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One of the coolest things about looking at a Constable painting is that you can take a ride out to his family's old country estate and track down some of the spots that gave him inspiration, as is the case with The Hay Wain. This IRL locale was a cottage on a stream that his father rented out to a farmer by the name of Willy Lott. In 2015, developers started the process to build 144 residential units and homes in the surrounding area. If it happens, the construction alone will permanently alter the face of the landscape. Undoubtedly leading to the destruction of the natural splendor that served as inspiration across Constable's oeuvre. Area residents and concerned citizens are putting up a fight, but only time will tell whether they can pull off the big win and kick the developers out of Constable's home turf.
The painting's original title was Landscape: Noon. One of Constable's friends was enamored of it and kept asking after the picture with the hay wain. That, of course, being the type of horse drawn cart resting midstream in the middle of the painting. Constable painted Hay Wain in his usual fashion, making a bunch of preparatory plein air sketches, then hunkering down in his London studio to let his imagination run wild with the impression all his preliminary work had left. While the British believe it's one of the MVPs from the kingdom's entire history of art, its initial reception was entirely 'meh,' premiering at the 1821 Royal Academy show to a collective yawn. Constable took his wares over to the Paris Salon instead, where Charles X of France awarded Hay Wain a gold medal.
In 2013, some jabroni touring the National Gallery stepped forward from his group and taped a picture onto the canvas. Guards pounced on his sorry butt. Taking him to the ground until police arrived to drag him off (presumably to be beaten in the alley, like anyone that messes with art deserves). The picture he affixed to the canvas was of his son, the vandal having recently lost a court appeal for custody of the boy. The man is a member of the group Fathers4Justice, which rudely applauded his effort to bring attention to the plight of families torn apart by the British court system. Fathers4Justice went so far as to encourage other like-minded men burned by the legal system to act out in a similar fashion. Luckily, The Hay Wain was back on the gallery floor in a jiffy. Hopefully F4J will reconsider the efficacy of their strange approach.
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The Hay Wain – originally titled Landscape: Noon – is a painting by John Constable, completed in 1821, which depicts a rural scene on the River Stour between the English counties of Suffolk and Essex. It hangs in the National Gallery in London and is regarded as "Constable's most famous image" and one of the greatest and most popular English paintings.
Painted in oils on canvas, the work depicts as its central feature three horses pulling what appears to be a wood wain or large farm waggon across the river. Willy Lott's Cottage, also the subject of an eponymous painting by Constable, is visible on the far-left. The scene takes place near Flatford Mill in Suffolk, though since the Stour forms the border of two counties, the left bank is in Suffolk and the landscape on the right bank is in Essex.
The Hay Wain is one of a series of paintings by Constable called the "six-footers", large-scale canvasses which he painted for the annual summer exhibitions at the Royal Academy. As with all of the paintings in this series, Constable produced a full-scale oil sketch for the work; this is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Another small oil-sketch, the first in his experimentation with extending of the composition of the painting to the right, is now in the collection of the Yale Center for British Art. Constable originally exhibited the finished work with the title Landscape: Noon, suggesting that he envisaged it as belonging to the classical landscape tradition of representing the cycles of nature.
The painting measures
130.2 cm × 185.4 cm (51+1⁄4 in × 73 in).
Check out the full Wikipedia article about The Hay Wain
HA I remember this one from art history class! Had to make up the dumbest phrase to remember the year it was made though: "Hey, Wayne, you can drink now you're 21!" That doesn't even make sense, but guess who passed arth101?? ME!
I like how John put an emphasis on the water and made a nice reflection that ties the image together. He also gives the trees nice detail!