Talks
Now a symbol of a quintessential and somewhat romantic British countryside, ‘The Hay Wain’ has entered our collective visual memory and pop culture as an icon of traditional British landscape painting, and it is hard to imagine that it was once considered radical. Yet, when it was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1821, it was viewed as an innovative reimagining of the landscape tradition.
Join Director of Collections and Research, Christine Riding and Mary McMahon, Associate Curator NG200 Collections, as they introduce our current exhibition. Explore how Constable came to be established as a master in the history of British art, as his work entered the collections of major galleries and museums. They will also look at the ownership of the painting and its acquisition by the National Gallery in 1886 and examine the rise in popularity of both Constable and ‘The Hay Wain’ since this point.
This session will be accompanied by live speech-to-text transcription supported by Stagetext.
Image: Detail from John Constable, ‘The Hay Wain’, 1821
