John Constable

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John Constable (1776-06-11 – 1837-03-31) was an English Romantic painter. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for his landscape paintings of Dedham Vale, the area surrounding his home.

Contents 1 Sourced 2 Unsourced 3 About John Constable 4 External links

[edit] Sourced

• And however one's mind may be elevated, and kept us to what is excellent, by the works of the Great Masters — still Nature is the fountain's head, the source from whence all originally must spring — and should an artist continue his practice without referring to nature he must soon form a manner, & be reduced to the same deplorable situation as the French painter mentioned by Sir J. Reynolds, who told him that he had long ceased to look at nature for she only put him out.

  For the last two years I have been running after pictures, and seeking the truth at second hand. I have not endeavoured to represent nature with the same elevation of mind — but have neither endeavoured to make my performances look as if really executed by other men.

  I am come to a determination to make no idle visits this summer, nor to give up my time to common-place people. I shall return to Bergholt, where I shall make some laborious studies from nature — and I shall endeavour to get a pure and unaffected manner of representing the scenes that may employ me.

  • Letter to John Dunthorne (1802-05-29), from John Constable's Correspondence, ed. R.B. Beckett, (Ipswich, Suffolk Records Society, 1962-1970), part 2, pp. 31-32

• There is room enough for a natural painture. The great vice of the present day is bravura, an attempt to do something beyond the truth. In endeavouring to do something better than well, they do what in reality is good for nothing. Fashion always had, & will have, its day — but truth (in all things) only will last, and can only have just claims on posterity.
  • Letter to John Dunthorne (1802-05-29), from John Constable's Correspondence, part 2, pp. 31-32

• I do not consider myself at work without I am before a six-foot canvas.
  • Letter to Rev. John Fisher (1821-10-23) from John Constable's Correspondence, ed. R.B. Beckett, (Ipswich, Suffolk Records Society, 1962-1970), part 6, pp. 76-78

• The sky is the "source of light" in Nature — and governs everything. Even our common observations on the weather of every day, are suggested by them but it does not occur to us. Their difficulty in painting both as to composition and execution is very great, because with all their brilliancy and consequence, they ought not to come forward or be hardly thought about in a picture — any more than extreme distances are.
  • Letter to Rev. John Fisher (1821-10-23), from John Constable's Correspondence, part 6, pp. 76-78

• I know very well what I am about, & that my skies have not been neglected, though they often failed in execution — and often, no doubt, from an over-anxiety about them — which will alone destroy that easy appearance which nature always has — in all her movements.
  • Letter to Rev. John Fisher (1821-10-23), from John Constable's Correspondence, part 6, pp. 76-78

• But the sound of water escaping from mill-dams, &c., willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork, I love such things. Shakespeare could make everything poetical; he tells us of poor Tom's haunts among "sheep cotes and mills."

  As long as I do paint, I shall never cease to paint such places. They have always been my delight.

  • Letter to Rev. John Fisher (1821-10-23), from John Constable's Correspondence, part 6, pp. 76-78

• Still I should paint my own places best; painting is with me but another word for feeling, and I associate "my careless boyhood" with all that lies on the banks of the Stour; those scenes made me a painter, and I am grateful; that is, I had often thought of pictures of them before ever I touched a pencil.
  • Letter to Rev. John Fisher (1821-10-23), from John Constable's Correspondence, part 6, pp. 76-78

• A sketch (of a picture) will not serve more than one state of mind & will not serve to drink at again & again — in a sketch there is nothing but the one state of mind — that which you were in at the time.
  • Letter to Rev. John Fisher (1823-11-02), from John Constable's Correspondence, ed. R.B. Beckett, (Ipswich, Suffolk Records Society, 1962-1970), part 6, pp. 142-143

• What a sad thing it is that this lovely art — is so wrested to its own destruction — only used to blind our eyes and senses from seeing the sun shine, the feilds [sic] bloom, the trees blossom, & to hear the foliage rustle — and old black rubbed-out dirty bits of canvas, to take the place of God's own works.
  • Letter to C.R. Leslie (1833-02-13), from John Constable's Correspondence, ed. R.B. Beckett, (Ipswich, Suffolk Records Society, 1962-1970), part 3, p. 94

• I ought to respect myself for my friends' sake, and my children's. It is time, at fifty-six, to begin, at least, to know oneself, — and I do know what I am not, and your regard for me has at least awakened me to believe in the possibility that I may yet make some impression with my "light" — my "dews" — my "breezes" — my bloom and freshness, — no one of which qualities has yet been perfected on the canvas of any painter in the world.
  • Letter to C.R. Leslie (March 1833), The Letters of John Constable, R.A. to C. R. Leslie, R.A. 1826-1837 (Constable & Co., 1931), p. 104

• My canvas soothes me into forgetfulness of the scene of turmoil and folly — and worse — of the scene around me. Every gleam of sunshine is blighted to me in the art at least. Can it therefore be wondered at that I paint continual storms? "Tempest o'er tempest roll'd" — still the "darkness" is majestic.
  • Letter to C.R. Leslie (1834), John Constable's Correspondence, ed. R.B. Beckett, (Ipswich, Suffolk Records Society, 1962-1970), vol. 3, p. 122; also quoted in Hugh Honour, Romanticism (Westview Press, 1979, ISBN 0-064-30089-7), ch. 3, p. 91

• I am anxious that the world should be inclined to look to painters for information about painting. I hope to show that ours is a regularly taught profession; that it is scientific as well as poetic; that imagination alone never did, and never can, produce works that are to stand by a comparison with realities.
  • "The History of Landscape Painting," first lecture, Royal Institution (1836-05-26), from notes taken by C.R. Leslie

• We see nothing truly till we understand it.
  • "The History of Landscape Painting," third lecture, Royal Institution (1836-06-09)

• Painting is a science and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature. Why, then, may not a landscape be considered as a branch of natural philosophy, of which pictures are but experiments?
  • "The History of Landscape Painting," fourth lecture, Royal Institution (1836-06-16), from John Constable's Discourses, ed. R.B. Beckett, (Ipswich, Suffolk Records Society, 1970), p. 69.

• The attempt to revive styles that have existed in former ages, may for a time appear to be successful, but experience may now surely teach us its impossibility. I might put on a suit of Claude Lorraine's clothes and walk into the street, and the many who knew Claude but slightly would pull off their hats to me, but I should at last meet with some one, more intimately acquainted with him, who would expose me to the contempt I merited.

  It is thus in all the fine arts. A new Gothic building, or a new missal, is in reality little less absurd than a new ruin.

  • Lecture, Literary and Scientific Institution, Hampstead, (1836-07-25), from notes taken by C.R. Leslie

• The first impression and a natural one is, that the fine arts have risen or declined in proportion as patronage has been given to them or withdrawn, but it will be found that there has often been more money lavished on them in their worst periods than in their best, and that the highest honours have frequently been bestowed on artists whose names are scarcely now known.
  • Lecture, Literary and Scientific Institution, Hampstead, (1836-07-25), from notes taken by C.R. Leslie

• The climax of absurdity to which the art may be carried, when led away from nature by fashion, may be best seen in the works of Boucher... His landscape, of which he was evidently fond, is pastoral; and such pastorality! the pastoral of the Opera house.
  • Notes of Six Lectures on Landscape Painting (1836), from C.R. Leslie, Memoirs of the Life of John Constable (1843), p. 343

• The world is wide; no two days are alike, nor even two hours; neither were there ever two leaves of a tree alike since the creation of the world.
  • C. R. Leslie, Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, Composed Chiefly of His Letters (1843) (Phaidon, London, 1951) p. 273

• There is nothing ugly; I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, — light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.
  • C. R. Leslie, Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, Composed Chiefly of His Letters (1843), (Phaidon, London, 1951), p. 280
  • Reply "to a lady who, looking at an engraving of a house, called it an ugly thing"
    

• A self-taught painter is one taught by a very ignorant person.
  • Quoted in The Quarterly Review vol. 119 (1866) p. 292.

[edit] Unsourced

• Speaking to a lawyer about pictures is something like talking to a butcher about humanity.

• The time of year when the devil comes and spews art over London.
  • On the Royal Academy of Arts' Summer Exhibition.

[edit] About John Constable

• Constable himself knew the value of such studies, for he rarely parted with them. He used to say of his studies and pictures that he had no objection to part with the corn, but not with the field that grew it.
  • Richard and Samuel Redgrave, A Century of Painters of the English School (1866), vol. II

• Without any doubt the great works of Constable were done at the point when his desire to be a "natural" painter and his need to express his restless, passionate character overlap. Through his violence of feeling, concealed under a conventional exterior, he was able to revolutionise our own feelings about our surroundings. The conviction that open spaces and areas of rural scenery must be saved for the refreshment of our spirits owes more to Constable than to any other artist. While Turner, with greater gifts, was transforming the "beauty spots" of Europe, Constable was teaching us all to realise that our own countryside could be taken exactly as it is, and and yet become more precious to us.
  • Kenneth Clark, The Romantic Rebellion (Harper & Row, 1973, ISBN 06-10802-9), ch. 11: Constable (p. 283)

[edit] External links

• Constable's Great Landscapes: The Six-Foot Paintings at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
• John Constable at Olga's Gallery
• Biography at Webmuseum, Paris
• John Constable at Find-A-Grave
• John Constable – English Landscape Painter
• Constable:The Great Landscapes (Tate Britain 2006): an illustrated review Retrieved 29 September 2006 .