Exhibition to mark 250th anniversary of John Constable’s birth

For the 250th anniversary of John Constable’s birth, Gainsborough’s House, in Sudbury, will celebrate the event with a programme of landscape exhibitions.

The area where his paintings are created are by the River Stour, and is famously the birthplace and inspiration of two of Britain’s most influential landscape painters, Thomas Gainsborough and Constable.

An exhibition “Gainsborough, Turner and Constable” (April 25 to October 11)  feature both these artists, and others – notably J M W Turner – will be held alongside two exhibitions of contemporary art by David Dawson and Kate Giles, showing how their influence is still felt by artists today.

It will feature over 40 oil paintings, watercolours and drawings, mainly from private collections and therefore rarely seen, by Gainsborough, Turner and Constable, but also by their contemporaries,  including the likes of Alexander Cozens, Francis Towne and Thomas Girtin.

It will also include several works by their European forerunners, such as Antonio Joli and Claude-Joseph Vernet.

Key works include Gainsborough’s idyllic scene, “Landscape with Cattle, a Young Man Courting a Milkmaid” (early 1770s), which has not been exhibited in the UK since 1952; Turner’s large-scale watercolour, “Abergavenny Bridge” (1799) which has not been on public display since 1799 at the Royal Academy; and John Constable’s “The Leaping Horse” from the Royal Academy — in Suffolk for the very first time.