Andrew Clayton-Payne
Menu
    • Home
    • About
    • Notable sales
  • Andrew Clayton-Payne
    • Press
    • Publications
    • Contact

Notable sales

JOHN CONSTABLE R.A.

(1776-1837)

Sky Study

Sky Study
Inscribed 'Sep 18 ... 5' (upper right)
Pencil and watercolour
12 x 16 cm
Acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Provenance

1896, Arthur Kay, H.R.S.A.

Private Collection, France

Exhibited

Bradford Exhibition of Fine Arts, 1904

This remarkable, spiritedly worked, sky study dating from the early 1830s is an important recent rediscovery. The dark plateaued tree line which runs along the bottom of the sheet was a common feature in Constable’s studies at this date. Anne Lyles has suggested that Constable made this study in Hampstead whilst living in Lower Terrace that overlooks the westside of Hampstead Heath.

 

The only known owner of this watercolour was a well-known Scottish art collector and critic, Arthur Kay, H.R.S.A. Arthur Kay is remembered for being a keen and discriminating collector (he was the owner of Rembrandt’s earliest known landscape at that time and was one of the first avid collectors of Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas).

 

Interestingly,  Kay owned another Constable cloud study, an oil on paper study from c.1822, which is now in the Manton Collection. On the back of the stretcher an inscription reads “Study of Sky (from Nature) / by John Constable RA Bought with a sketchbook / (thro T. Maclean) direct from the Constable Family 1896 / Arthur Kay.”  It seems likely that this watercolour came from that sketchbook.  

Read more

Related artworks

  • ${artwork.get('title_and_year')}
    EUGÈNE ISABEY Sunset on the Normandy Coast
    Oil on paper, laid down on canvas 22.9 x 29.5 cm
    Jointly acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Morgan Library & Museum, Gift of Eugene V. Thaw
  • ${artwork.get('title_and_year')}
    J.M.W. TURNER R.A. THE SKY AT DAWN
    Watercolour 10 x 11 in (26 x 29.5 cm)
    Acquired by a Private Collector
Previous
|
Next
44 
of 108

andrew@clayton-payne.com

+44 (0)20 7493 6980

By Appointment,

16 Savile Row, London W1S 3PL

Copyright © 2021 Andrew Clayton-Payne
Site by Artlogic