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John Constable, 'Stratford Mill', 1820

About the work

Overview

Stratford Mill was the second of the six monumental paintings of the Stour landscape Constable exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1819 and 1825, a group that includes The Hay Wain (National Gallery, London).

Stratford Mill was a water-powered paper mill (now demolished) on the River Stour near East Bergholt, Suffolk. Constable shows the mill in shadow, while shafts of sunlight play between the trees beside the meandering river. A dying willow leans over the glassy water and we glimpse a distant sunlit farmhouse. A girl watches a boy cast his fishing line into the water, and it looks as though the angler to their left has just got a bite.

After Constable’s death, the painting became known as ‘The Young Waltonians’, a reference to Izaak Walton’s book on fishing, The Compleat Angler, published in 1653.

Key facts

Details

Full title
Stratford Mill
Artist dates
1776 - 1837
Date made
1820
Medium and support
oil on canvas
Dimensions
127 × 182.9 cm
Acquisition credit
Presented to the National Gallery under the acceptance-in-lieu procedure, 1987
Inventory number
NG6510
Location
Not on display
Collection
Main Collection
Frame
19th-century English Frame

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

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