“Boat-Building near Flatford Mill”
“Boat-Building near Flatford Mill” is a serene oil on canvas landscape painting by the English Romantic artist, John Constable. Dating to 1815. It depicts the building of a boat at a dry dock along the River Stour that was owned by Constable’s father in East Bergholt, England.
Many of Constable’s works featured this mill in an area that today is known as “Constable Country”. Built in 1733, the mill is still standing today and is used as the setting for art, natural history, and ecology classes. This painting was based off of a very small pencil sketch made by Constable that visitors can also see today in the same museum.
Although he is associated with the Romantic movement, Constable’s work was based much more on the natural landscape around where he lived. His contemporaries often focused on more exotic landscapes and ancient ruins which made Constable’s art less popular during his lifetime and therefore less successful. It was Constable’s realistic landscapes in a romantic world that made him a quiet rebel. His loose brush strokes and lighter palette created a new way of doing landscapes and was the inspiration for the Barbizon school of art.
“Boat-Building near Flatford Mill” is currently on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England.
For more on John Constable, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
