Letters from former bishop to artist sold at auction

The archive was created by a descendant of John Bishop

Letters written by a former Bishop of Salisbury to the artist John Constable have sold for £3,780 at auction.

John Fisher, who held the position from 1803 until his death in 1825, was one of Constable's closest friends and patrons.

The previously unknown letter - which is dated 19 February 1813 - was found in a storage loft in Wales. It mentions plans of meeting in Salisbury and asks Constable gift Fisher's sister with artwork.

An academic based in the UK purchased the letter at Chiswick Auctions.

The sale also included a monochrome watercolour wash view of the church at Osmington, Dorset, two etchings by Constable's son, Charles Golding Constable, diaries and a handwritten family tree.

They all form part of an archive created by a descendant of Mr Fisher.

John Constable's painting of Salisbury Cathedral

The Fishers and Constables were said to be so close that much of Constable's 1943 biography by Charles Robert Leslie was based on correspondence between the two families.

Mr Fisher, who was also a keen amateur artist, commissioned Constable's famous landscape of Salisbury Cathedral in 1823.

The piece is now at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

When Mr Fisher died in 1825, Constable commemorated him in a painting which depicts a rainbow alighting on Leaden Hall in Cathedral Close, where he lived in Salisbury.