Sean Scully Talk at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 28 October

13 August 2026

On 28 October, renowned British painter Sean Scully joins the Yale Center for British Art for an intimate conversation with Martina Droth, Paul Mellon Director, YCBA, about his recently discovered affinities with John Constable while also offering insights and reflections on his own artistic practice.

Scully moved to Hampstead in 2021—more than two hundred years after Constable moved there in 1819. For two years Scully walked across the same expanse of Hampstead Heath that became such an important subject in Constable’s art to get to his studio each day.

In Constable, the Dublin-born Scully recognizes a kindred artistic spirit. Fostered under the same dark, wet light, theirs is a shared sense of materiality, with a color sense that is often tonal. The horizon lines of land, sea, and sky are an enduring theme for both—Constable considered sky to be “the chief organ of sentiment” in a painting—and it is through their mutual interest in nature, in particular the shadows in nature, that their work evokes emotion.

Wednesday, October 28, 2026, 5–6 pm ET
Yale Center for British Art, Lecture Hall

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Image: Portrait of Sean Scully at Philadelphia Museum of Art © Sean Scully, Courtesy the Artist, Photography by Joseph Hu