The Cornfield is an oil painting by the English artist John Constable, completed from January to March 1826 in the artist’s studio. The painting shows a lane leading from East Bergholt toward Dedham, Essex, and depicts a young shepherd boy drinking from a pool in the heat of summer. The location is along Fen Lane, which the artist knew well. Constable referred to the piece as The Drinking Boy.
On the advice of Constable's friend, the botanist Henry Phillips, The Cornfield was painted with the trees and plants depicted as accurately as possible. Constable commissioned the engraver David Lucas to produce the plates of the painting for a book, Various Subjects of Landscape, Characteristic of English Scenery, first published in July 1830. The art historian Anthony Bailey considers The Cornfield to have "opened the gate through which a great number of people were to pass into Constable's country". It was exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in April 1826, under the title Landscape: Noon, and shown in Paris from early November to the spring of 1828. The painting was praised but Constable did not find a buyer. After the artist’s death, funds were raised to purchase the work for the National Gallery.
Background
John Constable was born in 1776 in the Suffolk village of East Bergholt, to Golding Constable and his wife Ann. His father was a corn merchant, who owned Flatford Mill in the village and a mill in Dedham, Essex; Constable was expected to succeed his father in the business. After his education at schools in Lavenham and Dedham, Constable worked in his father's corn business, but his younger brother Abram eventually took over the running of the mills.
In 1799, the 19-year-old Constable persuaded his father to let him pursue a career in art, and Golding granted him a small allowance to allow him to train. He entered the Royal Academy Schools as a probationer. Following his marriage to Maria Bicknell In 1816, Constable lived in Bloomsbury in central London, before his family settled in Hampstead, where they lived permanently from 1827 onwards. The year The Cornfield was painted, Constable was 50 and had not yet been accepted as a full member of the Royal Academy of Arts, despite having sought election since the early 1820s.
Composition
thumb|Study for The Cornfield (1826), [[Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery]]
Constable's painting The Cornfield, painted in oil on canvas, depicts a young shepherd. The boy, wearing a red waistcoat, is drinking from a pool as he rests from his work at noon in the heat of summer. He has removed his hat.
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In September 1827, it went to the Paris Salon, where it was shown to the public from early November to the spring of 1828 under the title '. It was returned to England the following September. In Paris, it failed to receive the same acclaim given to his previous works. It was praised by the critics but never managed to find a seller at any of the five exhibitions where it was shown.
The Cornfield was the first work to be sold following Constable's death in 1837, and for 10 years, until the National Gallery acquired The Valley Farm from Robert Vernon, it was the only painting by Constable in a national collection. , the work is not on public display in the galleries.