The Wheat Field

In 1816, a year after Waterloo, the English countryside was living through a hard peace: bread prices held high and rural work was scarce. Constable painted none of that trouble here. This is the Stour valley in Suffolk, the country he grew up in, worked up from studies he made outdoors the previous summer. Reapers cut the wheat, and behind them the gleaners stoop to gather the loose ears left in the stubble, an old customary right of the poor at harvest time. Near the front a boy keeps watch over the workers' lunch with his dog. Constable showed the picture at the Royal Academy that spring, and the same autumn he finally married Maria Bicknell, after years of waiting for both families to agree.