Charles John Holmes

“ The small study for The Valley Farm deserves special attention for the beauty of its colour, and an air of dignity and repose unusual with the master during his last years. The Study of Tree Stems might almost come from the hand of Manet, so brilliant and natural is the blaze of the sunlight, so frank is the treatment of the cool shadows. The furious sepia studies of buildings and trees at Dedham and Bergholt may also be assigned to this period. The View of Hampstead Heath, which Constable exhibited at the Academy of 1830, is probably identical with the picture in the National Gallery. ”

“ The logical result of such experiments is scientific imitation rather than Art, and, though a longer life might have enabled Constable to become even more modern than he is, it is doubtful whether he would have added to his fame as an artist.
The actual scope of his achievement is already wide enough. In early life his aim had been to find out how far the cool fresh colours of the skies and streams and fields and trees of his beloved Suffolk could be suggested within the then accepted limits of oil-painting. ”

“ All that we are shown is a vision of morning when the air is still dim with the mist that drifts up slowly from the valleys to melt before the rising sun, which is still low down on the horizon, so that the trees cast only obscure shadows over the sloping fields. ”

“ Portrait-painting is good practice for a landscape painter, both because it forces him to treat a simple subject with close attention, and because it is the branch of art which has the most sound and definite technical traditions. ”

“ To blame him for not anticipating the feeling for a less conventional spacing, which has been stimulated during the last forty years by the discovery of the art of Japan, would be as unfair as to insist on the fact that his technique is less supremely certain or his taste less intensely sensitive than that of the greatest artists of the past. ”

“ He found, as the moderns have found, that this devotion was incompatible with the traditional handling of oil-paint—with smooth shapely brushwork passing by adroit transitions into a harmonious foundation of broken grey or brown, and afterwards mellowed by a warm glaze. To suggest the shimmer of wet grass and leaves in sunlight, or the intense brightness of the summer sky, he had to use paint fresh from the tube, loading parts of his canvas with spots and masses of pure pigment, so that no single atom of illumination might be lost. ”

“ The evidence of Constable's later sketches is more decisive. The studies made after the painter's fiftieth year are loose hasty memoranda, done anyhow. A few, it is true, are finished carefully, but they are the exceptions. As a rule, the passion for brightness, movement, and glitter becomes increasingly predominant, to the exclusion of graver artistic qualities, till at times the result is strikingly modern. The Kensington study of a tree stem surrounded by blazing sunlight has already been mentioned as an anticipation of Manet. ”

“ The small pencil study of Netley Abbey, belonging to the year 1816, seems to have been used by Constable for one of the few etchings by him of which proofs still remain. He had experimented with etching in the days of his friendship with "Antiquity" Smith, but acquired little or no mastery of the medium. One print in the British Museum, apparently a scene near Salisbury, is quite respectable amateur's work; but the Netley Abbey, which must have been done at a time when his painting was strong and sound, is an utterly feeble and worthless production. ”

“ His method, in fact, was almost identical with that of our modern scientific painters, except in one important respect.
The essential difference is that Constable retained to the last his sound foundation in monochrome. Paintings like The Leaping Horse, The Valley Farm, and The Cenotaph, with all their splashing and spotting and scraping and loading, have thus a certain unity and dignity, which enables them to hang by the side of the paintings of the old masters, without looking garish or undecided. ”

“ He had for many years employed such methods in sketching to catch the glitter and freshness which he admired in nature, and had often used them in parts of large pictures to get some particular effect, but The Hampstead Heath is one of the first pictures in which they actually predominate. His large Academy picture of 1828, an upright view of Dedham Vale, is interesting because it is identical in design with the Kensington sketch of 1802, and shows that little or no change had taken place in the painter's affection for his native Suffolk. It was admirably mezzotinted by Lucas on a large scale. ”

“ The four pen-drawings of cottages at South Kensington, dated 1796, are hardly the kind of thing one expects from a young man of twenty who proposes to take up art seriously. Three years later he became a student at the Academy, and worked hard at copying such pictures by recognised masters as he came across—Ruysdael, Annibale Carracci, Richard Wilson, Sir George Beaumont, Claude, and drawings by Girtin. ”

“ The sketches at Kensington and Burlington House show that Constable, while painting these large pictures in oil, was not neglecting the study of natural detail. Some of his best pencil-drawings of trees belong to the year 1820, and in the following two years he spent much time in painting skies from nature. These studies cannot claim to be regarded as pictures, but in the expression of natural colour, motion, and luminosity they can hardly be surpassed. ”

“ It is little more than a feeble imitation of West's religious works, and shows that at the age of twenty-eight Constable was quite unable to paint a figure subject decently. Yet, if the little picture in the National Gallery, On Barnes Common, belongs to this period, as its Dutch technique would suggest, the artist was already showing in what direction his talent really lay. Constable is still a student, and a student of the old masters, but he has learned something about traditional methods of work. ”

“ To the same period we may assign the beautiful picture. At East Bergholt, Suffolk—Dawn, in the possession of Mr. G. A. Phillips. One might think it only an experiment in the manner of Gainsborough, were it not that the harmonies in warm brown and sober green which the older master handled so perfectly, are replaced by a cooler scheme of colour like that of a dusky aquamarine. The brushwork is swift and free, and no attempt is made to give a literal portrait of the Suffolk hillside with its trim hedges and scattered elms. ”

“ The Nayland picture, Christ Blessing the Elements, is freely and broadly treated in a scheme of deep liquid colour, toned with a rich warm glaze, which from the size and nature of the cracks must have contained a large proportion of asphaltum. The general appearance of the work, in fact, is far more like Lawrence than Constable. ”

“ A more critical age will doubtless do Lucas proper justice, and give him his true place among the masters of British Engraving. Constable's share in the credit for the "English Landscape Scenery" may be assessed by a simple experiment. Charles Turner made an excellent little mezzotint of Rembrandt's noble Mill, now in the possession of Lord Lansdowne. ”