In his 1813 sketchbook, Constable made three drawings of this cottage – one from the same point of view and two from the opposite direction. Two years later, around 1815, he made the drawing A cottage in a cornfield. He also made two paintings of the scene, including A cottage in a cornfield c. 1816–17.
Constable wrote to Maria Bicknell on 27 August 1815: ‘I live almost wholly in the feilds [sic] and see nobody but the harvest men. The weather has been uncommonly fine though we have had some very high winds that have disconcerted the foliage a great deal.’
Constable drew constantly in small sketchbooks, documenting the structure of views for later paintings. These sketchbooks were his storehouse of images, and he continued to refer to the 1813 and 1814 sketchbooks of Suffolk scenes for the rest of his life. His control of the medium is evident in the numerous ways he handles the pencil. Compare the way he draws clouds with the way he defines the structure of the cottage, and look at how he creates the variety of tones in the foreground with pencil strokes of different density and direction.