Full-Scale Study for <i>The Hay Wain</i>

ca. 1821 · Oil painting · 137 × 188 cm

May one see it?

Yes, receiving visitors

Victoria and Albert Museum

London, United Kingdom

RoomPaintings, Room 87, The Edwin and Susan Davies Galleries

On public display.

Checked: 7 days ago
In this state since: Sep 25, 2026
Source: The museum's own collection data

On the map Museum page

About the painting

Constable often made full-scale studies for large exhibition paintings. He used a broad painting style to establish the general balance of the composition and its colours. This study is for his most famous work, The Hay Wain, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1821. The painting is now in the National Gallery. The scene is near Flatford Mill.

Victoria and Albert Museum

Particulars

Accession number: 987-1900

What it shows

Landscape

In the catalog

British School Great Britain

Sources

Victoria and Albert Museum: the museum's own open data · fetched 7 days ago
Image: Victoria and Albert Museum — © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Meanwhile, in the life of John Constable

The whole life

1821
“The Hay Wain” at the Royal Academy
The picture, shown as “Landscape: Noon”, found no buyer, but it was seen by the painter Théodore Géricault and the writer Charles Nodier. According to Delacroix, Géricault went back to France quite stunned and invited Constable to Paris, while Nodier urged French artists to look to nature rather than to trips to Rome.
1821
“I should paint my own places best”
In a letter to his friend John Fisher in 1821 Constable wrote that he should paint his own places best, and that painting is but another word for feeling. The Dedham Vale around his home came to be known as “Constable Country”.
1821
Son born: Charles Golding Constable
23 October 1821
To Fisher: “I have done a good deal of skying”
Constable wrote to Fisher that he had done a good deal of skying and was determined to conquer all the difficulties that remained. He made cloud studies, noting the weather, direction of light and time of day on the back, and held the sky to be the key note of a landscape, drawing on the meteorologist Luke Howard’s classification of clouds.
1822/1823
Daughter born: Isabel Constable