The Hay Wain shows a farm wagon crossing the millpond at Flatford, on the River Stour in Suffolk, with the house of a tenant farmer named Willy Lott on the left. John Constable painted it in London in 1821, from sketches and from memories of the place where he grew up. It is less a record of the countryside than a picture of one he loved.
He first showed it at the Royal Academy as "Landscape: Noon." The title we use came from a friend. In February 1821, Archdeacon John Fisher asked him how his "hay wain" was getting on, and the nickname stuck.
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The wagon in the title is empty. The hay is on the far bank, where men are loading it onto a different cart. The wagon in the water is only on its way there, wheels deep in the Stour, and the painting stops before anything is carried anywhere.
Most of what people say about this picture is just as loose. It is often said that England ignored it and only Paris understood it. In 1821 the reviewers generally praised it. It still did not sell, and I think that says more about how it was seen than any medal does.
Where is the hay in The Hay Wain?
On the far bank. The National Gallery describes the empty wagon making its way through the shallow water to the meadow on the other side, where the haymakers are working. One man sharpens a scythe. Others load hay onto a second wagon in the distance.
The wagon is crossing at the ford that gave Flatford its name. The water just in front of it is empty, but it was not always. X-rays described in Judy Egerton's catalogue of Constable for the National Gallery show that he first put a horse and rider in the middle foreground, painted them out, floated a barrel in the same spot, and painted that out too.
Other details came from his drawings. The woman at the water's edge, with a pitcher beside her, kept the same pose from the first sketch to the finished canvas. The dog on the path first appears in a sketch of 1811, and Constable moved it for the final picture. On the right, a man who may be a fisherman heads for a boat.
Before touching the large canvas, Constable made a full-size oil sketch, 137 by 188 centimeters, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Then he had about five months to paint the finished version. Behind the wagon, the house on the left was not a stage set.
What You'll Discover
Who lived in that house.
What London made of it.
What Delacroix did after seeing it.
What the painting leaves out.