Constable’s greatest painting a ‘contested landscape’? They’ll be cancelling it next…

The National Gallery has decried one of its most revered canvases, ‘The Hay Wain’, for ignoring the social problems that plagued rural Britain in the 1820s. What’s got in to art curators, asks Chris Blackhurst

Just Stop Oil activists glue themselves to Constable’s ‘The Hay Wain’ in the National Gallery, after doctoring the bucolic landscape, in July 2022 (AFP/Getty)

Driving down the A303, as I did recently, I found it impossible not to be struck by the beauty that is forever England. The rolling hills, the languid, pastoral vista opening up time and again.

Over there is a tractor chugging along, up and down. It’s all so peaceful. If I was an artist, I’d be tempted to paint the scene.

Wait, might I be guilty of falsely representing the reality – that the farmer is thinking of turning his fields over to solar panels, much in demand because the world is frying; the horrible, grasping supermarket constantly knocks him down on price of his crop; the tractor driver can’t afford anywhere to live because the area is overrun with London second-homers and Airbnbs; and he and his wife were thinking of having a third child but now they’re not sure because the Labour government says it won’t scrap the two-child benefit cap? And isn’t that Salisbury Plain in the distance, where the army trains – and that’s a Chinook in the sky, and there’s a war on…

Still, I’d get out the oils anyway and give it a go. Who knows, it might be a great work, revered in years to come, provided the planet survives that long.

It’s being so cheerful that keeps me going. It could be worse, I could be a total misery and be employed at the National Gallery.

There, I will look at works that give joy to millions but I will see them in a different light – as an indulgence, ignoring the hell that people at the time, when the painter blithely sat down and leisurely erected their easel, were going through.

Take John Constable’s The Hay Wain. His depiction of idyllic rural Suffolk is one of the most adored, recognised and copied paintings ever. The National Gallery should be thrilled to have it.

Oh no. The commissars who populate its offices hate his bucolic representation. So much so that, as they rehang it, they want to stress the poverty and turmoil that Constable ignored. In the words of Dr Mary McMahon, the National Gallery’s curator: “We want to talk about everything that has not been included in this painting.”

I don’t know Dr McMahon, so I can only surmise that she gets her kicks with creations that are “honest”. Give her a wall-to-wall exhibition of Lowry any day, with his factory chimneys, greys, lots of grey, and huddled, bent-over sticks for people. For good measure, each visitor could receive a free copy of The Road To Wigan Pier, just to give them a lift.

Apparently, Constable’s famous 1821 cart in the river is now a “contested” landscape in that, she says, “the British landscape was a contested space. We have the Corn Laws, we are coming out of the Napoleonic Wars, people are losing their land to enclosure.”

John, how could you, you little gaslighter you? What were you thinking of? No matter that what you saw was exactly as you saw it. Did you not see the beggars by Willy Lott’s cottage and the veteran on crutches staring into the water?

The Tate Britain last year began cancelling the likes of William Hogarth and hanging works linked to the British empire with labels explaining the background of racism, colonialism and the slave trade. Now this.

Next, we will be required to sit an exam before we leave, asking us if we completely understood what we’ve witnessed, whether we get “the context”. Don’t for a second imagine going to a gallery is to have a pleasurable experience. That is so over. That sort of behaviour is for Trumpian brutalists. No. We, the thought police, want to ensure you wallow in misery and realise the cruelty of your fellow humans.

We’re opening up a whole new type of appreciation. It’s not about what’s in front of you but what isn’t. It’s genius. Crowds will flock back. They thought they knew The Hay Wain. Oh no.

It’s not enough, apparently, to say that you love The Hay Wain and view Constable as one of Britain’s finest. That’s to disregard the fact he was a blinkered bigot, and that makes him no good at all.

There’s no end to the wokery. Soon, they will stop repeating Dad’s Army because Captain Mainwaring makes no reference to the Holocaust. It’s astonishing really that Would I Lie To You? is still allowed since it teaches folk to tell barefaced porkies. You find both programmes funny? How dare you. A session with Dr Mary at the National will soon put you straight.