A Stunning John Constable Sketch That Hadn’t Previously Been Recorded in the Literature Is Heading to Auction

A previously unknown oil sketch by the renowned British landscape artist John Constable is headed to auction. The early 19th-century artwork depicts Dedham Vale, a green, sprawling valley some 70 miles northeast of London. It’s thought to be an early draft of Constable’s 1815 painting View of Dedham Vale From East Bergholt.

The 12- by 15-inch sketch will be sold at Tennants Auctioneers next month, and it’s expected to fetch as much as £200,000 (about $250,000), according to a statement from the auction house. Constable’s “impressive and vigorous early plein-air sketch” depicts the green, rolling countryside near his childhood home. “I shall never cease to paint such places,” he later wrote. “They have always been my delight.”

“Oil sketches, much like drawings, have an immediacy—a direct link to the mind and working practices of an artist,” says Jane Tennant, director and auctioneer with Tennants, in the statement. As she tells BBC News’ Georgia Levy-Collins, “It will cause great excitement, no doubt, in the auction world.”

Born in 1776, a young Constable first learned to paint from a Suffolk plumber and amateur artist. Growing up, he sketched the countryside: Its natural scenes “made me a painter, and I am grateful,” he later wrote. “The sound of water escaping from mill dams … willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts and brickwork. I love such things.”

Constable began studying art in 1802 at the Royal Academy Schools, where he rejected classical landscape painting styles in favor of the guidance of “nature herself.” When he returned home, Constable developed a “colorful and highly expressive oil sketching style,” which is evident in the piece being auctioned, per the statement.

“Executed when he was just starting out on his extraordinary career, he has managed to imbue the sketchily painted landscape with such vitality with his deft handling of dramatic light and shade,” says the auction house.

Based on the sketch’s style, experts have dated it to between 1809 and 1814, as Tennant says in a video. The piece depicts Dedham Vale from the north, looking towards the nearby village of Langham. Compared to similarly dated Constable sketches, this one has “a more dramatic use of light and shade,” exemplified by a “burst of sunlight through the clouds illuminating the bottom of the valley,” Tennant adds.

An Early Sketch by John Constable

She suggests that the sketch is an early version of Constable’s finished painting, View of Dedham Vale From East Bergholt. The final painting includes additional people and animals in the foreground but keeps the same sunlight breaking through distant clouds.

Constable’s artistic attraction to nature was imbued with sentimentality. As he once wrote to a friend, “I should paint my own places best—painting is but another word for feeling.” Due to the artist’s special attention to Dedham Vale, the area earned the moniker “Constable Country.”

“It’s not every day that a work by Constable comes to auction,” as Tennant tells Artnet’s Brian Boucher. Though the sketch’s owners always knew it to be a Constable work, “it hasn’t previously been recorded in the literature,” she adds. “But as we have seen time and time again, that’s what makes the art world interesting!”