It is a curious fact that of the hundreds of surviving oil sketches made by Peter Paul Rubens none can be recognised in the documents relating to and recording the possessions owned by the artist at his death. Any trace of these painted sketches, on which the artist placed such value, has had to be sought among the 'dessins' or 'draughts' grouped together as a single lot in the 'Specification', or catalogue of those works intended for sale after Rubens's death in 1640.1 This col- location does, however, appear consistent with Rubens's own usage in a memorandum of 1614, in which he calls one of his sketches (Fig.l) a 'dissegno colorito'.2 It also conforms to what one finds in Italy throughout the sixteenth and for much of the seventeenth centuries. Monochrome oil sketches by the Carracci (Fig. 2) are called 'disegni' by both Mancini and Malvasia;3 and in 1640 Lanfranco offered to make a 'tela ildisegno' in hopes of winning a much coveted commission.4 Such references and those to the 'disegni ad olio' found in inventories of painters' estates or mentioned in correspondence,5 all suggest that far into the seventeenth century the oil sketch had not yet acquired a name of its own but was regarded as a species of drawing. Though, as the example of Rubens shows, oil sketches were not only made but also sold, this does nevertheless suggest a certain lack of certitude about the idea of sketching in paint. The circumstances under which a clear term emerges, which is the subject of this article, may thus also be taken as marking the moment when the oil sketch acquired its own identity.

John Constable sold relatively few of his paintings during his lifetime, and though most of his major works can be traced to significant collections there is a substantial portion of his oeuvre for which there is little initial provenance. After his death in 1837, many works were disposed of at the studio sale held at Fosters the following year, catalogued with only summary descriptions and sold in bundled lots which were largely bought by dealers. There is not much information about the men and women who subsequently acquired them, who may justly be termed their original owners,' and it is worth focusing on three early collectors of his work who may well be typical of a wider range of rural collectors in the 1840s and 1850s.