Malvern Hall

In 1819 the owner of Malvern Hall, Henry Greswolde Lewis, wrote to Constable to say he had undone the alterations the architect John Soane made to his house in the 1780s. He had brought it back, he said, to nearly what it was 60 years ago, before that modern Goth Mr Soane spoilt a handsome house. The front here, low and plain across the water, is that restored house, and Constable came up to Warwickshire in 1820 to paint it. He had painted the place once before, in 1809, when Soane's additions were still on it, and Lewis had been buying pictures from him ever since. A full-size sketch for this view is now at Yale, a second version went to the Royal Academy exhibition of 1822, and the house itself still stands on the edge of Solihull, south of Birmingham, in use as a preparatory school.