The Hay Wain

1821

Oil on canvas, 130.2 × 185.4 cm. The National Gallery, London

A horse-drawn cart fords a shallow millpond on the river Stour on a summer day. The familiar name came later from his friend Archdeacon John Fisher.

Shown at the Royal Academy as Landscape: Noon; it was well reviewed but did not sell.
Look at the cottage at left, home of the farmer Willy Lott, at Flatford in Suffolk.
Painted in his London studio from earlier studies. In a 2017 gallery talk, the National Gallery's Colin Wiggins points out that the fields are yellower and bluer greens laid over a mid-green layer that shows through.
Ordinary farm work fills a canvas about six feet wide, a size normally kept for history painting. Scale claims serious attention for the native countryside.
The dealer John Arrowsmith took it to the 1824 Paris Salon, where Charles X awarded the painter a gold medal; Henry Vaughan gave it in 1886.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (PD-Art)