East Bergholt Common, View toward the Rectory

1813

Constable painted this view of the Common in East Bergholt during a summer visit to Suffolk, from a window in the house where he was born. The rectory referred to in the painting’s title is concealed by trees. This small, carefully observed landscape, painted on a single day in August, records a view the artist must have known well, bathed in the light of a bright summer’s day.

Medium	oil on canvas, mounted on panel
Dimensions	8 7/8 x 11 9/16 in. (22.5 x 29.3 cm)
Object Number	2007.8.26
Acquisition	Gift of the Manton Art Foundation in memory of Sir Edwin and Lady Manton, 2007
Status	On View

Image Caption

John Constable, East Bergholt Common, View toward the Rectory, 1813, oil on canvas, mounted on panel. Clark Art Institute, gift of the Manton Art Foundation in memory of Sir Edwin and Lady Manton, 2007.8.26

Select Bibliography

. Grosvenor Gallery. 1889. Parris, Leslie, Ian Fleming-Williams, and Conal Shields. Constable: Paintings, Watercolors & Drawings. Tate Gallery, London, Feb. 18-April 25, 1976. London: Tate Gallery. 1976. Richard Green Gallery. Annual Exhibition of British Landscape Painting. London: Richard Green Gallery. 1979. Reynolds, Graham. The Early Paintings and Drawings of John Constable. 2 vol. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 1996. Hoozee, Robert. L'opera completa di Constable. (Classici dell'arte series). Milan: Rizzoli. 1979. Clarke, Jay, ed. Landscape, Innovation, and Nostalgia: The Manton Collection of British Art. Williamstown, MA: The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 2012. Lees, Sarah, ed. Nineteenth-Century European Paintings at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute; New Haven and London: distributed by Yale University Press, 2012.

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Provenance

Isabel Constable, the artist’s daughter, by descent (d. 1888, her sale, Christie’s, London, 28 May 1891, no. 124, as A Sketch. “18th Aug. 1813,” bought in or sold to Colquhoun);¹ Ernest Alfred Colquhoun (from 1891); Janet E. Colquhoun, by descent; sale, Sotheby’s, London, 19 July 1978, no. 92; [Richard Green Gallery, London, by 1979]; private collection, London; [Deborah Gage ( Works of Art) Ltd., sold to Manton, 10 Apr. 2002]; Sir Edwin A. G. Manton (2002–d. 2005); Manton Family Art Foundation (2005–7, given to the Clark, as View toward the Rectory at East Bergholt); Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 2007. 1. Colquhoun had consigned the works from Isabel Constable’s collection to Christie’s; it is therefore unclear whether he owned them or was acting as an agent.