A Boat Passing a Lock

John Constable grew up on this stretch of the River Stour in Suffolk, where his father ran the mill at Flatford and grain barges worked their way down toward the sea. By the 1820s he was living in London and painting the country of his boyhood from memory and old sketches. Here a boat has reached the lower gate of Flatford lock, and a barefoot boatman in a red waistcoat leans his whole weight on a crowbar to swing it open, real labor set at the center of a calm view. A storm is bunched up in the sky above him. Far off across the meadows you can just make out the tower of Dedham church. When the Academy made him a full member in 1829, this is the painting Constable chose to leave them as his diploma work.