Mrs James Andrew

Mrs James Andrew from 1818, at the National Gallery, is the companion portrait to the Rev. Dr James Andrew painted in the same year, completing the conventional pair of husband-and-wife portraits that middle-class and professional patrons commissioned as markers of domestic respectability. The portrait was painted at a moment when Constable's first major Stour Valley exhibition canvas was being developed — The White Horse would appear at the Academy the following year — and the contrast between the ambitions of his landscape practice and the professional necessity of portrait work was at its most acute. His handling of Mrs Andrew is competent and respectful, within the conventions of female portraiture established by Reynolds and his followers, but the portrait lacks the atmospheric directness of his landscape studies. The National Gallery preserves the companion portraits together, allowing visitors to understand the full range of Constable's professional practice and the economic reality that required him to divide his energies between the work he loved and the commissions that paid his household expenses.

The portrait demonstrates Constable's straightforward approach to female portraiture, with clear lighting and careful rendering of dress and features in a conventional but competent manner.