Constable Country?
Images from 1827-2016
Constable Country? celebrates the 250th anniversary of the birth of John Constable in East Bergholt, Suffolk.
It brings together a group of first published state mezzotints from Constable's English Landscape Sceneryportfolio, alongside twentieth artists associated with the Stour Valley landscape and examples from the For John Constable portfolio published in 1976.
The Flatford Mill Study Centre attracted artists to teach including John Nash and students such as Mary Newcomb and John Addyman, all of whom feature in this exhibition. Strong watercolours of the River Stour by Alfred Munnings and Rowland Suddaby contrast with a poetic etching and aquatint by Richard Bawden of pollarded willows. A spectacular linocut from 1958 by Blair Hughes-Stanton dates from when he was based at Manningtree and produced ambitious images of the Stour valley. Peter Kennard's photomontage Haywain with Cruise Missiles, 1983 uses the ubiquity of Constable's work for his own political messaging, whilst Chris Orr's watercolour Constable Country wittily satirises what Flatford Mill has come to today with mass cultural tourism on the site.
Working in collaboration with the Bernard Jacobson Gallery we are delighted to showing 5 works from the For John Constable portfolio was published by Bernard Jacobson Gallery in 1976 and we have works by Ivon Hitchens, Howard Hodgkin, Ivor Abrahams, Bill Brandt and William Tillyer.