Kitchen garden at Golding Constable’s house c. 1814 is one of two carefully detailed drawings that Constable may have exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1815. Constable depicted the garden and fields at the back of his family home, a place he described to Maria Bicknell as ‘the sweet feilds [sic] where we have passed so many happy hours together’. In the foreground he drew the flower garden with the central circular bed, which he associated with his mother, and the adjacent kitchen garden that he connected with his father. He included the figure of a woman (perhaps his mother) in the flower garden, and two gardeners tending the rows of vegetables in the kitchen garden. On the left he drew his father’s barn, and on the extreme right he depicted the rectory where Maria stayed with her grandfather, Dr Rhudde. Beyond lie Golding Constable’s fields and, on the horizon, his windmill on East Bergholt Common. Constable drew the scene looking down from a first-floor window at the back of the house. Constable was a consummate draughtsman, using pencil in a variety of ways to capture the structure of the landscape. In his earlier drawings, such as this one, he reproduced the natural appearance of the garden in a detailed and descriptive way. Later drawings were looser and more expressive, and were often enhanced with watercolour washes. This looser style is also evident in his later oil paintings. Constable was concerned with facts of nature, but because of his personal connections and deep affection for the subject of this work, he created an emotionally charged scene. In this ordered and harmonious landscape he expressed his pleasure in a successful and well-organised farm. Questions • Where is the vanishing point in this composition? • Compare this drawing with the drawing A cottage in a cornfield c. 1815, (click on 'view related work' beneath small image on the left) and discuss the purpose and technique of each.