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.