It shows a little farmhouse upon the bank of a stream, a spot well
known as "Willy Lott's Cottage." The owner had been born there and he
died there eighty-eight years later, without ever having left his
cottage for four whole days in all those years. Upon the tombstone of
Lott, which is in the Bergholt burial ground, his epitaph calls the
house "Gibeon Farm." It was a favourite scene with Constable, and he
painted it many times from every side. It is the same house we see in
the "Mill Stream," another Constable painting, and again in "Valley
Farm." In this last picture he painted the side opposite to the one
shown in the "Hay Wain."

The stream near which the house stands spreads out into a ford, and in
the picture the hay cart, with two men upon it, is passing through the
ford. The horses are decked out with red tassels. On the right of the
stream there is a broad meadow, golden green in the sunlight, "with
groups of trees casting cool shadows on the grass, and backed by a
distant belt of woodland of rich blues and greens." On the right is a
fisherman, half hidden by a bush, standing near his punt.

Constable wrote to his friend, Fisher, "My picture goes to the Academy
on the tenth." This was written on April 1st, 1821. "It is not so
grand as Tinney's." This shows us, that Constable had not vanity
enough to interfere with his self-criticism. Again in a letter written
to him by a friend: "How does the 'Hay Wain' look now it has got into
your own room again?" adding that he wished to see it there, away from
the Academy which to him was always "like a great pot of boiling
varnish."

Later Fisher wrote: "I have a great desire to possess your 'Wain,' but
I cannot now reach what it is worth;" and he begged Constable not to