The small rural American city where an oil sketch by John Constable hid for decades in plain view
It was only in 2017 that auction-house specialists began to suspect that there may be more to the painting.
Jefferson, a small city in rural east Texas, US, is an unexpected place for an artistic discovery. Yet, it was there that an oil sketch by John Constable hid for decades in plain view. In 1970, the Jefferson Historical Society and Museum received from New York’s Newhouse Galleries what was then thought to be ‘the large sketch for a painting now in the National Gallery in London’, The Cornfield. Later, however, it was downgraded to one of the many copies of the Constable landscape — until 2017, when the museum requested an appraisal of its collection and auction-house specialists began suspecting there may be more to it.
Scientific tests have since revealed that materials and techniques showed ‘complete consistency’ with Constable’s work and the picture is now thought to have been the full-scale sketch of The Cornfield, about 1820–26, something the painter had done for all his six-footers, but which had been thought not to exist for this particular 4ft 8in by 4ft view of a Suffolk summer.
‘Previous commentators have talked at length about how Constable leapt from the small, preliminary works for The Cornfield directly to the finished painting,’ wrote in the catalogue painting conservator Sarah Cove, founder of the Constable Research Project and one of the two experts who appraised the painting, together with former Tate curator Anne Lyles. ‘Since the rediscovery of the full-size sketch, we now know that is incorrect.’
The picture will be the centrepiece of Heritage Auctions's Important European Art sale on June 5
This feature first appeared in the May 13, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.
