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John Constable

Portrait of Mrs. Edwards, ca. 1818

Description

Maker

Title

Portrait of Mrs. Edwards

Year

ca. 1818

Medium

Oil on canvas

Materials/Techniques

Materials

Supports

Dimensions

76 x 63.7 cm (29 15/16 x 25 1/16 inches)

Place

England

Type

Credit

Corporate Membership Fund

Object Number

58.197

About

John Constable is renowned for dense and atmospheric landscapes whose color and texture deliver palpable experiences of nature. He applied similar techniques to portraiture, a genre of painting that served as his professional “bread and butter” around 1818. Few details are known of the circumstances of this portrait commission, only that Mrs. Edwards and her mother, a native of southern Wales, were painted around the same time. Constable renders Mrs. Edwards’s portrait with great sympathy, softly depicting his matronly sitter’s fair complexion and sweet smile. Acknowledging the thought she has given to her costume, he lavishly evokes the sheen of her striped dress and the transparent laces that adorn her bonnet, shawl, collar, and cuffs.

England
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Projects & Publications

Publications

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

From the Reserve I

April 9 - August 3, 1994

Constable is well-known as the leading master of English landscape painting. His fame as such has until recently overshadowed his achievements as a portrait painter. Though he rarely showed his portraits in the Royal Academy exhibitions and seldom commented in his correspondence on the over eighty he painted, they are distinguished by a lively, free handling of paint which gives the sitter a certain vitality and spirit. The subject of this picture is the daughter of Mrs. Tuder, whose portrait, also by Constable, hangs in the Cannon Hall Museum, Barnsley, England. Constable probably painted the two portraits at the same time in 1818.

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in the public domain (CC0 1.0). This object is Portrait of Mrs. Edwards with the accession number of 58.197. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.