Dedham Vale

Dedham Vale was among the subjects John Constable returned to throughout his life, the river country of his Suffolk boyhood, and this late, large canvas is one of its most assured renderings. Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1828 under the plain title Landscape, the picture looks across the gentle valley from the heights above the village toward the tower of Dedham church, gathering a lifetime of study of clouds, water, and weather into a single serene prospect. Now in the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, it ranks with the artist’s final surveys of English pastoral.