| UK. Culture Minister defers export of a c.1814 painting by John Constable, Flatford Lock |
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| Monday, 13 November 2006 | |
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Government news: Culture Minister, David Lammy, has placed a temporary export bar on a painting by John Constable, Flatford Lock from the Mill House. This will provide a last chance to raise the money to keep the painting in the United Kingdom. The Minister's ruling follows a recommendation by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest, run by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. The Committee recommended that the export decision be deferred on the grounds that the painting is of outstanding significance for the study of the work of John Constable, in particular for documenting an important phase of open-air painting in his early career. Between 1814-17 Constable decided to paint modest sized and carefully executed paintings in the open air, to improve his powers of finishing. This painting, which was attributed to Constable only in 2004, contributes to our understanding of that initiative, which has long been regarded as of major importance in the emerging story of naturalism in Western landscape painting. Constable is thought to be one of the very few European artists who painted finished pictures, rather than just small landscape sketches, in the open air with any regularity until the Impressionists, some fifty years later. The painting is a unique image in Constable's work which records important features of the local landscape and the workings of the lock at Flatford which are documented in no other work by the artist. The decision on the export licence application for the painting will be deferred for a period ending on 11 January 2007 inclusive. This period may be extended until 11 May 2007 inclusive if a serious intention to raise funds with a view to making an offer to purchase the painting at the recommended price of £2,788,003 (excluding VAT) is expressed. Anyone interested in making an offer to purchase the painting should contact the owner's agent through: The Secretary Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, Victoria House, Southampton Row< London WC1B 4EA Editors note: The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest is an independent body, run by MLA, which advises the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport on whether a cultural object, intended for export, is of national importance under specified criteria. Where the Committee finds that an object meets one or more of the criteria, it will normally recommend that the decision on the export licence application should be deferred for a specified period. An offer may then be made from within the United Kingdom at or above the fair market price. John Constable is one of England's greatest landscape painters and a key figure in British and European Romantic art of the early nineteenth century. The first half of his career - from which Flatford Lock from the Mill House dates - was punctuated by distinct phases of experimentation and artistic changes of course. It is only in recent years that the progression of his early career has become much better understood, chiefly because a number of key finished pictures dating from this period have only resurfaced recently. Flatford Lock from the Mill House is just such a picture, and first emerged on the London market in the late 1980s as an unattributed British picture. It was not assigned to Constable until 2004 since when the attribution has remained unchallenged. It was first published in the catalogue accompanying the 2006 exhibition Constable: the Great Landscapes where it was argued that it documents the highly important moment in 1814 when Constable first decided to embark on the practice of painting small to medium sized pictures in the open air. Constable's pictures produced in the period 1814-17 were almost entirely painted on the spot, rarely depend on preliminary sketches, and for this reason each one is a more or less unique image. Flatford Lock from the Mill House has no related studies, and shows a particular corner of the landscape close to Flatford Mill and Lock that is undocumented in the rest of his work. The pictures which Constable painted in and around his father's mill at Flatford in his early career tell us a great deal about the workings of the River Stour itself. The section of the Stour from Sudbury to Manningtree was a busy highway for river traffic in the early nineteenth century, a vital artery for the transport of foodstuffs and other cargoes in an era before the construction of the railways. Constable also records the exact workings of the Stour, with its sluices, lock chambers and lock mechanisms. The structure with a bell in the left foreground is thought to be an automatically operated warning device relating to the height of the water below the mill. The painting measures 61 x 50.8 cm. Its condition is good, though there is evidence of some rubbing and repainting in the area of the sky. |
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