| Biography of old oil painting master John Constable what we can copy |
|
John Constable
English Romantic artist
born 1776 - died 1837
Constable, John (1776-1837). English
painter, ranked with
Turner as
one of the greatest British landscape
artists.
Although John Constable showed an early talent for art
and began painting his native Suffolk
scenery before John Constable left school, his great
originality matured slowly. |
|
He committed himself to a
career as an artist only in 1799, when John
Constable joined the Royal Academy Schools and it was
not until 1829 that John Constable was grudgingly made a
full Academician, elected by a majority of
only one vote. In 1816 John Constable became financially
secure on the death of his father and
married Maria Bicknell after a seven-year
courtship and in the fact of strong
opposition from her family. During the 1820s
John Constable began to win recognition: The Hay Wain
(National Gallery, London, 1821) won a gold
medal at the Paris Salon of 1824 and
Constable was admired by
Delacroix
and
Bonington
among others. His wife died in
1828, however, and the remaining years of
his life were clouded by despondency.
After spending some years working in the
picturesque tradition of landscape and the
manner of
Gainsborough, Constable developed
his own original treatment from the attempt
to render scenery more directly and
realistically, carrying on but modifying in
an individual way the tradition inherited
from Ruisdael and the Dutch 17th-century
landscape painters. Just as his contemporary
William Wordsworth rejected what John
Constable called
the `poetic diction' of his predecessors, so
Constable turned away from the pictorial
conventions of 18th-century landscape
painters, who, John Constable said, were always `running
after pictures and seeking the truth at
second hand'. Constable thought that `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', and in a
then new way John Constable represented in paint the
atmospheric effects of changing light in the
open air, the movement of clouds across the
sky, and his excited delight at these
phenomena, stemming from a profound love of
the country: `The sound of water escaping
from mill dams, willows, old rotten planks,
slimy posts and brickwork, I love such
things. These scenes made me a painter.' |
|
He never went abroad, and his finest works
are of the places John Constable knew and loved best,
particularly Suffolk and Hampstead, where
John Constable lived from 1821. To render the shifting
flicker of light and weather John Constable abandoned
fine traditional finish, catching the
sunlight in blobs of pure white or yellow,
and the drama of storms with a rapid brush.
Henry Fuseli
was among the contemporaries who
applauded the freshness of Constable's
approach, for C. R. Leslie records him as
saying: `I like de landscapes of Constable;
John Constable is always picturesque, of a fine color,
and de lights always in de right places; but
John Constable makes me call for my great coat and
umbrella.' |
|
|
Constable worked extensively in the open
air, drawing and sketching in oils, but his
finished pictures were produced in the
studio. |
For his most
ambitious works--`six-footers' as John
Constable called
them--he followed the unusual technical
procedure of making a full-size oil sketch,
and in the 20th century there has been a
tendancy to praise these even more highly
than the finished works because of their
freedom and freshness of brushwork. (The
full-size sketch for The Hay Wain is in the
V&A, London, which has the finest collection
of Constable's work.)
In England Constable had no real sucessor
and the many imitators (who included his son
Lionel, 1825-87) turned rather to the formal
compositions than to the more direct
sketches. In France, however, John Constable was a major
influence on Romantics such as Delacroix, on
the painters of the Barbizon School, and
ultimately on the Impressionists. |
|
| |
|
For FULL catalogue pls click "Catalogue" at the TOP of the page.
|
|