Wivenhoe Park
A commissioned view of a friend's estate in Essex — the parkland is now the campus of the University of Essex.
Wivenhoe Park
The painting depicts a real landscape or cityscape. The precise viewpoint the artist used may be unknown, so the marker shows the general area.
Wivenhoe Park — at a glance
- Artist
- John Constable (1776–1837)
- Year
- 1816
- Movement
- English Romantic landscape
- Place
- Wivenhoe Park, near Colchester, Essex, England
- Viewpoint
- The estate's lakeside — the park is now the University of Essex campus; lakes, trees and house survive
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- c. 56 × 101 cm
- Now at
- National Gallery of Art, Washington
Overview
Wivenhoe Park is one of John Constable's most sparkling early landscapes, painted in the late summer of 1816. It is a wide, sunny prospect of an English landscape park: a lake with a small bridge and a fishing net, cattle in the water, a herd on the meadow, deer, swans, a curved sweep of trees, and the house just visible at the right. It is oil on canvas, about 56 by 101 cm, and it hangs in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.
The story behind the painting
Scholarship It was commissioned by Major-General Francis Slater-Rebow, a friend and early patron who also paid Constable to paint his daughter. Constable stayed at Wivenhoe and painted the view on the spot; he wrote to his fiancée Maria Bicknell that he was cramming ‘a great deal into a very small space’ and had to add a strip of canvas at each side to fit the whole park in. The commission money helped him marry Maria that October.
Where was Wivenhoe Park painted?
Scholarship Wivenhoe Park is an eighteenth-century landscape park near the village of Wivenhoe, just south-east of Colchester in Essex. Since 1964 it has been the main campus of the University of Essex, whose buildings stand on the higher ground; the lakes (the ‘Wivenhoe ponds’), the parkland, mature trees and the house (now used by the university) survive, and the view over the water can still be broadly recognised.
What is in the painting?
A lake fills the centre foreground, a fishing net staked in the shallows and cattle standing in the water. A low white bridge crosses an inlet at the left; beyond, open meadow with grazing cattle and deer, a belt of trees curving round, swans on the water, and at the right, past more trees, the pediment and roof of the house under a big sky of white and grey cloud.
Look closely
The fishing net
A net is staked in the shallows of the lake in the foreground, with cattle standing in the water.
The white bridge
A low bridge crosses an inlet of the lake at the left.
The deer and swans
Deer graze on the meadow and swans ride the water — the ornaments of an English landscape park.
The house at the right
The pediment and roof of Wivenhoe House show past the trees — now a University of Essex building.
Analysis
Composition and technique
A panoramic sweep from the lake across the meadow to the house, tied together by the curve of the tree belt.
Scholarship The added side strips give an unusually wide field; Constable uses the lake, the bridge and the arc of trees to lead the eye across the whole estate, with the house as a modest end-point. The handling is fresh and flecked, full of small bright touches for water, foliage and animals.
Colour and light
Green meadow and blue-grey water under a moving cloudy sky, with sunlight sweeping across the park.
The colour is that of a bright, breezy late-summer day — vivid greens, silvery water, warm stone on the bridge and house — with Constable's characteristic sparkle of white highlights on the ripples and leaves.
History & provenance
The painting stayed with the Rebow family and their descendants until the twentieth century, then entered American collections and the National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Sources
- National Gallery of Art, Washington — collection entry for John Constable, ‘Wivenhoe Park, Essex’ (1816; oil on canvas, c. 56 × 101 cm)
- University of Essex — history of the Wivenhoe Park campus
Related paintings
More by John Constable
The Hay Wain
Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds
Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows
