John Constable

“ The artist still demands that nature shall inspire him with her beauty, but he has learned that this beauty is so widely diffused that he may find it anywhere. It was a profound saying of John Constable that there is nothing ugly in nature, for, as he explained it, let the actual form and character of an object be what it would, the angle at which it might be viewed, and the effect upon it of light and colour, could always make it beautiful. ”

“ No one has painted English cloud effects so truthfully, or used them as a compositional quantity with so much skill. Though in looking at nature he was determined to see with his own eyes and not with those of any former master, he found that the science of his predecessors was necessary to him before his sketches could be translated into large pictures. In these pictures his vivid tones and fresh colour are grafted upon the formulae of Claude and Rubens, and it is a common error to regard Constable as an opponent of the great old masters. ”

“ Pupil of the Royal Academy
John Constable was the son of a "yeoman farmer" who meant to make him also a yeoman farmer. Mostly we find that the fathers of our artists had no higher expectations for their sons than to have them take up their own business; to begin as they had, and to end as they expected to. But in John Constable's case, as with all the others, the father's methods of living did not at all please the son, and having most of all a liking for picture-making; young John set himself to planning his own affairs. ”

“ For many years he was priest at Swinnerton in Staffordshire, the residence of the Fitzherbert family. He was also declared rector of the jesuit ‘college’ or district of St. Chad on 16 July 1735 (Foley, Records, vii. 159) . In the parish register of Swinnerton is this entry:—‘1743–4, March 28, buried Mr. John Constable, from Mr. Fitzherbert's’ (ib. iii. 207) . In Oliver's opinion Constable is unquestionably entitled to rank among the ablest and best informed men in the English province. ”

“ Thus, at the time of Constable's birth, while art on the Continent had practically ceased to exist, there were three distinct schools of landscape-painting in England to guide a rising artist. The classical tradition had been ably sustained by the refined taste and majestic genius of Wilson; the princely realism of Rubens had turned to delicate romance in the hands of Gainsborough; while water-colour, though still in its childhood, was already giving indications of its capacity. ”

“ Sir Ralph Evers and Sir George Conyers were reputed to have taken refuge in Scarborough. Sir Ralph Ellerkar the elder, and Sir John Constable were holding Hull for the [Pg 128] king. These places must at once be seized. Stapleton rode down from Weighton to Hull gate, and summoned the town. The mayor was for yielding at once; he had no men, he said, no meat, no money, no horse or harness,—resistance was impossible. Ellerkar and Constable, however, would not hear of surrender. Constable replied that he would rather die with honesty than live with shame ”

“ It is only necessary to compare his work with that of his predecessors or contemporaries, to realize how vast was the revolution that he initiated, more especially in the matter of colour, which he treated with a combination of frankness and temperance as yet unsurpassed. No man has hitherto combined so much of that beauty of aspect which we all admire in the Art of the past, with so large a measure of the wind and sunshine which have become the condition of the painting of our own day. ”

“ Constable I believe to have been truly a great man and in all respects a gentleman: as different in mental qualities as he was in physical dignity from the bounding brothers of Kelso. Who can fail to admit the genius of the man who foresaw the value of the Waverley Novels, and who provided Scott with the greatest consolation of his last sad years—the magnum opus of the collected edition, and thus enabled him to carry out his romantic resolve to pay the so-called debts to the full? John Ballantyne told Lockhart a good story of Constable's fondness for bestowing nicknames. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He was an intelligent man, and devoted all his spare time to painting landscapes. His cottage was close to the house of Golding Constable, and the latter's son, John Constable (1776–1837) [q. v.] , early formed an intimacy with Dunthorne, and it was in Dunthorne's little house, and in his companionship, that Constable laid the foundations of his future great career as a landscape-painter. Dunthorne continued to live at East Bergholt until his death, on 19 Oct. 1844, at the age of seventy-four. By his wife Hannah he had four children, the third of whom was John Dunthorne, jun. ”

“ In a sketch unity can easily be obtained by devices that are impossible in large pictures, where the composition has to be built up by elaborate machinery. Feeling that he could not as yet control this machinery, Constable set himself to learn its secrets by returning to the study of Reynolds and others of the old masters. His experiments in landscape were for a time confined to modest proportions, and he did not begin to paint on a large scale until he had assured himself of the soundness of his principles of work. ”

“ As a young man Constable certainly may not have been rich, but he was never reduced to any desperate straits, and later by various bequests inherited nearly £30,000. If his art was too original to command the ready sale which attends the commercial painter who has learned to paint down to the level of the public, he was at least admired and respected by a fair number of his brother-artists, he was a regular exhibitor at the Academy, and his success on the Continent was sufficiently spontaneous and remarkable to have satisfied any ambition. ”

“ From 1806 to 1809 Constable was frequently engaged in painting portraits or in copying portraits by Reynolds and Hoppner. The effect on his landscape was great. He learned how to construct an oil painting, and the efforts of the next few years were devoted to combining this knowledge with his innate love of the fresh colour of nature. ”

“ As already indicated, the mature art of Constable did not develop till after the year 1811, when he began to combine the fresh colour of nature, which he had learned to depict by working in the open air, with the art of making a picture, which he had learned from painting portraits and copying those of other masters. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nowhere else can Constable’s art be studied completely or safely, since forgeries and imitations are common and have crept into the Louvre and other famous galleries. Much of the power of his work survives in the noble series of mezzotints made after his sketches by David Lucas, and first issued in 1833. Though a commercial failure at the time of publication, this English Landscape series is now deservedly prized, as are the other plates which Lucas engraved after Constable. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He resigned just before the union. 36 ⁠for 1784 read 1780 30 i 15 f.e. Conolly, William: after of which he insert was elected member for Donegal borough 1692-3 and 1695-9, and for co. Londonderry 1703 till death. He 5 f.e. ⁠after revenues insert (1709-10 and 1714 till death) 33 ii 27 Constable, Archibald: after Edinburgh.' insert A son, John Constable (d. 1892) , was principal of the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, from 1859 to 1880, and afterwards rector of Marston Bigot, near Frome. ”

“ To accuse him of want of veneration for Nature is even more absurdly false, and may be best answered in Constable's own words. In the course of the last of his lectures on Landscape, delivered the year before his death, he says: "The young painter who, regardless of present popularity, would leave a name behind him, must become the patient pupil of Nature.... The landscape painter must walk in the fields with a humble mind. No arrogant man was ever permitted to see Nature in all her beauty. ”

“ The realism, however, is marked by a certain incoherence of design and colour, which prevents such work from being artistic, and the rusticity has become mechanical from lack of that intimacy and affection which made Constable the first true painter of the country.
The best work done in England of recent years has been done by the painters who have inherited the tradition of Constable indirectly through the science of Monet or the poetry of Corot. Such work may not be great art, but it is frequently good art, for its primary impulse has been the creation of something beautiful. ”

“ Leslie's admirable biography must always remain the great authority on Constable's personal history, yet no book, however accurate and sympathetic, which dates from the forties, could foresee the enormous change which has taken place in landscape painting since Constable's death. Whatever his responsibility for the artistic revolution with which his name is associated, Constable undoubtedly stands at the parting of the ways between the old masters and the moderns, for he was the first to prove that a landscape might be a good picture, and also be really like nature. ”

“ John therefore took a convenient opportunity to mention the new scheme as if casually—so as to give Constable the impression (p. 204) that the author's purpose was to divide the second series also between his old rival in Albemarle Street, of whom his jealousy was always sensitive, and his neighbor Blackwood, whom, if there had been no other grudge, the recent conduct and rapidly increasing sale of his Magazine would have been sufficient to make Constable hate with a perfect hatred. ”

“ Constable was also publisher of the Edinburgh Review, to which Scott had contributed many articles. But now Scott set up the firm of 'John Ballantyne and Co.' in direct competition with Constable. Jeffrey's review of Marmion in the Edinburgh and the offence taken by Scott at the language of Constable's partner are suggested as the special occasions of the breach. But there were other and deeper reasons. Scott's political zeal was at this time becoming militant. The beginning of the Peninsular war had stimulated party passions. ”

“ In a short abstract such as this it is impossible to give a fair impression of the painter's character, of the simplicity and earnestness of his nature, of the kindness of his heart, and the sense of humour which together served to gain the affection of those with whom he came in contact, even more than his enthusiasm for his art, and the patience, originality, and skill with which he practised it. In Leslie's delightful pages Constable the man is revealed as clearly as Constable the painter, and it is difficult to say which of the two is the more attractive. ”

“ Attention has already been called to the finest of his many sketches of the composition. The majestic Cenotaph in the National Gallery, a view of the monument to Reynolds in the grounds at Coleorton, was Constable's principal Academy picture of 1836. The sketch for it, probably made during the painter's visit to Sir George Beaumont in 1823, is at Kensington. At Kensington, too, may be seen Constable's other Academy exhibit of 1836, a large water-colour of Stonehenge, seen under a tremendous effect of storm. ”

“ At home he practised painting from nature in company with John Dunthorne, a plumber and glazier, an ingenious and original man, who shared the boy's enthusiasm for art. As in the case of Crome, who, as a boy, was apprenticed for seven years to a coach, house, and sign painter, this early acquaintance with men who used paint in the broadest and simplest manner was doubtless of much use in saving Constable from any pettiness or timidity in the handling of pigment. ”