John Constable R.A.

(Suffolk 1776-1837 Hampstead)

East Bergholt Fair

Footnotes

Provenance
E. Cowles Voysey, by whom bequeathed to the present owner

Exhibited
London, Tate Gallery, John Constable, 13 June-15 September 1991, cat. no. 245

Literature
P. Goldman, 'Newly Discovered John Constable drawing' in Antique Collector, October 1982, pp. 86-87, ill.
I. Fleming Williams, Constable and his Drawings, 1990, p. 100-1, ill., fig. 97
L. Parris and I. Fleming Williams, Constable, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, 1991, pp. 408-9, ill, cat. no. 245
I. Fleming Williams, Constable, a Master Draughtsman , exh. cat., Dulwich Picture Gallery, 1994, p. 124, ill, fig. 62
G. Reynolds, The Early Paintings and Drawings of John Constable, New Haven/ London, 1996, p. 171, cat. no. 12.30, ill. pl. 960

The present drawing is dated in the Tate Gallery exhibition catalogue, by a process of elimination, to 1812, when the annual toy fair at East Bergholt was held, in front of the Constable family home on the 29 and 30 July. Constable made a number of sketches of the fair; two oils, one by day and one by night, and a group of five pencil sketches.

This drawing, and two others in the group, depict the stalls in the centre of the village, which formed the focal point of the fair. The present work shows a quiet moment, either before the crowd has arrived or after the fair had finished on the Friday afternoon. The remaining sketches of the 1812 fair, one in a private collection and the other in the Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California, are of crowds gathered outside The White Horse pub.