The John Dunthornes

John Dunthorne was born in 1770 and became a plumber and glazier in East Bergholt. Six years older than John Constable, John Dunthorne was a talented artist as well as the local plumber, glazier, painter and village constable.  However, he was an unconventional free thinker, suspected of harbouring radical ideas and of fomenting dissent and insurrection in the countryside.  He was an aetheist and like many farm labourers of the time, did not attend church which had become largely a congregation of the middle classes. In addition, it is said he treated his wife badly and fathered a child by someone other than his wife.

The Dunthorne cottage was owned by John Constable’s father and situated close to the Constable house.  As young boys he and John formed a friendship and enjoyed sketching together in the Dedham Vale. John Dunthorne painted  inn signs and funeral hatchments and was asked to help restore a historic seventeenth-century wall-painting in St Mary’s Church, Hadleigh. However, the only painting definitely attributable to John Dunthorne senior is Flatford Lock – see above.

Dunthorne’s devotion to outdoor sketching and his practical knowledge of the materials and techniques of oil painting were a crucial source of encouragement and tuition for Constable who, prior to his move to the Royal Academy in London in 1799, was receiving little of either from anyone else. Constable expressed his deep attachment to Dunthorne, whom he included among ‘those whose love and friendship I most value’.

John Constable’s mother did not approve of John Dunthorne but more importantly neither did Rev Dr Rhudde, Rector of East Bergholt Church nor his grand-daughter Maria Bicknell whom John was anxious to marry. Maria considered Dunthorne too low in social class to be worthy of John Constable’s time and company. 

In order to appease Dr Rhudde’s opposition to him marrying Maria Bicknell, John Constable asked Dunthorne to never call at the Constable home again except in his capacity as plumber.  The break was short-lived because it failed to placate Dr Rhudde and Constable and Dunthorne shared a much more important interest – landscape painting.

John Dunthorne lived in East Bergholt until his death in 1844 at the age of seventy-four. His wife Hannah had four children, the third of whom, John Dunthorne (junior) was born in 1798.