Produced by Al Haines
[Illustration: cover art]
MASTERPIECES
IN COLOUR
EDITED BY
T. LEMAN HARE
CONSTABLE
1776-1837
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PLATE I.--THE VALLEY FARM.
(Frontispiece).
National Gallery.
In "The Valley Farm," exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1835, two years
before his death, Constable returned to the scenes of his boyhood, to
Willy Lott's house on the banks of the Stour. His hand and eye have
lost something of their grip and freshness, but his purpose is as firm
as ever. "I have preserved God Almighty's day light," he wrote, "which
is enjoyed by all mankind, excepting only the lovers of old, dirty
canvas, perished pictures at a thousand guineas each, cart grease, tar,
and snuff of candle." The old Adam, you perceive, was still strong in
him.
[Illustration: PLATE I.--THE VALLEY FARM.]
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CONSTABLE
BY C. LEWIS HIND
ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT
REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR
[Illustration: title page art]
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.
1907
CONTENTS
Chap.
I. The Year 1824
II. The Brown Tree
III. His Life
IV. His Sketches
V. His Pictures
VI. His Personality and Opinions
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Plate
I. The Valley Farm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece
(National Gallery)
II. The Hay Wain
(National Gallery)
III. The Corn Field
(National Gallery)
IV. Flatford Mill
(National Gallery)
V. Dedham Mill
(Victoria and Albert Museum)
VI. A Country Lane
(National Gallery)
VII. Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Garden
(Victoria and Albert Museum)
VIII. Salisbury
(National Gallery)
[Illustration: Constable]
CHAPTER I
THE YEAR 1824
John Constable was forty-eight years of age in 1824, a memorable year
in the history of landscape painting. A date to be remembered is 1824,
for in that year Constable's "Hay Wain" was hung in the French Salon.
That picture, which is now in the National Gallery, marked an epoch in
landscape art.
Reams have been written about the influence of "The Hay Wain" upon
French art, by critics who are all for Constable, by critics who are
complimentary but temperate; and by critics who are lukewarm and almost
resentful of the place claimed for Constable as protagonist of
nineteenth century landscape art. A guerilla critical warfare has also
raged around the influence of Turner. Constable and Turner! Most
modern landscape painters have, at one time or another, learnt from
these two great pioneers. Turner is more potent to-day, but his
influence took longer to assert itself. It was not until 1870 that
Monet visited London to be dazzled by the range and splendour of Turner
at the National Gallery. Forty-six years had passed since "The Hay
Wain" was exhibited at the Salon. In that half-century the Barbizon
School, those great men of 1830, Corot, Rousseau, Millet, Daubigny,
Troyon, Diaz, and the rest had come to fruition. Constable has been
claimed as their parent. Thore, the French critic, who wrote under the
name of G. W. Burger, affirms that Constable was the _point de depart_
of the Barbizon School; but Albert Wolff, another eminent French
critic, was not of that opinion. Thore, writing in 1863, also said
that although Constable had stimulated in France a school of painting
unrivalled in the modern world, he had had no influence in his own
country, a far too sweeping statement.
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PLATE II.--THE HAY WAIN. National Gallery.
Painted in 1821, exhibited in the French Salon in 1824, "The Hay Wain,"
with two other smaller works, which had been purchased from Constable
by a French connoisseur, aroused extraordinary interest in Paris, and
had a potent influence on French landscape art. So impressed was
Delacroix with the naturalness, the freshness, and the brightness of
Constable's pictures at the 1824 Salon, that he completely repainted
his "Massacre of Scio" in the four days that intervened before the
opening of the exhibition.
[Illustration: PLATE II.--THE HAY WAIN.]
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The truth about Constable's influence on French art would seem to be
midway between the opinions of Thore and Wolff. That Constable's
exhibits at the Salon of 1824, which included two smaller landscapes
besides "The Hay Wain," did arouse extraordinary interest, and did have
a potent influence on French landscape art, there is no shadow of
doubt. So impressed was Delacroix with the naturalness, the freshness,
and the brightness of Constable's pictures at the 1824 Salon, that,
after studying them, he completely repainted his "Massacre of Scio" in
the four days that intervened before the opening of the exhibition; and
the following year Delacroix visited London eager to see more of
Constable's work. There is also the testimony of William Brockedon,
who, on his return from the Salon, wrote thus to the painter of "The
Hay Wain." The text of the letter is printed in C. R. Leslie's Memoirs
of the _Life of Constable_, a mine of information in which all writers
on John Constable, whom de Goncourt called "_le grand, le grandissime
maitre_," must delve.
"My dear Constable," wrote William Brockedon, "You will find in the
enclosed some remarks upon your pictures at Paris. I returned last
night and brought this with me. The French have been forcibly struck
by them, and they have created a division in the school of the
landscape painters of France. You are accused of carelessness by those
who acknowledge the truth of your effect; and the freshness of your
pictures has taught them that though your means may not be essential,
your end must be to produce an imitation of Nature, and the next
Exhibition in Paris will teem with your imitators, or the school of
Nature versus the school of Birmingham. I saw one man draw another to
your pictures with this expression--'Look at these landscapes by an
Englishman; the ground appears to be covered with dew.'"
Note these passages: _They have created a division in the school of the
landscape painters of France--Paris will teem with your imitators--The
ground appears to be covered with dew._
Constable received the gratifying news very quietly. Writing to Fisher
from Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, on 17th December 1824, he
remarked--"My Paris affairs go on very well. Though the Director, the
Count Forbin, gave my pictures very respectable situations in the
Louvre in the first instance, yet on being exhibited a few weeks, they
advanced in reputation, and were removed from their original situations
to a post of honour, two prime places in the principal room. I am much
indebted to the artists for their alarum in my favour; but I must do
justice to the Count, who is no artist I believe, and thought that as
the colours are rough they should be seen at a distance. They found
the mistake, and now acknowledge the richness of texture, and attention
to the surface of things. They are struck with their vivacity and
freshness, things unknown to their own pictures. The truth is, they
study (and they are very laborious students) pictures only, and as
Northcote says, 'They know as little of Nature as a hackney-coach horse
does of a pasture' ... However, it is certain they have made a stir,
and set the students in landscape to thinking."
Note the passages: _They are struck with their vivacity and
freshness--The truth is they study pictures only._
I have quoted these letters at length, because they are first-hand
authorities, and because they state, with simple directness, the effect
of Constable's pictures at the Salon of 1824. The two smaller works
that accompanied "The Hay Wain" we may disregard for the moment, and
ask what is there in "The Hay Wain" that it should have so startled the
French painting world, and that it should have marked an epoch in the
history of landscape art. Stand before "The Hay Wain" in the National
Gallery and ask yourself that question. If you are honest, you will
admit, perhaps only to yourself, that "The Hay Wain" looks a little
old-fashioned. And you will also admit that the full-sized sketch for
"The Hay Wain," which you have surely noticed hanging in the Constable
room at the Victoria and Albert Museum, pleases you better on account
of its greater brilliance, vigour, and impulse. The finished picture,
though very powerful, seems a little stolid, a little laboured, as if
the painter had left nothing to "happy accident" but had worked with
John Bull conscientiousness over every inch of the canvas. You have in
the last decade or two seen so many landscapes--pearly, atmospheric,
spacious, vivid and vibrating with sunshine, that this "Hay Wain" by
honest John, this English pastoral with the great sky, the shimmering
water, and the leaves carefully accented with colour to represent the
flickers of light, does not astonish you. Perhaps you pass it by
without a pause, without even a cursory examination. But remember this
is 1909, and "The Hay Wain" made its sensation in 1824. In those
eighty-five years landscape painting has progressed at a faster rate
than in all the preceding centuries. In 1824 "The Hay Wain" was a
fresh vision, very new and arresting. Why? Simply because Constable
returned to Nature and painted Nature. Again and again has this
happened in the history of art from the time of Giotto onwards. The
little men falter on, copying one another, "studying pictures only," in
Constable's phrase; the public accepts their wooden performances as
true art; then the great man arises, often a very simple,
straight-thinking, modest man like this John Constable, and the great
man does nothing more miraculous than just to use his own eyes; he
refuses to be dictated to by others as to what he should see and do,
and lo! the world looks at what he has done, and either rejects him
altogether (for a time), or says, "Here is a genius. Let us make much
of him."
One thing is certain. It was not by taking thought, by planning or
scheming, that John Constable made that sensation at the Salon of 1824.
It was born in him to be what he became--a painter of Nature. How easy
and simple it seems. Everybody paints Nature to-day; but in the early
years of last century one had to be a great original to break away from
tradition and from academic formulae, and to paint--just Nature.
The awakening came to John Constable in 1802, when he was twenty-six
years of age. In a letter to his friend Dunthorne, Constable wrote
from London:
"For the last two years I have been running after pictures and seeking
the truth at second hand ... I shall return to Bergholt, where I shall
endeavour to get a pure and unaffected manner of representing the
scenes that may employ me. There is little or nothing in the
Exhibitions worth looking up to. _There is room for a natural
painter_."
A natural painter he became--the painter of England, of simple rural
scenes. At forty-seven years of age he lamented that he had never
visited Italy, but the mood passed as quickly as it came, and he cries:
"No, but I was born to paint a happier land, my own dear old England."
And from his own dear old England he banished the brown tree. But the
droll story of the Brown Tree deserves a new chapter.