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John Constable, RA (British, 1776-1837) Windmill with storm clouds, circa 1830-1835 pen and ink with scratching out h:7 w: 12 cm Provenance: Probably Leggatt Brothers, London, 1899; H.A.Sutch; Leggatt Brothers, 1952; by descent to the present owner (please refer to introduction by Anne Lyles for further information on provenance) Constable's primary drawing tool was the simple lead pencil. However, he often added watercolour or monochrome washes to his drawings, sometimes in combination with pen and ink or scratching out. Subjects treated in monochrome washes or pen and ink tend to proliferate in Constable's later years, whether these are landscapes taken from the life or, more frequently, compositions that are clearly imaginary or else which show him working out new ideas. These two pen, ink and wash drawings, of a cottage on a lane and a windmill on the brow of a hill, appear to fall somewhere between these two categories. For they seem to be Constable's imaginary reworkings, or remembrances, of compositions either of his own or by other artists. The cottage on a lane, for example, is not dissimilar in compositional type to his painting of Sir Richard Steele's Cottage in Hampstead, 1832 ( Yale Center for British Art, New Haven; Graham Reynolds, The Later Paintings and Drawings of John Constable, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1984, no 32.6, plate 821); and the windmill subject is close in composition both to The Mill by Rembrandt in the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. ( which Constable probably saw when it was on public exhibition in London in 1806) as well as to a number of Constable's earlier windmill subjects, for example of Brantham and Stoke Windmill near Ipswich, themselves perhaps partly inspired by Rembrandt's composition. John Constable RA at Cheffins Fine Art, 5th & 6th March 2014 Introduction by Anne Lyles: This remarkable group of drawings - seven by John Constable, and one attributed to his son, Lionel Constable - can be traced back to the stock of London fine art dealers Leggatt Brothers, who handled a large quantity of Constable's sketches in oil, watercolour and pencil in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The vendor's father purchased this group of drawings from Leggatt Brothers in 1952, for £500. The drawings had been committed for sale by H.A. Sutch. Sutch was also a London art dealer who, together with Fredrick C. Williams, had been in partnership with William Lawson Peacock with premises in Duke Street St James and Bond Street as well as in Princes Street, Edinburgh. Following Peacock's death in 1921, Sutch and Williams opened a gallery of their own, the United Arts Gallery, at 23a Bond street, where Sutch specialised in the Old Master side of the business ( American Arts News, vol 20, no.5, Nov 12, 1921). As well as these eight drawings, Sutch is also recorded as having owned two other Constables: one, a pencil drawing, Dedham: Rain coming on, now in the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California (G.Reynolds, The Early Paintings and Drawings of John Constable, 2 vols, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 1996, no.14.75, plate 1220); the other, a watercolour, Bristol House and Terrace, Putney Heath, in a private collection (G. Reynolds, The Later Paintings and Drawings of John Constable, 2 vols, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 1984, no.18.18, plate 45. Sutch's name is mistakenly given under the provenance for this entry as H.S.Sutch, but is correctly referred to as H.A. Sutch in Reynolds's earlier Catalogue of the Constable collection in the Victoria & Albert Museum, 2nd edition, 1973, HMSO, pp.119-20 where he discusses another version of Bristol House in that collection). The latter work, Bristol House and Terrace, Putney Heath (R.18.18)- although one of three versions of the subject - is very likely to have been the example shown, as no. 109, in an important exhibition of Constable's work mounted by Leggatt's in 1899, Pictures & Water-Colour Drawings by John Constable R.A. Exhibited at Messrs Leggatt's Gallery 77, Cornhill, London (see Reg Gadney, John Constable 1776-1837: A catalogue of Drawings and Watercolours, with a selection of Mezzotints by David Lucas after Constable for 'English Landscape Scenery' in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, Arts Council of Great Britain, 1976, p.86). Indeed, it seems likely that Sutch acquired his version of Bristol House at that exhibition, and probably the Constable drawing now in the Huntington as well (item no. 175 in the 1899 catalogue has a remarkably similar title, Dedham (Rain coming up) ). Indeed, it seems highly probable that Sutch acquired the eight drawings catalogued here at the 1899 Leggatt's exhibition as well (or if not at the exhibition itself, then probably soon afterwards). The 1899 display was made up of works consigned for sale by two of Constable's grand-children, Hugh and Clifford Constable. Amongst the works included in the exhibition were some drawings which, although assumed by the two brothers to be by their grand-father, have since been identified as by one or other of Constable's artist sons, Lionel and Alfred (I. Fleming-Williams and L. Parris, The Discovery of Constable, Hamish Hamilton, 1984, pp.95-6 and L.Parris and I. Fleming-Williams, Lionel Constable, The Tate Gallery, London 1982). The fact that one of the eight drawings discussed here is almost certainly by Lionel Constable is another reason for assuming that Sutch acquired the group from Leggatts in 1899 or soon afterwards. Furthermore, it is interesting to note that the eight drawings have for many years been mounted and framed together in two sequences of four drawings per mount, and the 1899 exhibition catalogue similarly included numbered items of three or four drawings grouped together in series (numbers 96 and 99 are both listed in the catalogue as 'Four Pencil Drawings', and number 177 is listed as a 'Set of Four sketches'). - Anne Lyles, February 2014