Constable’s The Hay Wain to be presented as ‘contested landscape’
The National Gallery will present John Constable’s depiction of an idyllic rural scene in Suffolk as a “contested” landscape in an upcoming exhibition.
Constable’s 1821 painting The Hay Wain shows a cart and horses next to a corn mill in the River Stour and has become a gentle symbol of the British countryside.
But the painting will be rehung in a new exhibition highlighting the political issues within the countryside which Constable depicted and his omission of the plight of poorer workers of the day.
The Discover Constable and The Hay Wain exhibition, which opens in October, will shine a light on the social problems that plagued rural Britain but were omitted from landscapes created by Constable, whose own social rank and attitudes will also be examined in information accompanying the display.
The painting, originally titled Landscape: Noon, has become a popular and much-used representation of bucolic rural England, but the National Gallery, which owns the artwork, hopes to present the poverty and upheaval not included in Constable’s vision.
Dr Mary McMahon, the National Gallery’s curator, said of the project: “We want to talk about everything that has not been included in this painting.
“The British landscape was a contested space,” she added. “We have the Corn Laws, we are coming out of the Napoleonic Wars, people are losing their land to enclosure,” she said, referencing the economic impact these developments had on much of the working class at the time.
Following the Napoleonic Wars, the Corn Laws saw tariffs placed on imported grains to protect landowners and farmers, which pushed up the price of food and bread for the poor.
The Constable show will explain these issues and is set to be “the first National Gallery exhibition to examine the social and political context of The Hay Wain”.
It will be the last in a series of redisplays at the gallery, which have sought to refresh perceptions of well-known artists, including Manet and Degas.
The curatorial aim of proving the unpleasant social context to images comes after Tate Britain used a complete rehang to highlight themes of colonialism and slavery in its painting, as well as issues of rural poverty in landscapes that may otherwise appear idyllic.
The Hay Wain was one of Constable’s vast “six-footers” painted to attract the attention of buyers and depicts a hay cart or “wain” in the River Stour next to Flatford Mill in Suffolk.
The Mill, now a National Trust site, was owned by Constable’s father, and the artist adored the surrounding landscape, which is now beloved by thousands who visit “Constable Country” each year.
Curators will seek to explain why Constable may have omitted the social ills suffered by lower classes at the time in light of his “privileged” position as the son of a wealthy corn merchant and a holder of “conservative” attitudes, as noted in catalogue information for the exhibition.
Dr McMahon said: “He knew what it looked like for people to work the fields, but he would never have done that himself.”
The full social context of The Hay Wain will be explained with the help of satirical images from the period, including The Sign of the Four Alls by Rowlandson, a cartoon which shows the rural poor propping up royalty and clergy.
Paintings by Turner and Gainsborough will provide artistic context for Constable’s famous painting and displays will explain the radicalism of The Hay Wain - a naturalistic scene of daily life at odds with more prestigious history paintings - when it was first created.
In a catalogue for the upcoming exhibition, curator Christine Riding writes that the military and social upheaval of the years preceding The Hay Wain “had a profound effect on Constable and his contemporaries”.
She added: “Under these circumstances the British landscape could not be viewed as a neutral space devoid of politics and patriotism, privilege and discrimination.
“This is worth remembering if only to question how artists such as Constable interpreted contemporary rural life, including how much they chose to conceal or reveal.”
The free exhibition, Discover Constable and The Hay Wain, will run from Oct 15 to Feb 2 2025.