In the early 19th century, the beloved British artist John Constable helped popularize the process of painting landscapes directly from nature. Now, one of Constable’s on-site oil sketches—previously unknown to art historians—is heading to auction with a high estimate of $250,000.
Long-Lost Landscape by John Constable Heads to Auction
A previously unrecorded oil sketch by John Constable will hit the auction block on March 15 in a sale of British, European, and sporting art at Tennants Auctioneers in North Yorkshire. It was likely purchased on the open market by Anne Durning Holt (1899-1980), and it has belonged to the Holt family’s private collection ever since. The 15-inch sketch depicts Constable’s favorite area of the English countryside and formed the basis for a larger painting, Dedham Vale (c. 1825), now in the Bavarian State Painting Collections in Munich, Germany.
“Dedham Vale looking towards Langham is an impressive and vigorous early plein-air sketch by John Constable which has not previously been recorded,” reads the auction house’s lot essay. “Constable is well known for his commitment to making oil sketches in the open air—an exercise he first embarked on in 1802 and continued to practice until as late in his career as 1829…. These on-the-spot sketches would often prove useful to Constable many years later when he was working in his London studio and planning new pictures for exhibition or sale.”
Why Is John Constable’s Art So Valuable?
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Sign up to our Free Weekly NewsletterJohn Constable (1776-1837) was a key figure in the rich tradition of British landscape painting. He is best known for his paintings of the English countryside that employ luminous color and innovative optical effects to evoke the real experience of nature. One of Constable’s most famous works, The Vale of Dedham (1828), depicts the same area as the six-figure sketch. The thickly painted landscape, dotted with characteristic touches of white that convincingly indicate reflected sunlight, secured the artist’s admission to the prestigious Royal Academy of Arts in London the following year.
Constable repeatedly and affectionately painted Dedham Vale, an area on the Essex-Suffolk border near his childhood home. In 1821, he wrote to a friend, “I should paint my own places best…painting is but another word for feeling.” Constable was among the first generation of Romantic painters who rendered evocative landscapes drawn directly from nature instead of looking to earlier artists’ work. Additionally, his drive to paint familiar places on monumental canvases, typically reserved for religious or historical subjects, helped elevate the once-overlooked genre of landscape art.
While John Constable was not financially successful as an artist during his lifetime, his paintings are now some of the most popular and valuable in British art history. Today, the area of Dedham Vale is fondly known as “Constable Country.”
“Not Every Day” That Constable Appears at Auction
“It’s not every day that a work by Constable comes to auction,” Jane Tennant, auction house director and auctioneer, told Artnet. “It was always known in the Holt family to be by Constable, but what’s interesting is that it hasn’t previously been recorded in the literature. But as we have seen time and time again, that’s what makes the art world interesting.”
The auction record for John Constable was set in 2012 when his painting The Lock (1824) fetched $35.2 million at Christie’s London. Eleven other Constable works have sold for over $1 million, including some depicting the same landscape shown in the sketch.
