Building Gallery

Building the HTP warehouse on Malpas Road, Truro, Cornwall. Around 1911

Warehouse being built for HTP (Hosken, Trevithick and Polkinhorn), who were agricultural and grain merchants. View of the frame of the building with scaffolding and gangs of workers, including possibly a supervisor wearing a bowler hat in the centre of the photograph. Some workers are standing precariously on the top girder and many are holding the tools of their trade. The architect was Alfred J. Cornelius and the warehouse was completed in 1911. The building was later converted into 9 apartments as part of the Poltisco Wharf development. Photographer: Arthur William Jordan

© From the collection of the RIC

House in the Trees at Hampstead, John Constable (1776-1837)

Oil on board, English School, 1821. John Constable was the son of wealthy miller in Bergholt, Suffolk. His family did not approve of his vocation as an artist but he joined the Royal Academy Schools as a student in 1799. From 1802 until around 1820 his paintings mostly featured the landscape of Suffolk, a number of which were made by sketching in oils, which had been popular among young English landscape artists since before 1800. Constable took this quick and direct method of painting and developed it into a tool of great range and refinement. The most famous example of work from this Suffolk-based phase is The Hay Wain (1821), which was in fact painted in the studio. Constable was elected to the Royal Academy in 1819 and from then onwards based himself in London and Hampstead. In 1829 he was made a full Academician and the last years of his life were spent consolidating his reputation as one of Britain's foremost landscape painters. House in the Trees at Hampstead is a study of trees made against the sky and it is one of several that the artist made shortly after he settled permanently in Hampstead with his family. It is unclear whether these sketches resulted in a finished work or whether he employed the tree and cloud studies in these sketches for a painting somewhere else

© RIC

Beating the Bounds, Truro, Cornwall. 1912

The Mayor and his party at Sunny Corner during the ceremony of Beating the Bounds. Beating the Bounds is an old tradition whereby officials of the parish share their knowledge of the boundaries of their territory. Sometimes prayers would be offered for the protection of the fields and land, and to bless the land to ensure fertility. Photographer: Unknown

© From the collection of the RIC