Flatford Mill (Scene on a Navigable River) painting during his lifetime, and as a result it became part of the inheritance to his daughter Isabel. In 1888, she bequeathed it on behalf of herself, her sister Maria Louise and their brother Lionel Bicknell to The Tate gallery in London, where it has been displayed ever since. Flatford Mill (Scene on a Navigable River) Flatford Mill (Scene on a Navigable River) is an oil painting by English artist John Constable, painted in 1816. It is Constable's largest exhibition canvas to be painted mainly outdoors, the first of his large "six-foot" paintings, and the first in the "Stour series"
John Bicknell attribution is accepted also by modern scholarship. It was supported soon after Bicknell's death, by William Seward, who knew Bicknell and introduced James Boswell to him, in 1786. It was endorsed by Francis Douce and John Thomas Smith. Seward also identified a number of short satirical pieces in newspapers, that had been attributed to George Steevens, to Bicknell. Bicknell on 16 April 1784 married, at St Philip's Church, Birmingham, Sabrina Sidney, the girl he had selected with Thomas Day at Shrewsbury about 15 years earlier. She had spent some time living with Bicknell's mother. After Day dropped his plan to