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18
Mar
Constable painting sold at North Yorkshire auction for £320,000
A previously unrecorded early painting by master landscape artist John Constable sold at auction on Saturday for £320,000.
Dedham Vale looking towards Langham, executed around 1809-14, is technically a 'sketch' and measures just 12 by 15 inches.
It was sold from a private North Yorkshire family collection at Tennants Auctioneers' British, European and Sporting art sale in Leyburn.
Jane Tennant, director and auctioneer at Tennants, said:
Constable is such an icon of British art history, and we are delighted to have handled such an important work of art and achieved such a fantastic price for the vendors.
It is rare for an unrecorded Constable to come onto the open market, and it attracted a good deal of interest.
An uncropped view of the sketch.
John Constable lived from 1776 to 1837 and remains one of the most important figures in British art history. Having completed his studies at the Royal Academy Schools in 1802, he abandoned the classical academic landscape painting of previous generations, and let "Nature herself" guide his work.
Returning to his Suffolk home, he began created plein-air sketches out amongst the fields and byways, a practice he continued until around 1829, and developed a colourful and highly expressive oil sketching style.
The sketch just sold is believed to be the basis for a full-sized painting, Dedham Vale (ca.1825), which is now in the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen Neue Pinakothek in Munich.
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