John Constable: The late works

Join curator Anne Lyles and the RA’s Director of Collections & Learning Rebecca Lyons, as they explore the late work of John Constable and the significance of the first monographic survey of his work at the RA.
 
John Constable is one of Britain’s best-known artists. His landscapes are among the most instantly recognisable works of 19th-century British painting. He was a graduate of the Royal Academy Schools, a regular exhibitor at the Summer Exhibition and, from 1829, a full Academician. Yet until now the RA has never staged a major retrospective of his work.
 
The RA exhibition Late Constable focuses on the artist’s work from 1825 to 1837, a period which also coincided with his election as a Royal Academician. Characterised by expressive brushwork alongside a return to watercolour and an exploration into the possibilities of printmaking, Constable’s later works highlight an important chapter in his career and in his life.
 
In this online event, co-curator of the Late Constable exhibition Anne Lyles and the RA’s Director of Collections & Learning Rebecca Lyons discuss the evolution of Constable’s late style and career as he moved to a more liberated painterly language of his own.
 
Anne Lyles is an art historian and independent curator specialising in late 18th and early 19th-century British landscape painting. Previously a curator at Tate Britain, she has co-curated, and contributed to the catalogues of, many exhibitions on the art of John Constable and J.M.W.Turner among others. These include Constable: the Great Landscapes (Tate Britain and other venues, 2006-7); and Constable Portraits (National Portrait Gallery 2009).