Watermill at Flatford, Kent

Watermill at Flatford, Kent (the location is in fact Suffolk) from 1825, now at Canterbury Museums, depicts one of the mills central to the Constable family's economic activity. Flatford Mill, built partly by his father Golding and operated by the family since the mid-eighteenth century, was not merely a scenic backdrop in Constable's paintings but a working industrial building producing grain flour for the local market. His father's death in 1816 and the subsequent management of the mill by his brothers gave Constable a continuing personal connection to the working operations of the Stour Valley that informed the accuracy of his mill machinery in the major canvases. By 1825 the mill had become almost mythologized through its appearances in The Hay Wain, Boat Building, and other major paintings, yet Constable continued to paint it as a specific place with a specific character rather than as a picturesque icon. The Canterbury museum's possession of a Suffolk subject in a Kent collection illustrates the dispersal of these works through regional British collections far from their pictorial origins.

Constable renders the mill building and surrounding water with careful attention to reflected light and the play of shadows, using his characteristic flecks of white to suggest sparkling moisture in the atmosphere.