An important John Constable landscape showing one of the most famous of all British pastoral scenes has been accepted for the nation in lieu of more than £1m tax, it was announced on Tuesday.
Willy Lott’s House from the Stour (The Valley Farm) is the same cottage seen from a different angle in Constable’s most famous painting, the slightly later The Hay Wain.
Arts Council England said the painting settled £1,012,200 of inheritance tax and would be permanently allocated to the Ashmolean in Oxford.
Alexander Sturgis, the new director of the Ashmolean, said: “It is a huge honour to receive this beautiful painting – the first finished work by Constable to come to the Ashmolean – in my first month as director.
“The painting is on display in the 19th-century gallery where it can now be enjoyed by thousands of visitors in perpetuity.”
The painting was executed between 1816-18 and has had an interesting history. Once owned Jonathan Peel, the younger brother of prime minister Robert Peel, it was sold in 1848 and acquired by the New York millionaire and collector James Lennox – thus becoming, it is believed, the first Constable to enter an American collection. It returned to the UK in 1956.
Sir Peter Bazalgette, ACE’s chair, said it was a “gorgeous oil painting” and a wonderful addition to the Ashmolean. “The AIL scheme has once again delivered a really important acquisition for the nation.”
The bucolic, unchanging Suffolk scene at Flatford was one Constable returned to again and again, a nostalgic symbol of the “natural” way of life.
As well as The Hay Wain in the National Gallery there is The Valley Farm in the Tate collection.
It now joins and complements four Constable oil sketches that the Ashmolean also holds.
