Lines and Colors art blog

Beautiful “rediscovered” Constable

Dedham Vale With The River Stour In Flood From The Grounds Of Old Hall, East Bergholt, John Constable, rediscovered Constable landscape
Dedham Vale With The River Stour In Flood From The Grounds Of Old Hall, East Bergholt, John Constable

We’re fortunate that so much of the world’s great art is currently in museums and public collections. Works in private collections can often go unseen by the public for decades, or even hundreds of years.

From time to time, works that have gone unseen for extended periods become available and enter the art market.

This is the case with a newly “rediscovered” painting by John Constable, and boy is it a beauty!

Of those Constable paintings that I have not seen in person, it is already one of my favorites.

The painting is currently set to be part of the December 2017 Old Masters Evening Sale at Sotheby’s, one of the premiere auction houses through which high valued art reaches the market (see my 2009 post on Sotheby’s). If you have an extra $3 or $4 million lying around, maybe you can pick it up for over your couch.

There is a reasonably large zoomable photo on the Sotheby’s auction listing, but a much higher resolution image accompanying this article on Art Market Monitor (even larger than my detail crops would indicate).

There is also an article on the Sotheby’s site that describes the find: “Important Constable Rediscovered After 50 Years“.


Comments

2 responses to “Beautiful “rediscovered” Constable”

  1. Hi Charley, lovely painting. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the BBC program Fake or Fortune but a recent episode was about trying to authenticate another possible Constable. You can see it on YouTube:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKw2Q57UWQo
    I find the process fascinating.

    1. Wonderful. Thanks, kate!