Constable Six Foot Sketches

A thing I learned about John Constable from Tyler Green’s conversation with the curators of the Yale Center for British Art’s new show of Constable’s landscapes: The V&A claims copyright on this 205 yr old John Constable full scale study of The Hay Wain, 1821, oil on canvas, 6 x 4.5 ft, while the National Gallery purports a Creative Commons license applies to the version Constable showed at the Royal Academy in 1821 Constable made full-scale studies in oil of his 6-foot paintings in the same, brushy style of his small, quick, plen air-style sketches. The V&A has one, the 6-foot sketch of Constable’s most famous painting, The Hay Wain (1821), which is at the National Gallery. I think I still like the clouds best.