John Constable
The ‘Six-Footers’

Although he managed to scrape an income from painting, it was not until 1819 that Constable sold his first important canvas, The White Horse, described by Charles Robert Leslie as ‘on many accounts the most important picture Constable ever painted'. The painting (without the frame) sold for the substantial price of 100 guineas to his friend John Fisher, finally providing Constable with a level of financial freedom he had never before known. The White Horse marked an important turning point in Constable’s career; its success saw him elected an associate of the Royal Academy and it led to a series of six monumental landscapes depicting narratives on the River Stour known as the ‘six-footers’ (named for their scale). The extraordinary size of the works helped Constable attract attention in the competitive space of the Academy's exhibitions. Viewed as ‘the knottiest and most forceful landscapes produced in 19th-century Europe’, for many they are the defining works of the artist's career. The series also includes Stratford Mill, 1820 (National Gallery, London); The Hay Wain, 1821 (National Gallery, London); View on the Stour near Dedham, 1822 (Huntington Library and Art Gallery, Los Angeles County); The Lock, 1824 (Private Collection); and The Leaping Horse, 1825 (Royal Academy of Arts, London).

The following year, his second six-footer Stratford Mill was exhibited. The Examiner described it as having ‘a more exact look of nature than any picture we have ever seen by an Englishman’. The painting was a success, acquiring a buyer in the loyal John Fisher, who purchased it for 100 guineas, a price he himself thought too low. Fisher bought the painting for his solicitor and friend, John Pern Tinney. Tinney loved the painting so much, he offered Constable another 100 guineas to paint a companion picture, an offer the artist didn’t take up. Constable's growing popularity in turn led to more lucrative commissions, such as Malvern Hall (1821, Clark Art Institute).

In 1821, his most famous painting The Hay Wain was shown at the Royal Academy's exhibition. Although it failed to find a buyer, it was viewed by some important people of the time, including two Frenchmen, the artist Théodore Géricault and writer Charles Nodier. According to the painter Eugène Delacroix, Géricault returned to France ’quite stunned‘ by Constable’s painting, while Nodier suggested French artists should also look to nature rather than relying on trips to Rome for inspiration. It was eventually purchased, along with View on the Stour near Dedham, by the Anglo-French dealer John Arrowsmith, in 1824. A small painting of Yarmouth Jetty was added to the bargain by Constable, with the sale totalling £250. Both paintings were exhibited at the Paris Salon that year, where they caused a sensation, with the Hay Wain being awarded a gold medal by Charles X. The Hay Wain was later acquired by the collector Henry Vaughan who donated it to the National Gallery in 1886.

Of Constable's colour, Delacroix wrote in his journal: "What he says here about the green of his meadows can be applied to every tone". Delacroix repainted the background of his 1824 Massacre de Scio after seeing the Constables at Arrowsmith's Gallery, which he said had done him a great deal of good.

A number of distractions meant that The Lock wasn't finished in time for the 1823 exhibition, leaving the much smaller Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds as the artist's main entry. This may have occurred after Fisher forwarded Constable the money for the painting. This both helped him out of a financial difficulty and nudged him along to get the painting done. The Lock was therefore exhibited the following year to more fanfare and sold for 150 guineas on the first day of the exhibition, the only Constable ever to do so. The Lock is the only upright landscape of the Stour series and the only six-footer that Constable painted more than one version of. A second version now known as the ‘Foster version’ was painted in 1825 and kept by the artist to send to exhibitions. A third, landscape version, known as ‘A Boat Passing a Lock’ (1826) is now in the collection of the Royal Academy of Arts. Constable’s final attempt, The Leaping Horse, was the only six-footer from the Stour series that didn’t sell in Constable’s lifetime.
change_case:english_lowercase, length_constraints:number_paragraphs[6]