Lot Essay
For details of Constable's visit to Feering, see lot 29. A label on the reverse bears the inscription 'An Essex Village/April 23<->rd. 1817/Prov. Sotheby 1962/Coll: R.B. Beckett Purchased from/R.B.D.' Beckett, in a typescript 'Catalogue of Paintings and Drawings by John Constable' (copies at the Tate Gallery and Victoria and Albert Museum), listed the drawing as 'Cottages with a lane between' and read the date as '23rd (?Augt) 1817': Reynolds, on the other hand, accepts Day's reading of 22 October 1817, while accepting that the figure could be '23'. The Rev. W. Driffield, Vicar of Feering, had written on 11 August 1817 asking the Constables to visit him on their return from East Bergholt, where Constable had drawn the magnificent Elm Trees in Old Hall Park, East Bergholt on 22 October (Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Reynolds, loc.cit, no. 17.21, pl. 20). Constable had previously stayed with Driffield in 1814 (see G. Reynolds, The Early Paintings and Drawings of John Constable, New Haven and London, 1996, pp. 189, 191, no. 14.8, pp. 193-4, nos. 14.16-22) and 1816, when he drew the left-hand cottage in the present drawing from the other side, thus confirming the identification with Feering (Reynolds, 1996, p. 218, no. 16.17, pl. 1281; the 1816 drawing is inscribed 'Feering/26 July 1816'). A smaller drawing (3¼ x 4¼ in.) of The Vicarage, Feering, dated June 25 1814, and previously unrecorded, was sold, Sotheby's London, 10 March 1988, lot 8, (£5,000); see also Fleming-Williams, op.cit, p. 124, fig. 119.