1835
paint
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
Dominant colour
A Suffolk Child: sketch for 'The Valley Farm' is a 1835 paint by John Constable, a Romanticism work, held at Victoria and Albert Museum.
John Constable painted *A Suffolk Child: sketch for 'The Valley Farm'* around 1835. It’s a small watercolour study, not the final oil painting. Romantic artists often sketched outdoors to capture fleeting moments. This sketch shows a child near water—likely part of a larger farm scene. Constable rarely drew people, so this stands out. The figure later became an older woman in the final painting, flipped and set in a boat. Check out more works by the same artist at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
A watercolour study by John Constable depicts a seated young girl dressed in a simple frock and bonnet, created as a preparatory figure study for his 1835 oil painting *The Valley Farm*. The final composition, shown at the Royal Academy that year, reverses the figure’s orientation and alters her identity from a child to an older rural woman seated in a boat. The sketch belongs to a small group of figure drawings Constable produced, most of which were confined to small sketchbooks.
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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