Letters from former bishop to Constable go on sale

The documents were recently found in storage in a loft

Letters written by a former Bishop of Salisbury to the artist John Constable are to be sold at auction.

John Fisher, Bishop of Salisbury from 1803 until his death in 1825, was a key patron and close friend of Constable, and commissioned him to paint the famous 1823 landscape of Salisbury Cathedral.

The letters are among hundreds of lots in a catalogue of Old Masters and 19th Century art for sale at Chiswick Auctions in London on 18 September.

The papers, expected to fetch between £3,000 to £5,000, were recently found together in storage in a loft.

Constable painted Salisbury Cathedral from different viewpoints

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

The Fishers and the Constables were said to be so close that Constable's 1943 biographer, Charles Robert Leslie, based much of his work on correspondence between the families.

The Bishop, a keen amateur artist himself, presided at Constable's wedding.

The Salisbury Cathedral painting he commissioned from Constable is on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

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

'Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishops Grounds' is one of Constable's most celebrated works

Other items included in the sale include a handwritten Fisher family tree, two etchings by Constable's second son, and family diaries.

Two drawings from the private collection of the family of art historian, Ronald Brymer Beckett, who published eight volumes of the edited Correspondence of John Constable, as well as Constable and the Fishers: The Record of a Friendship, will also go on sale.