29. David Lucas (1802-1881)
after John Constable (1776-1837)
The Vale of Dedham, Essex

(click on image to print)
Lucas, The Vale of Dedham, Essex

The Vale of Dedham, Essex

Mezzotint, 1836-38, Shirley 40, 635 x 524 mm. Superb impression on thick wove paper, trimmed inside the plate mark, thus not showing the title, but with considerable white space outside the image and borderline; a few lightly abraded areas at the edges of the image retouched and a small abraded scrape within the image. Because of the trimming of the very wide plate margins, it is impossible to determine whether it is a proof before letters or a published state. The work is one of Lucas’ larger plates after Constable and he worked on it for three years. Both the detail work and the play of light and dark over the vast landscape and sky are quite incredible. Dedham Vale is an area of great natural beauty between Essex and Suffolk in East England, around the River Stour, an area known since the nineteen century as “Constable Country.” In the scene, Dedham Village, with the stone tower of its parish church, can be seen in the middle ground. Constable’s painting, his first major painting, done when he was twenty-six, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Lucas’ mezzotint, more dramatic in its chiaroscuro than the original oil, differs from it in many details, all, presumably, sanctioned by Constable, in the attempt to make a successful and effective black and white image of a color composition. It is part of the reason why such joint efforts as Lucas-Constable are so superior to simple attempts to reproduce a painting as a print.