Hadleigh Castle: Large Plate
1830–32
Medium
Mezzotint; proof before letters
Dimensions
Plate: 10 7/8 × 14 3/4 in. (27.6 × 37.5 cm) Sheet: 11 1/4 × 15 1/8 in. (28.6 × 38.4 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1927
Accession Number
27.4.62
Tags
Art Historical Context
Behold the evocative *Hadleigh Castle: Large Plate*, a mezzotint proof created between 1830 and 1832 by engraver David Lucas after John Constable's monumental 1829 oil painting. This print captures the dramatic ruins of Hadleigh Castle on England's Essex coast, perched precariously above the stormy Thames estuary. Constable, a master of Romantic landscape painting, used the crumbling 13th-century fortress to meditate on nature's sublime power and the fleeting nature of human endeavors—a theme resonant in the turbulent era following the Napoleonic Wars. Lucas's mezzotint technique, a labor-int...
About the Artist
David Lucas|John Constable · 1802–1881
**David Lucas (1802–1881)** David Lucas was born in 1802 in Geddington Chase, Northamptonshire, the son of a farmer.) A chance encounter in 1820 led him to become a pupil of the renowned engraver Samuel William Reynolds, under whom he apprenticed in London until 1827, mastering the art of mezzotint engraving.) By 1827, Lucas had published his first mezzotints, showcasing his precocious talent for...