A Haunch of a Countess

Helmingham Hall and its adjacent deer park in Suffolk, England, about 20 miles north of John Constable’s home territory of East Bergholt, provided the artist with creative, bodily and economic sustenance from 1800 until his death in 1837. This chapter proposes an alternative ecology of Constable’s work that points toward a richer reading of place by insisting on the primacy and agency of its nonhuman inhabitants. The original title of Constable’s painting triangulates the relationship between artist, aristocrat and animal and moves it beyond the subject/object, artist/animal, patron/artist binaries of power. Constable’s titular reference also links him directly to the Countess of Dysart and the deer park: denoting the person who gave him venison and the place from which it originated. Deer parks resemble zoos in their confinement, objectification and ownership of wild animals, yet are private rather than public spaces.