Oil paint on board
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<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/john-constable-108" aria-label="More by John Constable" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">John Constable</a>
Mill Stream Night Scene with Bridge
Bequeathed by Henry Vaughan 1900
architecture
boy
children
England
England, East
Essex
fishing
Flatford, Willy Lott’s House
industrial
landscape
leisure and pastimes
natural phenomena
people
places
reflection
river
River Stour
sport
UK cities, towns and villages
UK counties
UK countries and regions
UK natural features
water: inland
watermill
wooded
<p>Painted quickly outdoors on a bright day, this study is the setting for one of Constable’s most famous paintings, <span>The Hay Wain</span> (now in the National Gallery). It shows the view from the forecourt of Flatford Mill across a side stream of the River Stour in Suffolk. The stream had been diverted under the mill to power the waterwheel. The white house is Willy Lott’s House, named after the tenant farmer who lived there for over 80 years.</p><p><em>Gallery label, October 2023</em></p>
painting oil paint board
15 October 2001 – 4 August 2002
2002-08-04
15 October 2001 – 4 August 2002
2002-08-04
2001-10-15
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2001-10-15
Constable: Outdoor Sketching
Collection based display
26 August 2002 – 9 March 2003
2003-03-09
26 August 2002 – 9 March 2003
2003-03-09
2002-08-26
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2002-08-26
Constable
Collection based display
12 May 2003 – 23 April 2006
2006-04-23
12 May 2003 – 23 April 2006
2006-04-23
2003-05-12
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2003-05-12
Constable 2
Collection based display
4 September 2004 – 9 January 2005
2005-01-09
4 September 2004 – 9 January 2005
2005-01-09
2004-09-04
Statens Museum for Kunst (Copenhagen, Denmark)
2004-09-04
Turner and Constable and their European Contemporaries
Loan-out
15 June 2005 – 4 September 2005
2005-09-04
15 June 2005 – 4 September 2005
2005-09-04
2005-06-15
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2005-06-15
A Picture of Britain
Exhibition
1 June 2006 – 28 August 2006
2006-08-28
1 October 2006 – 31 December 2006
2006-12-31
2006-10-01
National Gallery of Art (Washington DC, USA)
3 February 2007 – 29 April 2007
2007-04-29
2007-02-03
Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens (San Marino, USA)
http://www.huntington.org
2006-06-01
Constable: The Great Landscapes
Exhibition
28 May 2007 – 31 March 2008
2008-03-31
28 May 2007 – 31 March 2008
2008-03-31
2007-05-28
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2007-05-28
John Constable: Marking Out a Path
Collection based display
6 August 2010 – 9 April 2012
2012-04-09
6 August 2010 – 9 April 2012
2012-04-09
2010-08-06
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2010-08-06
Romanticism Introduction
Collection based display
20 February 2021 – 4 February 2023
2023-02-04
20 February 2021 – 31 May 2021
2021-05-31
2021-02-20
Mitsubishi Ichigokan (Tokyo, Japan)
1 July 2022 – 9 October 2022
2022-10-09
2022-07-01
Villa Vauban (Luxembourg City, Luxembourg)
24 October 2022 – 4 February 2023
2023-02-04
2022-10-24
Reggia di Venaria Reale (Turin, Italy)
2021-02-20
Constable and England: A History of His Affections
Tate partnerships & programmes
13 March 2023
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2023-03-13
Gallery 108
Collection based display
11 July 2026 – 4 October 2026
2026-10-04
11 July 2026 – 4 October 2026
2026-10-04
2026-07-11
Christchurch Mansion (Ipswich, UK)
2026-07-11
Constable 250
Loan-out
The Mill Stream. Verso: Night Scene with Bridge
support: 210 × 292 mm
frame: 398 × 480 × 85 mm
Bequeathed by Henry Vaughan 1900
<div class="text">
<p>Painted quickly outdoors on a bright day, this study is the setting for one of Constable’s most famous paintings, <i>The Hay Wain</i> (now in the National Gallery). It shows the view from the forecourt of Flatford Mill across a side stream of the River Stour in Suffolk. The stream had been diverted under the mill to power the waterwheel. The white house is Willy Lott’s House, named after the tenant farmer who lived there for over 80 years.</p>
</div>

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2023-10-25T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
<p><a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/constable-the-mill-stream-verso-night-scene-with-bridge-n01816" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N01816</span></a> <b>The Mill Stream </b>Circa 1810</p>
<p>
<br/>Oil on board, 8 3/16×11 1/2 (20.8×29.2).
<br/><i>Prov:</i> Lionel Constable, sold Christie's 2 March 1874 (168, ‘The Mill Stream. <i>A sketch for the picture</i>’), bt. Wigzell £43. 1s. for Henry Vaughan<sup>1</sup> and bequeathed by him to the National Gallery 1900; transferred to the Tate Gallery 1919. <i>Accession No.</i>1816.
<br/><i>Exh:</i>
Tate Gallery 1937 (p.15, No.23).
<br/><i>Engr:</i> etched by R.S. Chattock as ‘Willy Lott's House’ and published in <i>The Portfolio</i>, 1875, facing p.88.
<br/><i>Lit</i>: Holmes 1902, pp.220, 242; Shirley 1937, pp.lxv, 47, 60; Chamot 1956, p.260; Kitson 1957, pp.342, 343, 352, 354, 356–7; Beckett 1961, Paintings: Suffolk B(51) No.106; Smart and Brooks 1976, pp.64–5, 135–7; Hoozee 1979, No.183 (verso: No.184).
<br/>
<br/>Verso: <b>Night Scene with Bridge</b>
<br/>
<br/>The Constable family owned two corn-grinding watermills on the river Stour, at Flatford and at Dedham. No.9 depicts the mill stream at Flatford, seen from the forecourt of the mill. The tail water left the mill through an archway below the forecourt at this point, hence the turbulence shown in the foreground. In the distance the junction of the mill stream with the main course of the Stour can be seen. A short way down the right-hand side of the mill stream there was also a smaller channel through to the Stour, which was used by a ferry plying between the left bank of the mill stream and the fields on the far side of the river. The building at the left of No.9 is Willy Lott's house, a recurrent motif in Constable's art, appearing first around 1802 and finally in 1835 (‘The Valley Farm’, No.41 below).
<br/>
<br/>Constable used No.9 as the basis of his <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a> ‘The Mill Stream’ (Fig. 1, Ipswich Borough Council, TG 1976 No.129, H.191). The slightly squarer <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/proportion" title="Glossary definition for 'Proportion'"><span>proportions</span></a> of the Ipswich picture, which measures 28×36 inches, resulted from Constable's omission of the left-hand part of Willy Lott's house and the hut beyond it. Otherwise the only alteration to the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/composition" title="Glossary definition for 'Composition'"><span>composition</span></a> was the addition of a ferry (the ferry mentioned earlier in this entry), of a woman washing clothes or dipping a vessel in the water near Lott's house and of four birds in the sky. The Ipswich picture was <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/e/engraving" title="Glossary definition for 'Engraving'"><span>engraved</span></a> by Lucas for English Landscape as ‘Mill Stream’ and appeared in 1831 (Shirley 1930, No.25). The paintwork in the bottom left-hand corner of No.9 is difficult to read but the Ipswich picture and, still more, Lucas' <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/print" title="Glossary definition for 'Print'"><span>print</span></a> show that part of the forecourt parapet is intended.
<br/>
<br/>The Ipswich ‘Mill Stream’ has often been taken to be the work which Constable exhibited at the R.A. in 1814 as ‘<a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/l/landscape" title="Glossary definition for 'Landscape'"><span>Landscape</span></a>: The ferry’. While it appears to date from about this time, there is, however, reason to think that it was not the exhibited work. In his diary entry for 5 April 1814 Farington said that he had called on Constable and seen ‘his upright Landscape intended for the Exhibition’. The only other picture Constable exhibited at the R.A. that year was ‘Landscape: Ploughing scene in Suffolk’, which is a horizontal composition measuring 20 1/4×30 1/4 inches (Private Collection, TG 1976 No.123, H.193). If the painting seen by Farington actually appeared at the R.A., it cannot have been ‘The Mill Stream’, which is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an ‘upright Landscape’. Again, Farington reported on 23 April 1814 that Constable had seen ‘Thomson at the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/a/academy" title="Glossary definition for 'Academy'"><span>Academy</span></a> who was very cordial with Him &amp; spoke particularly of the merits of his small picture, saying also that his large picture had good parts in it’. The Ipswich painting is not sufficiently larger than ‘Landscape: Ploughing scene in Suffolk’ for the one to have been called ‘large’ and the other ‘small’. The version of ‘The Valley Farm’ at one time in the collection of Arthur Sanderson (Private Collection, H.192), which also includes a ferry, seems a more promising candidate, being both an upright and noticeably larger - 49 1/2×39 3/8 inches - than the ‘Ploughing scene’.
<br/>
<br/>For the figure of the ferryman in his boat in the Ipswich ‘Mill Stream’ Constable probably referred to two sheets of <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/g/graphite" title="Glossary definition for 'Graphite'"><span>pencil</span></a> studies, one now in an album in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter (Fig. 2)<sup>2</sup> and the other in the collection of Mr H.A.E. Day (Fig. 3, Day 1975, pl.213)<sup>3</sup>. A squared-up, schematic <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/d/drawing" title="Glossary definition for 'Drawing'"><span>drawing</span></a> of the whole composition is on the other side of the latter (Fig.4, Day 1975, pl.28); this relates more to No.9 than to the final painting, though it presents the scene from a slightly different viewpoint to either. Other studies of the mill stream and Willy Lott's house connect more closely with the left-hand side of ‘The Hay Wain’ of 1821. In these, e.g. V.&amp;A., R. 110, 110a, 329a (H.185, 186, 143) and the Ipswich study of 1816 (TG 1976 No.144, H.221), the subject is seen from the left bank of the mill stream rather than from the forecourt of the mill, and the vista down the stream to the Stour is consequently obscured.
<br/>
<br/>The subject on the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/r/recto-verso" title="Glossary definition for 'Recto / Verso'"><span>verso</span></a> of No.9 has not been satisfactorily identified. The tower on the left looks like the Monument but the other features do not seem to relate to the area around London Bridge.
<br/>
<br/>As with No.8 above, there appears to be little evidence for a precise dating of this work. When the Ipswich ‘Mill Stream’ was thought to have been exhibited in 1814, a date of circa 1813 was usually assigned to No.9. The date, circa 1810, given here is intended only as a very approximate guide.
<br/>
<br/>1. In his manuscript volume ‘The Hay-Wain and other Pictures by John Constable R.A.’ (National Gallery Library), Henry Vaughan wrote on p.3A, which faces an impression of Chattock's etching of No.9, ‘This Sketch was bought by me at Christie's at the Sale of pictures belonging to Lionel Constable’.
<br/>
<br/>2. Bequeathed by Mrs Edward Fisher to Exeter Public Library in 1897 and transferred by Devon Library Services to the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in 1978 (Accession No.99/1978), this unpublished album contains sixty-five drawings by Constable and other artists. The drawing of the ferryman is mounted on folio 40, measures 3 1/4×6 3/16 (9.5×15.7) and is inscribed ‘Hight of boat [?&amp;] man - the same as [?over] from water’.
<br/>
<br/>3. 3 1/4×6 1/4 (9.6×15.9): measurements taken from Christie's catalogue, 5 June 1973, when the drawing was sold as lot 27.</p>
<p>
<br/><b>Published in:</b>
<br/>Leslie Parris, <i>The Tate Gallery Constable Collection</i>, London 1981
<br/></p>

Catalogue entry
2004-09-23T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
architecture boy children England England, East Essex fishing Flatford, Willy Lott’s House industrial landscape leisure and pastimes natural phenomena people places reflection river River Stour sport UK cities, towns and villages UK counties UK countries and regions UK natural features water: inland watermill wooded