Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1981.25.118
Gallery Label:
This is one of the relatively small studio sketches which Constable used as stepping stones toward far more ambitious landscape paintings, of which Stratford Mill in the next bay, a full-scale sketch for the “finished” painting (National Gallery, London) demonstrates the penultimate stage of the artist’s long, careful and deliberate process of compositional refinement. In this case, there exist a number of versions of this preliminary treatment of Dedham Lock none of which ever made it to the next stage. Constable chose instead to broaden his composition to encompass the neighboring mill (which belonged to his family business), and to embark upon a more complex view of Dedham from a vantage point thirty paces or so further distant from the lock. A full-scale, unfinished sketch for the resulting Dedham Lock and Mill, ca. 1816–17, is in Tate (London), while the finished or “exhibition” version is in a private collection. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2005