Painting of the Day: Dedham Lock and Mill, 1820

Dedham Lock and Mill
John Constable, 1820
The Victoria & Albert Museum

This bucolic landscape painting depicts a mill that belonged to famed painter John Constable's father, Golding Constable.  Also seen in the view is the River Stour, and the tower of Dedham church.  Constable painted several views of this scene, first in oil sketches.  This is the third and last version of the subject and remains one of Constable’s most famous paintings. 

The artist’s father owned Dedham Mill, and John worked there as a boy, on and around the river Stour.  Constable aimed to recreate the place as truthfully as possible.  He wrote: “Painting is for me another word for feeling, and I associate my ‘careless boyhood’ with all that lies on the banks of the Stour; these scenes made me a painter, and I am grateful.”