• Welcome to PaintingMania.com
  • Hello, New customer? Start here.
  • John Constable
    Jun 11, 1776 - Mar 31, 1837
  • The Sick Child - John Constable RA was an English landscape painter in the Romantic tradition. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for revolutionising the genre of landscape painting with his pictures of Dedham Vale, the area surrounding his home – now known as "Constable Country" – which he invested with an intensity of affection. "I should paint my own places best", he wrote to his friend John Fisher in 1821, "painting is but another word for feeling".
Shop by Art Gallery
The Sick Child
  • Pin It
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Enlarge
  • The Sick Child

  • John Constable
  • Standard size
    We offer original aspect ratio sizes
  • Price
  • Qty
  • 20 X 24 in
  • $136.95
  • 24 X 36 in
  • $212.95
  • 30 X 40 in
  • $293.95
  • 36 X 48 in
  • $390.95
  • 48 X 72 in
  • $759.95
  • If listed sizes are not in proportion to the original, don't worry, just choose which size is similar to what you want, we can offer oil paintings in a suitable size, painted in proportion to the original.
  • If you would like the standard size, please let us know. Need a Custom Size?
  • line
  • Why settle for a paper print when you can add sophistication to your rooms with a high quality 100% hand-painted oil painting on canvas at wholesale price? Order this beautiful oil painting today! that's a great way to impress friends, neighbors and clients alike.

  • 100% hand-painted oil painting on artist grade canvas. No printing or digital imaging techniques are used.
  • Additional 2 inch blank border around the edge.
  • No middle people, directly ship to the world.
  • In stock items ship immediately, usually ships in 3 to 10 days.
  • You can order any painting in any size as your requests.
  • $12.95 shipping charge for small size (e.g., size <= 20 x 24 in).
  • The cheapest shipping rate from DHL, UPS, USPS, etc.
  • Canvas stretched on wood bars for free.
    - Need special frame for oil painting? Please contact us.
  • Send you a digital copy via email for your approval before shipping.
  • 45-day Satisfaction Guaranteed and 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed.
Prev The Opening of Waterloo Bridge, Seen from Whitehall Stairs, London, 18 June 1817 The Stour Valley with the Church of Dedham Next
Would you like to publicly share your opinion of this painting?
Be the first to critique this painting.

Other paintings by John Constable:

The Opening of Waterloo Bridge seen from Whitehall Stairs
The Opening of Waterloo Bridge seen from Whitehall Stairs
The Opening of Waterloo Bridge, Seen from Whitehall Stairs, London, 18 June 1817
The Opening of Waterloo Bridge, Seen from Whitehall Stairs, London, 18 June 1817
The Stour Valley with the Church of Dedham
The Stour Valley with the Church of Dedham
The view of Salisbury Cathedral from the River, with the House of the Archdeacon Fischer
The view of Salisbury Cathedral from the River, with the House of the Archdeacon Fischer
John ConstableJohn Constable (11 June 1776 – 31 March 1837) was born in East Bergholt, a village on the River Stour in Suffolk, to Golding and Ann Constable. His father was a wealthy corn merchant, owner of Flatford Mill in East Bergholt and, later, Dedham Mill. Golding Constable also owned his own small ship, The Telegraph, which he moored at Mistley on the Stour estuary and used to transport corn to London. Although Constable was his parents' second son, his older brother was mentally handicapped and so John was expected to succeed his father in the business, and after a brief period at a boarding school in Lavenham, he was enrolled in a day school in Dedham. Constable worked in the corn business after leaving school, but his younger brother Abram eventually took over the running of the mills.

In his youth, Constable embarked on amateur sketching trips in the surrounding Suffolk countryside that was to become the subject of a large proportion of his art. These scenes, in his own words, "made me a painter, and I am grateful"; "the sound of water escaping from mill dams etc., willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork, I love such things." He was introduced to George Beaumont, a collector, who showed him his prized Hagar and the Angel by Claude Lorrain, which inspired Constable. Later, while visiting relatives in Middlesex, he was introduced to the professional artist John Thomas Smith, who advised him on painting but also urged him to remain in his father's business rather than take up art professionally.

In 1799, Constable persuaded his father to let him pursue art, and Golding even granted him a small allowance. Entering the Royal Academy Schools as a probationer, he attended life classes and anatomical dissections as well as studying and copying Old Masters. Among works that particularly inspired him during this period were paintings by Thomas Gainsborough, Claude Lorrain, Peter Paul Rubens, Annibale Carracci and Jacob van Ruisdael. He also read widely among poetry and sermons, and later proved a notably articulate artist. By 1803, he was exhibiting paintings at the Royal Academy.

In 1802 he refused the position of drawing master at Great Marlow Military College, a move which Benjamin West (then master of the RA) counselled would mean the end of his career. In that year, Constable wrote a letter to John Dunthorne in which he spelled out his determination to become a professional landscape painter:
"For the last two years I have been running after pictures, and seeking the truth at second hand. I have not endeavoured to represent nature with the same elevation of mind with which I set out, but have rather tried to make my performances look like the work of other men... There is room enough for a natural painter. The great vice of the present day is bravura, an attempt to do something beyond the truth."

His early style has many of the qualities associated with his mature work, including a freshness of light, colour and touch, and reveals the compositional influence of the Old Masters he had studied, notably of Claude Lorrain. Constable's usual subjects, scenes of ordinary daily life, were unfashionable in an age that looked for more romantic visions of wild landscapes and ruins. He did, however, make occasional trips further afield. For example, in 1803 he spent almost a month aboard the East Indiaman ship Coutts as it visited south-east coastal ports, and in 1806 he undertook a two-month tour of the Lake District. But he told his friend and biographer Charles Leslie that the solitude of the mountains oppressed his spirits; Leslie went on to write:
"His nature was peculiarly social and could not feel satisfied with scenery, however grand in itself, that did not abound in human associations. He required villages, churches, farmhouses and cottages."