The Lock
Not on view
A lock-keeper opens the gates of Flatford Lock in the foreground to lower the water level for a barge that waits at right. The engraver Lucas captured a scene that Constable knew intimately, centered on the broad meadows of Dedham Vale and distant tower of Dedham Church. The print reproduces one of Constable's famous "six-footer" paintings, shown at the Royal Academy in 1824. Soon after the latter sold on opening day, the engraver Samuel William Reynolds proposed a related print, but it would not be completed for a decade. In the spring of 1832, Reynolds' pupil David Lucas began the engraving which was then published in 1834. Lucas had worked closely with Constable between 1830-32 on a series of twenty-two smaller mezzotints known collectively as "English Landscape," so he was well prepared for the more ambitious scale of "The Lock."
