Painting Worksheet (HUM 2210)

MUSEUM REPORT

WORKSHEET

Question 1

TITLE

The title of the painting is The Hay Wain . The Hay Wain is the horse-drawn cart in the painting . The scene is in the countryside of Suffolk , England , the artist 's boyhood home . The cart is crossing the river Stour , a winding river found in the farm owned by the artist 's father . The cottage at the left is the home of the artist 's neighbor Willy Lott . At present , the cottage still stood but the view on the other side is blocked by

overgrown grasses . The original tile of the painting was Landscape : Noon , but it was changed to The Hay Wain by Constable 's friend , Archdeacon John Fisher of Salisbury ( Barker 2000 , Kaufmann 2006

Question 2

ARTIST

The artist who painted The Hay Wain ' is the British painter John Constable (1776-1837 . Constable was primarily a landscape painter but since landscapes were not that popular in his time , he often resorted to portrait painting to support his large family . As a landscape painter his most important work was his sky studies , where he sketched and recorded the different weather conditions , shapes and forms of the sky or cloud in a certain day and time . Constable believed that the role of the clouds is to express the moods of the landscape painting . The Hay Wain is the result of the many sketches Constable made whenever he went home from London . Although he made many open-air sketches , Constable finished his artworks inside a studio . As an artist , John was not as famous as he is today for he is now classified as one of the greatest English landscape painters ( Barker 2000 , Kaufmann 2006

Question 3 The Hay Wain is found in almost every English home . The wide appeal of the painting may be attributed to the painting 's ability to communicate freshness to the viewer . This is because The Hay Wain ' followed the romantic style of painting . This means that the painting was not idealized but depicted naturally the way Constable saw it . As a result the finished product looked more natural , alive . One French writer described it as a mirror of nature . Constable 's appreciation and admiration of the English countryside showed forth in this painting . In fact , much of these feelings are depicted in this painting for as he said painting for him is just another way of expressing his feeling (Barker 2000 , Internal splendor 1991

Question 4

DATE

The painting was finished in 1821 . It was a consolidation of the many sketches made by Constable in the previous years . For example Constable made many oil sketches of the cottage alone between the years 1810-15 . The painting was exhibited in 1821 at the Royal Academy in London but was interested in buying it . By 1824 , Constable tried his luck in exhibiting the painting in the famous Paris Salon Fortunately , the French painters appreciated his naturalist and expressive way ' of depicting a landscape . In that exhibition , The Hay Wain ' was awarded the gold...