Landscape

An exhibition of approximately one hundred works by John Constable (1776–1837) was devoted to his primary interest, landscape. The assembled group, spanning the artist's entire career, came from a private collection; virtually none of the works had been previously shown in this country.

This exhibition consisted of approximately sixty landscape oil sketches from the collection of the art historians John and Charlotte Gere. Dating from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, these small, rapidly-executed sketches on paper, panel, or canvas were painted outdoors by artists across Europe to sharpen their skills of perception and execution; they were rarely intended for public exhibition.