John Constable (1776 - 1837)

Précis

John Constable was born in East Bergholt, Suffolk, England. His father ran several mills and as to their artistic son, the family held, as his mother wrote in 1797, "the hope that he will attend to business, by which he will please his father, and ensure his own respectability and comfort."* This was obviously not to be. While Constable's paintings never brought him financial success in England, he did gain increasing respect as he grew older. In France, his reputation was considerably stronger, even though Constable himself cared little for Continental Europe, but painters like Delacroix were highly influenced by his use of color in The Hay Wain.

The White Horse (A Scene on the River Stour)
o/c, 1819, Frick, NY
Image courtesy of Mark Harden's Artchive

The White Horse, shown above, was an important work for his career. Constable wrote to a relation later in life, calling it, "one of my happiest efforts on a large scale, being a placid representation of a serene grey morning, summer."*

Excerpts from C.R. Lewis' Memoirs of the Life of John Constable  (source)

John Constable's letter to John Dunthorne, Sr., 29 May 1802

"For the last two years I have been running around after pictures, and seeking the truth at second hand. I have not endeavoured to represent nature with the same elation of mind with which I set out, but have rather tried to make my performance look like the work of other men." ... "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. Fashion always had, and will have, its day; but truth in all things only will last, and can only have just claims on posterity."

Intro to his Lecture 1 to the Royal Institution of Great Britain, notes taken by C.R. Lewis, 26 May 1836

"...I am anxious that the world should be inclined to look to painters for information on 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; and to show, by tracing the connecting links in the history of landscape painting, that no great painter was ever self-taught."

[editors note: since this appears out of context, let me note that I believe him to mean in his last line that all painters are indebted to their predecessors]

From his Lecture 3, 9 June 1836

[editors note: speaking of Poussin's The Deluge]

"The good sense of Poussin, which was equal to his genius, taught him that by simplicity of treatment, the most awful subjects may be made far more affecting than by overloading them with imagery."

"Chiaroscuro is by no means confined to dark pictures; ... It may be defined as that power which creates space; we find it everywhere, and at all times in nature; opposition, union, light, shade, reflection and refraction, all contribute to it."

From his Lecture 4, 16 June 1836

"It appears to me that pictures have been over-valued; held up by a blind admiration as ideal things, and almost as standards by which nature is to be judged rather than the reverse; and this false estimate has been sanctioned by the extravagant epithets that have been applied to painters, as 'the divine', 'the inspired', and so forth. Yet, in reality, what are the most sublime productions of the pencil but selections of some of the forms of nature, and copies of a few of her evanescent effects; and this is the result, not of inspiration, but of long and patient study, under the direction of much good sense. -- It was said by Sir Thomas Lawrence, that 'we can never hope to compete with nature in the beauty and delicacy of her separate forms or colours, -- our only chance lies in selection and combination.' Nothing can be more true, -- and it may be added, that selection and combination are learned from nature herself, who constantly presents us with compositions of her own, far more beautiful than the happiest arranged by human skill. I have endeavoured to draw a line between genuine art and mannerism, but even the greatest painters have never been wholly untainted by manner. -- Painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature."

From his Lecture to the Literary and Scientific Institution at Hampstead, notes taken by C.R. Leslie, 25 July 1836

"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."

"The attempt to revive old styles that have existed in former ages may for a time appear to be successful, but experience may now surely teach us its impossibility." ... "It is to be lamented that the tendency of taste is at present too much towards this kind of imitation, which, as long as it lasts, can only act as a blight on art, by engaging talents that might have stamped the Age with a character of its own, in the vain endeavour to reanimate deceased Art , in which the utmost that can be accomplished will be to reproduce a body without a soul."