Why the famous English picture John Constable's "The Hay Wain" is not what it looks

Why the famous English picture John Constable's "The Hay Wain" is not what it looks

Although The Hay Wain by John Constable paints an idyllic picture of rural England, the picture is not without its sad side.

"The most celebrated and certainly quintessentially English landscape painting" is John Constable's The Hay Wain (1821), which has been widely satirized and reproduced on everything from bath towels to biscuit tins, according to Alice Rylance-Watson, assistant curator for the National Trust, who is also discussing the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty that inspired the painting. However, she claims that this bucolic sight of a hay truck crossing a millpond in Suffolk is "an idealised image". In fact, our confidence in The Hay Wain's portrayal of England grows as we learn more about it.

A new exhibition at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, National Treasures: Paintings of Landscapes, explores the many meanings that painters, both past and present, connect to the landscapes they represent. The Hay Wain as the Constable in Bristol in "Truth to Nature" The famous six-foot-tall oil painting, which is often ranked as one of the best pieces of art in Britain, is on loan from the National Gallery in London as part of the museum's bicentennial celebrations, which get underway on May 10. When it reopens at the National Gallery in October, it will serve as the centerpiece of Discover Constable & The Hay Wain, an exhibition that explores the history of the painting and the many interpretations of it.

In 2021, the Hay Wain's bicentennial year, it was chosen as Britain's second greatest masterpiece. 

Constable (1776–1837), who was more of a Romantic than a Realismist, undoubtedly infused his environment with the feeling he felt for it. "I associate'my careless boyhood' with all that lies on the banks of the Stour," he wrote, rhapsodizing about "the beauty of the surrounding scenery, its easy declivities, its luxuriant meadow flats." He grew up just a mile that extends from the whitewashed cottage, owned by the resident farmer Willy Lott, with its charming view over millpond and cornfields.

However, the industrialization that was quickly changing the environment at the time of painting was not reflected in the rural way of life he painted. Constable was facing rearward rather than forward, in contrast to JMW Turner, his contemporaries' painter of a steam locomotive tearing through the canvas. The Hay Wain is, in many respects, an image too wonderful to be true, an anachronism that appeals to his nostalgia more than providing an accurate depiction of rural Suffolk.

One of the most powerful icons of industrialization was shown in JMW Turner's Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway (1844) (Credit: Getty Images).)

Christine Riding, Director of Collections as well as Research at the National Gallery, tells the BBC that far from being an impartial depiction of the countryside, the image necessarily reflects Constable's own place in society as the son of a landlord. The Constable family has owned Flatford Mill since 1742, and it is located just off-canvas. "He knows that landscape very well, but he knows it from a position of privilege," she continues. Everything seemed so satisfied and genuine. People are just moving on with their lives, knowing where they belong in society."

A darker aspect of contentment in the country

But when you take into account the social backdrop, the scene becomes less joyous. The agricultural laborers shown in the backdrop could not afford to eat the bread they helped create, often worked in hazardous circumstances in a bloated and fragile labor market, and were about to face even more hardships as they prepared to be replaced by robots.

Additionally, the Enclosure Acts, which restricted access to rural areas to a select few between 1604 and 1914, are not shown in the image. "By the time you get to The Hay Wain, there is very little common land," says Riding. "He's painting places that his father and his brother have possession over… but you don't see owners, only labourers."

He is presenting, in a sense, a work of fiction: a carefully chosen landscape with things added later to enhance the composition and increase its attractiveness.

Regarding the portrayal of "nature," Riding remarks, "That landscape is anything but natural." "Everything is built by humans...The fields are regulated landscapes used for agriculture." Despite being a pioneer of plein air painting, Constable's masterwork was created from drawings collected over almost two decades and finished at his studio in Hampstead, London, which was a hamlet at the time but had become part of the capital's urban sprawl within a century.

He is presenting, in a sense, a work of fiction: a carefully chosen landscape with things added later to enhance the composition and increase its attractiveness. One such is the panting dog on the beach, while remnants of a horse and barrel still lie under the surface to its right. The quintessential representation of the English countryside, the hay wain, is really a wooden cart rather than a hay wagon. It is possible that it was painted based on a drawing given to Constable in London, or it may have originated from carts parked near Whitestone Pond in Hampstead Heath, according to recent study.

According to art historians, Constable may have drawn inspiration for his hay wain from a wooden wagon he saw parked next to a pond close to his Hampstead house. (Source: Getty Pictures))

However, in other respects, The Hay Wain is a model of realism, created by a painter who remained loyal to his creative vision despite the low place that landscapes had in the hierarchy of artistic genres recognized by the European Academies. Julia Carver, the curator of the Truth to Nature show, tells the BBC that Constable is "known for his attempts to be true to nature, as well as his commitment to painting a landscape that, for him as a worker was very real." "He was working at a time when that wasn't fully comprehended by a lot of people in the artworld, and he still held to it."

It's possible that The Hay Wain's too-natural and unremarkable appearance at the time contributed to its lack of popularity when it debuted at the Royal Academy in 1821. However, it was just this realism that earned it a gold prize at the Paris Salon, when it was shown three years later with View on the Stour near Dedham and Yarmouth Jetty. The author Stendhal made the following statement: "We have never seen anything like these pictures before." What's so remarkable about them is how honest they are.

Carver notes that in light of the academic hierarchy, "a lot of people who been contemplating painting landscapes were starting to use history painting as a way to do it," citing Turner's Dido constructing Carthage (1815) and Constable's predecessor Richard Wilson (1713–1782). Constable, on the other hand, rejects classicism and the temples, ruins, and mythological creatures that dot the landscapes of many of his contemporaries, and he makes green the primary color rather than the more conventional brown. Rather, he speaks of going back to Suffolk to do "laborious studies from nature" and produce "a pure and unaffected" picture of the sights in a letter to his boyhood friend and fellow artist John Dunthorne.

"His copious work outdoors to prepare the completion result does help us to see something that was truly present, one that was true to nature," Carver states. Constable's thorough study and drawing during his hours-long "skying" produced his scientifically precise cloud shapes, for example. Constable was concerned with the painting's realism, and its initial title, Landscape: Noon, reflects the accuracy he sought in the image's depiction of the sky and light.

However, Christine Riding argues that The Hay Wain is best understood as "an evocation" despite all of his meticulous research and drawings, some of which are on show in the exhibits in Bristol and London. "Constable weren't going in for a mimetic, optical-truth attitude to painting," she says. "It's a lifelong study of nature, but by means of the medium of oil paint" .

According to Riding, individuals have affixed their own realities to the picture throughout the ages. The French Revolution and Peterloo served as a warning to families like the Constables, who controlled the means of production, that organized labor could overthrow the status quo at any time. The Napoleonic Wars had demonstrated at the time of painting that the English way of life could not be taken for granted. Riding speculates, "Maybe he just wants things to stay the way they are."

The dangers have evolved, but the Hay Wain remains a totemic representation of an England that must be preserved. In 2022, The Hay Wain became the center of attention for climate action after two Just Stop Oil protesters taped a dystopian version of the original artwork alongside glued themselves to its frame. In 1983, Peter Kennard's The Hay Wain with Cruise Missiles facilitated the Greenham Common protests against the positioned of guided nuclear missiles in the English countryside.

"I think we do Constable a disservice by imagining that all he wanted to do was to strip away traditions as well as conventions to paint the landscape as it was," Riding says. According to Constable, she is "trying to navigate the difference between being in a landscape as well as representing the landscape" in addition to being aware of "people's emotional and aesthetic appreciation of the landscape." Though what we see may not be an exact replica of this specific area of Suffolk, it is a far cry from a fake in terms of Constable's emotional and personal attachment to the area.