Tent Fire Baby Woman
John Constable is a famous English painter. He was born in 1776 – the year when America gained its independence – and died in 1837.
He is known as a Romantic painter of landscapes. Almost all his landscapes contain some figures or some evidence of human endeavour.
Dedham vale is a valley in Constable’s home county of Suffolk.
Until I saw the huge painting of Dedham Vale in Edinburgh Art Gallery a few days ago, I thought of Constable as a landscape painter.
Now I think of him as a political painter.
The central figure in this rich, bucolic scene of the English countryside is a woman holding a baby while sitting next to a rude and rough shelter. She is poor. She is poor while all around her is rich.
I scanned this copy from a postcard, so the detail is not clear. I have put a white rectangle around the woman so that you can see where she is located in the painting. She is easy to miss, which is perhaps the intention behind the way she is painted
I think it’s a great painting.
Dedham Vale