1826
oil
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
A Donkey with a Foal: Study for <i>The Cornfield</i> is a 1826 oil by John Constable, a Romanticism work, held at Victoria and Albert Museum.
John Constable painted a quiet study of a donkey and her foal around 1826. He used oil paint to capture a simple farm scene, not a grand drama. This small work was just a step toward his bigger painting, The Cornfield, finished the same year. Constable often sketched animals in the countryside. He once wrote about painting while sitting on a donkey he planned to include in a picture. The donkey and foal pop up again in The Cornfield, now hanging in London. Next, look up the museum that keeps this study: Victoria and Albert Museum.
This study by John Constable depicts a donkey standing beside its foal, rendered in preparation for the group of donkeys included in his 1826 painting *The Cornfield*, now in the National Gallery, London. The work, catalogued as no. 287 in Reynolds' 1960 catalogue, bears inscriptions on the back identifying it as Constable’s and was given to the collection by Isabel Constable in 1888. It reflects Constable’s practice of sketching animals from life, as noted in his 1815 correspondence, where he described painting from a donkey to incorporate into a smaller composition. The study is…
Read the full account in the museum source.
John Constable (; 11 June 1776 – 31 March 1837) was an English landscape painter in the Romantic tradition.
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