Constable was a late developer, sketches show
Four unknown early paintings and sketches by John Constable have been discovered after lying hidden for almost 200 years in a family scrapbook.
Experts said the remarkable pieces, which date back to the artist’s teens, confirm that he was a ‘‘late developer’’, with his trademark landscape style emerging later in life.
However, the collection also contains some early drawings of family members that later became some of the painter’s most notable portraits.
The collection has been authenticated by Sotheby’s, the auction house, and will go for sale later this month.
The works are expected to collectively fetch more than £28,000 (NZ$54,000). The scrapbook, which also contains letters, poems and notes by the young artist, had remained hidden for the best part two centuries after being compiled by the Mason family of Colchester.
The Masons were related to the Constables by marriage and the two families were close during the 19th century.
One of the most notable works is an oval watercolour showing a team of horses pulling a cart over a stone bridge while a man carries a heavy load into a small village. It was painted on April 5 1794, when Constable was 17, making it one of his earliest known works. But it shows little of the stylistic vividness that would later make him one of Britain’s most celebrated painters.
However, Constable painted the scene while he was still working at the family business and half a decade before he started training formally as an artist.
‘‘It probably is a copy after a print and it is pretty naive,’’ Mark Griffith-Jones, a Sotheby’s specialist, told The Guardian. ‘‘He was very young. From an academic point of view it is interesting to find something of this date. Constable, quite famously, was a late developer.’’
The collection also contains intimate portraits of Constable’s family, including a pencil sketch of his younger brother Abram – a precursor to a later portrait. The two were close and it was the younger’s willingness to run the family’s milling and shipping businesses that allowed Constable to pursue his artistic career. Abram also supported his brother’s family financially, as the artist’s works received popular recognition only after his death.
The sketch is thought to have been saved as Abram was close to the Mason family. The collection also contains a tender portrait of his cousin Jane Anne Inglis, n??e Mason. ‘‘This is a particularly sensitive and really very beautiful pencil portrait study,’’ said Mr Griffith-Jones. ‘‘It is a really stunning work.’’
The fourth work in the scrapbook, which was made between 1794-1862, is a drawing of a thatched cottage that later became Constable’s only known etching from the period.