As Professor Judith Okely notes (Letters, 2 July), John Constable does indeed include a Gypsy woman and her baby in his 1828 painting of the Vale of Dedham, but this is unlikely to be as a sign of sympathy. Constable had no time for agricultural labourers, whom he regarded as potential agitators and troublemakers, and even less for Travellers. It is true that his Gypsy is in the foreground of his composition, but this only highlights her isolation from the community signified by the village in the background.

An important formal source for Constable’s picture is Claude’s Hagar and the Angel, and it may be that the links between the two works go beyond structural similarity. The Bible tells that Hagar became pregnant by Abraham, but left his house after an understandable row with Abraham’s childless wife Sarah. The angel is sent to require Hagar’s return to her previous abode (submission to the established authority). I doubt the reactionary Constable (a natural Brexiteer “avant la lettre”) would have been praising the Gypsy’s right to choose her own lifestyle; rather he would have been intimating the need for her to live according to the dictates of her “betters”.

Ed Lilley

Bristol

• Had the picture of Harlow Market Square that David Reed disparages (Letters, 29 June) been taken on the day it appeared, it would have looked very different. The town centre was filled with colourful stalls representing the community under the banner of Harlow Showcase. And his first sentence is an insult to the memory of master planner Sir Frederick Gibberd and his colleagues on Harlow Development Corporation. Of course a town built during the genuine austerity postwar years could not compete with, say, Nash’s Bath terraces or Brussels’ Grande Place. (Incidentally, the clock in the picture commemorates the corporation’s first general manager, Eric Adams.) But it did provide well-built, affordable, homes in a clean and green environment, together with an amazingly rich cultural life. For the working classes who moved to Harlow from east London in the 50s, 60s and 70s – many of them, or their descendants, are still in those houses – it was a transformation. Today, like many other urban areas, Harlow has problems. The privatisation of the town’s assets, which should have been devolved to the community when the corporation completed its work, by the Thatcher government, the sale of council houses ditto, and the further cuts by more recent Tory governments, have made life generally much harder for everyone. But it is still a great place to live. At this time of year it is especially beautiful, with green everywhere. And as “Sculpture Town”, it is unique.

Frank Jackson

Harlow, Essex

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