John Constable

British, 1776 - 1837

BiographyAlong with Turner, recognized as the greatest English landscape painter of the 19th century. Born in East Bergholt, Suffolk, the son of a well-to-do miller, Constable entered the RA schools, London, in 1799 and first exhibited in 1802. He acquired an eye for the picturesque through study of J. T. Smith's rustic etchings, and for wooded scenery through the example of Gainsborough and Dutch 17th-century masters. He was a lifelong admirer of Claude's poetic landscapes, especially those in the collection of Sir George Beaumont. Critical success came slowly; he became an ARA in 1819 and a full RA as late as 1829. Genuine enthusiasm for his work came in the 1820s, notably from the French, culminating in a gold medal at the Paris Salon in 1824 for his Haywain (London, NG), by far his best-known work. As Landscape, Noon Constable had first exhibited it at the RA in 1821. It was one of a series of large Suffolk subjects of river and farm scenes which he continued to paint even after he married and settled in London in 1816. Others include Flatford Mill (1816–17; London, Tate), called by Constable Scene on a Navigable River, and The Leaping Horse (1825; London, RA).

His knowledge of the farming year and its seasonal activities is seen in numerous small pencil sketches and in directly painted oil studies in which he accurately recorded the changing face of the cultivated landscape of the Stour valley and those who worked there. His attention to fleeting weather effects can be seen in his cloud studies, sketched from 1819 in the summer months at Hampstead, where he rented a house. Constable's techniques were designed to inject life and vibrancy into his large exhibited pictures. He made full-size preparatory oil sketches in the studio as a way of retaining the freshness and spontaneity of his on-the-spot sketches. Flickering light on moving leaves was rendered with deft touches of white, while a palette knife created rich textural effects. The critics sometimes saw this as lack of finish and unsophisticated handling. Without recourse to mythology or allegory Constable aimed to give meaning to his landscapes. His art was a quest involving experimentation into natural phenomena akin to scientific enquiry and containing moral, philosophical, and religious dimensions. He was widely read in the literature of landscape, especially English poets such as James Thomson, William Cowper, and Robert Bloomfield, himself a Suffolk poet. His ideas were explored in many letters, especially in those to his friend John Fisher, who acquired Constable's The White Horse (1819; New York, Frick Coll.). Constable lectured on the history and progress of landscape painting at the Hampstead Literary and Scientific Society in 1830 and at the Royal Institution in 1836. In 1830 he also began publishing a series of mezzotints entitled English Landscape Scenery, engraved by David Lucas from Constable's oil sketches and intended to show the ‘chiaroscuro of nature’. Constable died in 1837 feeling that his ambitions had not been realized. The publication in 1843 of Memoirs of the Life of John Constable by his friend, the artist C. R. Leslie (1794–1859), began a new assessment of his life and art. A body of subscribers bought his Cornfield for the National Gallery. Real appreciation of his drawings, watercolours, and oil sketches began with the bequest of Isabel Constable to the V&A in 1888.

Pidgley, Michael. "Constable, John." In The Oxford Companion to Western Art, edited by Hugh Brigstocke. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/opr/t118/e608 (accessed May 1, 2012).

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