TEACHERS' RESOURCES

Constable

Introduction

This resource introduces teachers to the Victoria and Albert Museum's collection of works by John Constable, providing a unique opportunity to look at the artistic process from sketch through to finished work. The suggested activities are aimed at supporting teaching and learning in Art & Design at Key Stages 2, 3, 4 and 5. They focus on visual analysis through discussion and drawing in the galleries and Print Study Rooms. The gallery activities can be carried out sequentially, progressing from composition to tone and colour, or as stand-alone tasks. These include:

• Constable's Drawings
• Analysing Composition
• Tone
• Colour

Also provided is a brief biography of Constable, a page listing further reading and links and a page with details of the V&A's Constable Resource Box.

Pre-prepared Resource Boxes are kept in the Print Study Rooms. They contain original, unglazed drawings and can be viewed by groups of 12 students at a time, with an accompanying teacher.

Constable in context

Below are listed some topics for discussion and investigation, either before or after your visit to the V&A, that will give a wider context for a study of Constable:

• Landscape painting
• The weather
• The environment
• Feelings in art
• The artistic process
• Constable's paintings as historical sources
• Constable's widespread popularity (reproductions on biscuit tins etc)

The V&A's Constable Collection

The first director of the V&A, Sir Henry Cole, recorded in his diary on 31 July 1856 that the collector John Sheepshanks had offered his collection to the nation. Sheepshanks's collection comprised 234 paintings, almost all by modern British artists, and included six by Constable, most notably the famous Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds (currently on display in the British Galleries, Room 120, Level 4).

However, the V&A's most important Constable acquisitions came from the artist's last surviving child, his daughter Isabel, who had inherited and cherished the main part of the family collection. She wrote that she would present to the museum 'some landscape sketches by J. Constable…they can be put in a box quite ready for removal'.

There were in fact no less than 390 paintings and drawings, in oil, watercolour, pen and pencil.

The Paintings galleries (Rooms 81, 82, 87 and 88) on Level 3 show a selection of works by Constable, including the full-scale study for The Hay Wain and a number of oil sketches.