Drawing,, Landscape with a stream at Wenham, by John Constable, pen and ink, 1796

A pen and ink drawing, very lightly sketched, of a landscape with a stream flowing past a wood (on the right bank) and a distant cottage (on the left bank).

Given by Isabel Constable, the daughter of the artist

This is one of the earliest dated drawings by Constable of which the whereabouts are now known.

John Constable was born in East Bergholt, Suffolk, on 11 June 1776, the second son of Golding Constable, a well-to-do mill-owner, and Ann Watts. His fondness for painting, without any marked precocity, had already declared itself by the time he was 16 or 17: and he was encouraged in this taste by his friendship with John Dunthorne, a plumber and glazier of East Bergholt, who was an amateur painter.

Excluding copies after engravings, 358H-1888 is among the earliest dated drawings by Constable of which the whereabouts are now known. In 1796, Constable, not yet firmly committed to an artistic career, met the writer J. T. 'Antiquity' Smith, who was compiling Remarks on Rural Scenery; With twenty etchings of Cottages, from Nature; and some observations and precepts relative to the pictoresque (published June 1797). Constable wrote to Smith in October 1796, offering to send him several drawings of cottages, perhaps from this sketchbook, which he might find suitable for his purposes. Although Smith apparently responded positively, none of Constable's drawings appears in the published edition.

In 1797 Constable was following his father's business in Suffolk. In 1799 he went to London to pursue his career in the arts, and on Farington's recommendation he was admitted as a probationer to the Academy Schools in March of that year.

This drawing of a landscape near Wenham, Suffolk, is one of the earliest dated drawings by Constable of which the whereabouts are now known. In 1796, the year Constable created the sketchbook from which this drawing comes, he had not yet committed himself to an artistic career; it was assumed that he would enter his father's business. The same year, he met the writer J. T. 'Antiquity' Smith, who was collecting material for a book on rural scenery. Constable offered him several light, schematic sketches of local cottages for possible inclusion in the book. Although Smith responded positively, he ultimately chose not to include any of Constable's cottage sketches in the published book.

358H-1888