council England, and other key partners, are set to work alongside them. The year-long programme of exhibitions and events will be showcased at Christchurch Mansion. The authority said the exhibitions would include work on loan from the Tate, National Galleries of Scotland, Victoria & Albert Museum, Royal Academy and the Government Art showcase will feature three exhibitions - Constable: A Cast of Characters; Constable: Walking the Landscape; and Constable to Contemporary. Ms Jones added: "We are very grateful to all the organisations supporting Constable 250 and partnering with us to make it possible."Local workshops and artist-led sessions will be held for families and school across school holidays, the council added. Follow Suffolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Wall Street Journal
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
John Constable's ‘The Hay Wain': A Landmark Landscape
The National Gallery, London, founded in 1824, celebrated its bicentenary in small exhibitions across the U.K. that brought the museum's most iconic paintings to an even wider British public. John Constable's 'The Hay Wain' (1821), the Romantic artist's best known landscape, revered in his native England as an authentic image of its rural countryside, was among the works acclaimed as national treasures, and is now back in London as part of the recently reinstalled collection. The peaceful, unassuming canvas's radically new technique, its profound redefinition of what landscape painting could be, and Constable's inherently moral approach to the genre's naturalistic representation would preoccupy him throughout his career. Constable (1776-1837) grew up in East Bergholt, a small village in Suffolk along the River Stour in East Anglia. His father, who had inherited the local Flatford Mill, plied his prosperous trade along the river's canals, which afforded his family a genteel country life. Though the artist studied at London's Royal Academy as early as 1799, he often returned to draw and paint the fertile green fields and placid river scenes that viewers recognized even during his lifetime as 'Constable Country.' After his marriage in 1816, however, he moved permanently to London, and was elected associate of the Royal Academy in 1819. Constable also exhibited that year the first of his so-called Six-Footers, the monumental River Stour scenes that were painted in his London studio and were his bid for fame.
Daily Mirror
11-05-2025
- Daily Mirror
Charming overlooked town surrounded by animal-filled meadows is day trip heaven
Few towns can boast a mummified cat and the decapitated head of an Archbishop among their tourist attractions. Fewer still were home to one of Britain's greatest painters, and are surrounded by ancient commonland where cows freely pasture. Sudbury is a beautiful town with a rich industrial and cultural history, yet like many of the sweet settlements in East Anglia, it suffers from its location. 'We're on the way to nowhere here. No one comes to Sudbury by accident,' a volunteer in Gainsborough's House Museum tells me as we admire the gallery's latest exhibition - a selection of 18th-century masterpieces borrowed from Kenwood House in Hampstead Heath. Sudbury's problem is that it's very much at the end of the line. The Gainsborough Line to be specific. You'll have to take the 50-minute train from London Liverpool Street to Marks Tey and change onto a three-carriage trundler, which emerges from leafy cuttings to ride high above the pastoral beauty of the Stour Valley on a 32-arch viaduct (the second largest brick-built structure in England) before terminating in Sudbury. It also finds itself competing with its neighbours in the informal 'great beauties of Suffolk' rankings. Seven miles up the road is Lavenham, Britain's best preserved medieval village where rickety houses dyed pink with pigs blood limewash line the streets. Over on the coast the pastel colours of Aldeburgh sit above a wide East Anglian pebble beach. The most direct competition comes 15 miles down the River Stour in Flatford, where John Constable painted The Hay Wain. Today the white mill that inspired the painting remains as it did in the early 19th century, like much of Constable Country does as it merges into Gainsborough territory while you make your way back west along the Stour River to Sudbury. Approached by foot, the town could exist at any point in the last thousand years, thanks to the meadow's commonland status which have kept this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty a haven for moorhen, field mice, collared dove and, as my niece kept pointing out, 'ducks!' On a sunny day a table up on The Mill's terrace is the best place to sit and watch the wildlife, the cattle roaming and the toddlers toddling by the water. When the sun is shining is also the best time to visit Gainsborough's House, due to the way the light bounces around its spacious galleries, filled, of course, with the artist's work, but also modern pieces responding to Thomas by the likes of Royal Academician Katherine Jones. After looking around, you could do worse than a cup of tea beneath the branches in the museum's garden. Other places in the town to enjoy a bite include vegan joint Cradle, brunch specialists Painters at the Angel and, as everyone I met kept recommending, The Henny Swan. The 17th-century pub is an hour's walk out of town along the Stour and rewards those who make the journey with a riverside garden and an esteemed Ploughman's. 'Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing–absolutely nothing–half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats,' Ratty once opined to Moley in A.A. Milne's Wind in the Willows, and he is right. Happily, to this end, both the Henny and the Sudbury Boat House are on hand with cheap rowing boats, paddle boards, and kayak options, which can be used to travel between Sudbury's riverside pubs. Once you've done messing about on boats it'll be time to get down to the serious business of Sudbury's second and third most popular tourist attractions - the mummified cat and the head. The poor moggy is entombed in a glass cabinet at the Mill, where she was found during a conversion in 1971. It's likely that the cabinet had been there for 300 years, in line with an old Suffolk tradition that saw live cats buried in the foundations of buildings to ward off witches, warlocks, and fires. The head is arguably less sad but more appointment viewing. Simon of Sudbury was another local lad done good, the wise young man working his way up from Rector of Wickhambrook to the Archbishop of Canterbury in the 14th century. Unfortunately, he took his seat and the role of Lord Chancellor just as the Government decided to pay off the King's huge war debts with a poll tax. In came the revolting peasants from the Home Counties, and off came Simon's head. Before the spike he was impaled on was used to hold up the later defeated People's Champion Wat Tyler, Simon's head was spirited away back to his hometown and tucked away in St Gregory's Church. Today, if you ask the caretaker nicely, they might get it out of storage and give you a look.
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
National Gallery refuses to politicise paintings in collection redisplay
The National Gallery has refused to politicise its paintings and will instead 'celebrate the European tradition'. Bosses refused to make paintings 'political' with their recent redisplay of the collection, in a move out of step with many British arts institutions. Museums and galleries have been accused of 'going woke' by reinterpreting their cultural treasures in terms of how they relate to slavery, colonialism, and racism. Rehangs of famous collections, including that of Tate Britain, have been used as opportunities to add new labels alerting visitors to historic injustices, which can sometimes be tangential. John Constable's beloved images of English rural life have even been linked in one museum to 'dark, nationalist' beliefs. The National Gallery has now completed the redisplay and relabelling of its entire collection, but has deliberately refused to politicise its artworks. Gallery director Sir Gabriele Finaldi told The Telegraph: 'Fundamentally, it is a celebration of the collection, of painters, and of the great European tradition. 'In some sense, it's a bit old fashioned.' Sir Gabriele, who has led the National Gallery since 2015, added: 'We think of it as an aesthetic experience, which then can become an educational experience, and a social experience. Not necessarily a political experience.' Instead, the total rehang of the collection aims to celebrate 'some of the great figures of the canon'. The rehang of all the gallery's displayed paintings, aside from a handful of works by Turner and Claude, marks the completion of a two-year project. Central to this was the £85 million remodelling of the Sainsbury Wing of the gallery, intended to make the space into a brighter, more welcoming main entrance to the attraction. The gallery's apolitical approach stands in contrast to recent rehangs of major British collections. In 2023, Tate Britain removed some innocuous images, while displaying more politically contentious works, and those linked to slavery and colonialism. New labelling then told the public of the evils of slavery and empire defences in the paintings, as well as issues including prejudice against travellers, and economic hardship for the labouring classes. Curators also pointed out in new labelling that Constable's paintings show an idealised England that ignores the suffering of the rural poor. The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge followed a similar theme. In 2024, the museum reordered into themed categories, in an 'inclusive' shake-up, with artwork grouped into categories including Men Looking at Women, Identity, Migration and Movement. In the Nature gallery, containing works by Constable and Gainsborough, it was noted that bucolic landscapes had a 'darker side' and could evoke 'nationalist feeling' The National Gallery, which cares for Constable's great 1821 work, The Hay Wain, has not included any political observations in its labelling for the painting. Information presented to visitors across the gallery instead places the focus on artistic trends and the art-historical significance of the painters represented. Sir Gabriele said he wanted to ensure labels helped visitors understand art and art history, adding: 'Artists come to the National Gallery and say, 'This is where I learn, this is a tonic for me'.' Marking the revamp, Arts Minister Chris Bryant said: 'The National Gallery is one of the best loved members of our family of national Museums. 'It's a delight to see any family member get a makeover, and this is no exception. And having seen some of the rehang, I know everybody will be amazed.' The revamped wing includes a new coffee bar, restaurant, and high-definition screens which show artworks in close up, revealing details that are barely viable to the naked eye. Some ceilings have also been removed to provide more space and light. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
