Constable’s painting The Cornfield celebrates its bicentenary in 2026. How has it aged? This is a landscape that has acquired iconic status – a marker of national identity -- as a representation of typically English countryside. How has that Englishness been constituted in the painting? And how does The Cornfield (a view of a partly working landscape) speak to current ideas about relationships and tensions between the natural world and the human presence, especially in our age of environmental anxieties?

This lecture was recorded by Malcolm Andrews on 20th January 2026 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London.

Malcolm Andrews is Professor (Emeritus) of Victorian and Visual Studies, University of Kent. He was the Editor of The Dickensian, the journal of the Dickens Fellowship, and a past President of the Dickens Society of America.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/constable-200

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