| Helmingham Dell | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | John Constable |
| Year | 1830 |
| Type | Oil on canvas, landscape painting |
| Dimensions | 113.3 cm× 130.8 cm(44.62 in× 51.50 in) |
| Location | Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City |
Helmingham Dell is an 1830 landscape painting by the British artist John Constable featuring a view of a dell in the grounds of Helmingham Hall in Suffolk, with a young woman in red about to cross a bridge. It appears to have been based on a sketch made as early as 1800 when he first visited Helmingham. [1]
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In 1829 when Constable was elected to full membership of the Royal Academy in London he was required to provide a diploma work. He chose to present his 1826 landscape A Boat Passing a Lock which was owned by his friend the bookseller James Carpenter. In exchange for Carpenter giving up the work, Constable promised to produce another landscape for him featuring Helmingham. [2] As the work progressed Constable chose to keep it and instead paid Carpenter for the loss of his original painting. [3]
It was exhibited at Somerset House for the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition of 1830. [4] Today the painting is in the collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri having been acquired in 1955. [5] Constable had produced an earlier, smaller version of the same view in 1826, a work now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. [6] As well as being considerably larger, the 1830 work added a stag and a cow to the composition. Both paintings are unusual in his work for only featuring a small glimpse of sky. [7]
