The White Horse

The White Horse by John Constable (1776–1837) is a full-size oil sketch of one of the artist's first large-scale landscape paintings. The final version, now part of the Frick Collection in New York, was first exhibited in 1819 at the Royal Academy and was the beginning of a series of works that became famously known as the "six-footers" for their grand size. The scene is a view from the south bank of the River Stour in the countryside around Suffolk, England, where the artist was born. The barge in the lower left corner is carrying a horse from the towpath on the near side of the river to the opposite bank.Hidden beneath this painting is a version of another Constable painting, Dedham Vale from the Coombs. The artist reused the canvas and painted over the scene to create the The White Horse sketch. The painting that is visible today was once obscured by paint added by someone other than Constable over a century ago, perhaps in an effort to make it look more finished. Through microscopic examinations, x-radiography, and painstaking analysis, expert conservators and scholars were able to decipher the multiple layers of paint on the canvas. The work was cleaned over a period of several years, from 1992 to 1997, and the lively and well-preserved Constable sketch was revealed.