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Why the iconic English painting The Hay Wain by John Constable is not what it seems
John Constable’s The Hay Wain presents a bucolic view of England – but there’s a dark side to the idealised rural image.
Widely satirised and reproduced on everything from bath towels to biscuit tins, John Constable’s The Hay Wain (1821) is “the most celebrated and certainly quintessentially English landscape painting”, says Alice Rylance-Watson, assistant curator for the National Trust, discussing the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty that inspired the painting. But this rural scene featuring a hay wagon fording a Suffolk millpond is, she says, “an idealised image”. In fact, the more we learn about The Hay Wain, the less we can trust its depiction of England.
Exploring the diverse meanings that artists past and present attach to the landscapes they depict was the subject of an exhibition at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, National Treasures: Constable in Bristol − “Truth to Nature”, starring The Hay Wain. The iconic 6ft-wide oil painting, frequently voted one of Britain’s favourite artworks, was on loan from London’s National Gallery as part of the museum’s bicentenary celebrations in 2024. Now it has returned to the National Gallery, it is the focal point of Discover Constable & The Hay Wain, an exploration of the painting’s creation and different reactions to it, which opened in October.
There’s no doubt that Constable (1776-1837), who leaned more towards Romanticism than Realism, imbued his landscape with the sentimental attachment he had to it. He grew up just a mile from the whitewashed cottage to the left of the canvas, owned by tenant farmer Willy Lott, with its charming view over millpond and cornfields, and he rhapsodised about “the beauty of the surrounding scenery, its gentle declivities, its luxuriant meadow flats…”, writing: “I associate ‘my careless boyhood’ with all that lies on the banks of the Stour”.
International
FTX executives shave serious time off their sentences
Ryan Salame and Caroline Ellison, FTX executives convicted for their roles in the notorious crypto fraud led by their former boss Sam Bankman-Fried, have both shaved time off their lengthy prison sentences.
Salame, a former top executive of FTX, the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency trading platform, pleaded guilty to criminal fraud charges in September 2023, and was sentenced in May to 7 1/2 years in federal prison. He began his sentence in October. But the Federal Bureau of Prisons currently lists his release date as March 1, 2031, more than a year earlier than his initial release date in April 2032. Business Insider first reported Salame’s new release date.
Ellison, Bankman-Fried’s former girlfriend and the former CEO of FTX’s hedge fund arm, Alameda Research, was sentenced to 2 years in prison after she pleaded guilty to seven federal counts of fraud and conspiracy and was a key witness against Bankman-Fried. Her current release date is listed as July 20, 2025, three months earlier than her initial release date.
Bankman-Fried, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison, does not have a release date listed on the prisons website.
The Bureau of Prisons didn’t immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment. However, in several past statements about early release dates, the bureau has told CNN that it does not comment on the conditions of any individual inmate, but inmates can earn good conduct time that is calculated into their projected release date.
Qualified inmates are currently eligible for up to 54 days of GCT time for each year of the sentence imposed by the court. Inmates have other ways of earning time credits while incarcerated, including participation in various prison programs.
FTX was a high-profile crypto startup that allowed people to buy and sell digital assets. It had its name emblazoned on an arena in Miami and on every Major League Baseball umpire’s jersey. The exchange had several celebrity endorsers and was widely believed to be a gold-standard for safety and security.
But FTX collapsed in November 2022 when customers pulled their funds as rumors spread about FTX’s unusually close ties to its founder’s crypto hedge fund, Alameda
International
‘It’s a scary time’: US universities urge international students to return to campus before Trump inauguration
Fear and uncertainty are spreading across many US college campuses ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration, with some schools advising international students to return early from winter break amid promises of another travel ban like the one that stranded students abroad at the start of Trump’s last term.
In a country where more than 1.1 million international students enrolled in US colleges and universities during the 2023-24 academic year, the former president has pledged more hardline immigration policies upon his return to the White House, including an expansion of his previous travel ban on people from predominantly Muslim countries and the revocation of student visas of “radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners.”
International students generally have nonimmigrant visas that allow them to study in the US but don’t provide a legal pathway to stay in the country.
International
Questions swirl over deadly crash of Azerbaijan Airlines plane. Here’s what we know
Azerbaijan held a day of mourning on Thursday for the dozens of victims of an airliner crash in Kazakhstan, as questions were being asked over the cause of the disaster.
The reasons that Azerbaijan Airlines flight J2-8243 came down are still unknown. Reuters reported Thursday that the plane was downed by a Russian air defense system, citing multiple unnamed sources in Azerbaijan with knowledge of the investigation.
Officials from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Russia, three countries linked to the disaster, urged people not to speculate about the crash until investigations have concluded.
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