John Constable, "Malvern Hall," 1821

This spirited painting of Malvern Hall was one of several portraits of this English country house painted by John Constable in the early 1820s. The building is shown from the east, its facade bathed in a cool grey shadow, its garden with an expansive lawn populated by a number of decorative peacocks, lit by the late afternoon sun. The painting was commissioned by the Dowager Countess Dysart, who had lived in Malvern Hall as a child. Clearly the Countess would have been keen to have a painting that accurately recorded the appearance of her childhood home, an image on which to hang her memories. But Constable may have been more interested in the other elements of the painting, the open space between the house and the imposing gate posts, the groups of trees, and most of all the light that fills the canvas. When some of Constable's paintings were exhibited at the Paris Salon exhibition in 1824, they were described by a contemporary critic as The truthfulness catches the eye and draws one to these charming works. In particular, Constable's remarkably naturalistic skies attracted the attention of critics and artists alike. In a letter to his friend the art deacon John Fisher, Constable mentioned the difficulty any landscape painter might have in capturing the light that filters through a cloudy sky, and explained why that difficulty was worth embracing. The sky is the source of light in nature, he wrote, and governs everything. Even our common observations on the weather of every day are altogether suggested by it. Constable's painting of Malvern Hall captures the light with all the spontaneity of a sketch done in the open air, in spite of the apparent formality of its subject.