''Wivenhoe Park'' is a painting of an

English landscape park The English landscape garden, also called English landscape park or simply the English garden (french: Jardin à l'anglaise, it, Giardino all'inglese, german: Englischer Landschaftsgarten, pt, Jardim inglês, es, Jardín inglés), is a sty ...

, the estate of the Rebow family, by the English Romantic painter, John Constable (1776–1837). John Constable was born in Suffolk, and is known principally for his landscape paintings, especially the landscapes of the countryside where he spent his childhood. His paintings are now considered among the most popular and valuable in British art.

Painting

The National Gallery of Art holds this painting as one of its highlights:

A pleasant sense of ease and harmony pervades this landscape of almost photographic clarity. The large areas of brilliant sunshine and cool shade, the rambling line of the fence, and the beautiful balance of trees, meadow, and river are evidence of the artist's creative synthesis of the actual site.

The painting was commissioned by the owner of

Wivenhoe Park Wivenhoe Park is a landscaped green space of more than at the eastern edge of Colchester, England. It is the site of Wivenhoe House, a four-star hotel, based in an eighteenth-century Grade II listed house. Wivenhoe House is also home to the Edg ...

, Major General Francis Slater-Rebow, who was among the artist's first patrons, being a close friend of the artist's father, Golding Constable. Wivenhoe Park is of parkland, purchased by the Rebow family before 1734. Slater-Rebow commissioned several paintings from Constable, including a portrait of the general's seven-year-old daughter in 1812. She also figures in this painting, in a donkey cart to the left. This painting, finished in September 1816, earned the artist enough money to allow him to marry his long-time love, Mary Bicknell. They married in October 1816.[''The painting was a important project for Constable on a personal level: He needed the income the commission generated in order to provide for his longtime love, Maria Bicknell, and enable them to marry with the approval of her parents, who opposed the match for a number of years. ''Wivenhoe Park, Essex'' was finished by September 1816, and Bicknell and Constable were at last married on October 2, 1816.'' Quote from Aleid Ford's project, Art 2010.] Constable's art is always penetrated by longing, melancholy and a yearning for the simple, natural life, for a bucolic, pastoral idyll, to rural subjects and aspects of life in the countryside, a "golden age" when people lived together in harmony with nature, a world on its way of disappearing when he painted his landscapes thanks to the beginning of the

Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...

. He was aware of the issue of

urban Urban means "related to a city". In that sense, the term may refer to: * Urban area, geographical area distinct from rural areas * Urban culture, the culture of towns and cities Urban may also refer to: General * Urban (name), a list of people ...

growth, of urban life's unpleasantness, which he contrasted to life in the

countryside In general, a rural area or a countryside is a geographic area that is located outside towns and cities. Typical rural areas have a low population density and small settlements. Agricultural areas and areas with forestry typically are descri ...

. Constable's art was rather unconventional for his time, and he loved simple things, a natural landscape without the ruins, dramatic effects or exalted, often excessive feelings, like the ones displayed in the paintings of his contemporary, J. M. W. Turner. His landscapes are flooded by a silvery brilliant light in the water and air and in the sky, and are characterised by a special intensity that is such an important feature of this artist's works.

References

Citations Bibliography *

External links

The painting in the permanent collection, National Gallery of Art

{{John Constable Paintings by John Constable 1816 paintings Collections of the National Gallery of Art Landscape paintings Birds in art Cattle in art Ships in art England in art