The appearance of the second edition of Leslie's _Life of Constable_
invites attention to this truly English and original artist. We have read
this volume with much interest. It is a graceful homage paid by a great
living painter to the memory of one who is no more: a kindly, and, as we
believe, an honest testimony to the moral and professional worth of one
whose works stand out with a striking and distinct character in the
English school of landscape-painting, and which, we are confident, will
retain the place which they have slowly gained in public estimation, as
long as a feeling of pictorial truth, in its more elevated sense, and as
distinct from a mere literal imitation of details, shall continue to
endure. Mr Leslie has accomplished his task with skill as well as good
sense; for, keeping the labours of the editor entirely in the background,
he has made Constable his own biographer--the work consisting almost
entirely of extracts from his notes, journals, and correspondence, linked
together by the slenderest thread of narrative. Story indeed, it may be
said, there was none to tell; for, among the proverbially uneventful lives
of artists, that of Constable was perhaps the least eventful. His
birth--his adoption of painting as a profession (for he was originally
destined _pulverem collegisse_ in the drier duties of a miller)--his
marriage, after a long attachment, on which parents had looked frowningly,
but which the lovers, by patient endurance and confidence in each other,
brought to a successful issue--his death, just when he had begun to feel
that the truth and originality of his style were becoming better
appreciated both abroad and at home; these, with the hopes, and fears, and
anxieties for a rising family, which diversify the married life with
alternate joys and sorrows, form, in truth, the only incidents in his
history. The incidents of a painter's life, in fact, are the foundation of
his character, the gradual development to his own mind of the principles
of his art; and with Constable's thoughts and opinions, his habits of
study, the growth of his style--if that term can be applied to the manner
of one whose great anxiety it was to have no distinguishable _style_
whatever--with his manly, frank, affectionate, and somewhat hasty
disposition, with his strong self-reliance, and, as we may sometimes
think, his overweening self-esteem--his strength of mind and his
weaknesses--this volume makes us familiarly acquainted.
Constable was born in 1776, at East Bergholt in Sussex. His father was in
comfortable circumstances, as may be gathered from the fact, that the
artist (one of six children) ultimately inherited L4000 as his share of
the succession. He was thus entirely exempted from the _res angusta_ with
which artists have so often to labour; although, with the characteristic
improvidence of his profession, we still find that he had enough to do to
make both ends meet. Born delicate, he grew up a strong and healthy boy,
and was intended by his father, who had succeeded by purchase or
inheritance to sundry wind and water mills, for a miller. Nay, for about a
year, Constable actually performed that duty at one of his father's mills,
and, it is said, faithfully and assiduously. Yet he contrived to turn even
this episode in his life to some advantage. He treasured up a multitude of
mental studies of clouds and skies, which, to the wind-miller, are always
objects of peculiar interest, and acquired that familiarity with mills and
their adjuncts which justified his brother's observation--"When I look at
a mill painted by John, I see that it will _go round_, which is not always
the case with those by other artists."
Even before his short trial of a miller's life, his love of drawing and
painting had shown itself; but, receiving little countenance from his
father, he had established a little sanctuary of his own in a workshop of
a neighbouring plumber and glazier, John Dunthorne, a man of some
intelligence, and himself an indefatigable artist on an humble scale. His
mother, who seems from the first to have had something like a prophetic
anticipation of his future eminence, procured him an introduction to Sir
George Beaumont, who frequently visited his mother, the dowager Lady
Beaumont, then residing at Dedham. The sight of a beautiful Claude--"The
Hagar"--which Sir George generally carried with him when he travelled, and
of some water-colour drawings by Girtin, which Sir George advised him to
study as examples of truth and breadth, seem to have determined his
wavering resolution to become a painter; and the combined influence of
Claude and Girtin may, indeed, be traced more or less during the whole
course of his practice. His father appeared at last to have given a
reluctant consent, and the mill was abandoned for the painting-room, or
rather for the study of nature in the open air, among the forest glades
and by the still streams of Suffolk.
Suffolk, certainly, might not appear at first sight to be the place which
one would choose for the education of a great painter. Mountains it has
none; to the sublimity arising from lake or precipice, or the desolate
expanse of moor and fell, it has no pretension; from the spots where
Constable chiefly studied, even the prospect of old ocean was shut out;
the country presented, as he himself describes it, only gentle
declivities, luxuriant meadow flats, sprinkled with flocks and herds,
quiet but clear streams, villages, farms, woodlands--
"The slow canal, the yellow-blossom'd vale,
The willow-tufted bank and gliding sail."
What influence scenery of a higher class might have had on Constable's
mind, it is not easy to decide; as it was, the narrow circuit of a few
miles round Bergholt, within which the materials of his pictures are
chiefly found, became for him the epitome of English nature; and he
associated the very ideal of beauty with those quiet nooks and scenes of
tranquillity and amenity, where he had first exercised his pencil, and
amidst which in after life he loved to linger.
And in truth, to a creative mind--for "it is the soul that sees," and
renders back its vision--how much of beauty, picturesque variety, nay,
under certain aspects and conditions of the atmosphere, how much of
grandeur existed within this narrow circle! A friend of ours has
maintained an ingenious thesis, that there is no such thing as a bad day
in nature; though whether, after the aspect of the present summer, he
retains his opinion, we think may be questioned. Constable certainly held
a similar theory with regard to beauty in landscape. "Madam," said he to a
lady who had denounced some object as ugly--"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."
This, indeed, was the talisman with which he worked; _light and
shade_--the magic of _chiaro-scuro_ applied to the simple elements of
form which the rich pastures and woods of Suffolk afforded, and a power
of exhibiting the varied influences and character of the skies, which, if
it has been equalled by Turner, Calcott, and Fielding, has certainly never
been surpassed by any British landscape-painter.
Let us glance at some of those pictures of tranquil English nature which
Constable's landscapes afford;--not professing to follow the details of
any particular picture, but embodying from recollection a few of their
leading features, as exhibited under those lights or atmospheric effects,
which he generally selected as in harmony with the sentiment of his
scenes.
We are standing, for instance, on a broken foreground, across which the
brier, the dog-rose, and the white bindweed have clasped themselves in
fantastic tendrils. The white hemlock shoots up rankly by the hedge, and
the tall bulrush and water-lily mark the course of the little stream which
is sliding noiselessly past among the grass. It is early morning, as we
see by the long oblique shadows. Yet industry is already at work. The
wheel of that weather-stained and lichen-covered mill--call it Flatford if
you will--is in motion, and the dripping water, glancing in the morning
sun, descends from the cogs in a shower of diamonds. The stream that
supplies the mill is crossed further down by a rustic bridge, as
picturesque as it is inconvenient. Beyond, and towards the centre, a long
wooded lane stretches out towards the horizon, close and overarching at
top, but with the sunbeams straggling in between the trunks, and
checkering the cool road with a network of light and shadow. About midway,
a small spring, trickling from a bank, has been collected in a rude stone
trough, for the refreshment of panting horse and wayworn traveller; beside
which two market wains--the one on its way to the neighbouring town, the
other returning from it--have stopped. The horses are watering; the
waggoners gossiping over the news, or smoking together the calumet of
peace; while a group of urchins, in whom the embryo ostler or future
strapper are easily detected, are looking on with that interest in all
that concerns horseflesh which distinguishes the rising members of an
agricultural population. Beyond the lane are gentle hills, "rounded about
by the low wavering sky"--some smoke indicating the market-town, and the
spire of the village church leading the eye out of the picture, and
crowning the cheerful serenity of the landscape.
The day advances, and the scene is changed. In the foreground we have a
building-yard by the river. Boats and barges are seen in their rise,
progress, decline, and fall;--some completed, some exhibiting merely their
skeletons upon the stocks; some blistering in the sun beside the broken
pier; some, which have seen better days, now entirely out of commission,
and falling to pieces among the mud;--placed in all attitudes, and
projecting broad and picturesque shadows along the ground. But these
shadows are soft and transparent, not dark and cutting; for the sultry
haze which rises steaming from all around, makes the summer sunshine
veiled and dim. All nature is in a state of indolence. The lazy Stour
sleeps beneath his fringes of elm and willow: a deep-laden barge comes
leisurely along, as if anxious not to disturb his slumbers: the horse has
plainly enough to do to make out his four miles an hour; and there is a
dog on deck who seems nervous about hydrophobia. The man at the bow,
depressing his head and elevating the lower part of his person to an
American angle of elevation, has thrown his sturdy limbs across yon
well-stuffed sacks of wheat, on their way to Flatford mill. Mercy on us!
what can that fellow in the stern be about, pretending to steer? Just as
we suspected--fast asleep, with his hand on the helm.
Another change--from the building-yard to the corn-field. The wind has
risen as the day advanced, and driven off to the west the veil of vapour
which had concealed the sun. The clouds ride high in heaven; and we see by
their roll and motion that there is a refreshing air astir;--and there is
need of it in this field of golden grain, framed, as it were, in the solid
green of those groves, and over which the gray tower of Dedham church
(which somehow or other finds its way into all these combinations of
scenery) rises straight and motionless against the rounded forms of the
ever-shifting sky. All here speaks of bustle and cheerful activity, peace
and plenty. It is impossible to look at the scene, and think for a moment
of the repeal of the corn-laws. Behind the stalwart band of reapers lie
the heaps of sheaves that have already fallen beneath their sickle; the
tall grain, swept by the wind, waves firm before them like a hostile rank
yet unbroken; while the _lord_, as he is called in Suffolk, or leading man
among the reapers and mowers, stands in advance of the rest, as if urging
a final charge. In truth, there has been rather a lull among the workmen;
for, breezy as the day is, still it is hot--the dinner-hour is nigh, and
there is a visible anxiety evinced for the arrival of the commissariat. At
last it is seen in the offing: the reapers, "sagacious of their quarry
from afar," gather new vigour from the sight; and yonder tall fellow--an
Irishman, we are positive even at this distance--seizing his sickle like
one inspired, is actually working double tides.
But stay, we have got into wilder quarters, and here has been a storm. Ay,
we thought the clouds, after such a sultry morning, were not rolling
themselves into those ominous grey volumes for nothing. Broken ground lies
before us in front, seemingly part of an old gravel-pit, down which winds
a break-neck path, lost at yonder turning. Beneath us, a level flat, where
the sullen verdure of the vegetation betrays the marshy, reedy, sterile
character of the soil. Pools of water, here and there set amidst the
swampy green, reflect the dark and watery clouds that are scudding above
them. The lavender, the water-lily, the mallow, the fern, the fox-glove,
luxuriate here; abundant food for botany, but not exactly in the place one
would choose for botanizing--particularly, as is the case this moment,
within an hour of sundown. Beyond the flat, the traces of a range of low
hills, their outline at present lost in rain. Overhead, a spongy sky,
darkening into a lurid gloom to the right; for there the laden
thunder-clouds are about to discharge their freight; and right underneath,
in the middle distance, an unhappy windmill, which has shortened sail
during the preparatory blast, stands glimmering like a ghost through the
gloom, obviously on the eve of the deluge. What may be the probable fate
of the miller and his men in this conjuncture, humanity, of course,
declines to contemplate; but, turning towards the left, sees the sun
struggling through the opening eyelids of the clouds, the leaden hue of
the sky on the right breaking off into a lustrous haze, and a rainbow
growing into form and colour, which, as it spans the dripping landscape
from east to west, gives token of a goodly day to-morrow.
These are but a few of the combinations which even this limited range of
scenery evidently presented to the eye and fancy of a man like Constable;
nor is it wonderful, after all, that to such materials, unpretending as
they seem, an artist embued with a genuine love of nature should have
succeeded in imparting a peculiar charm, and a never-ending freshness and
variety. Amidst scenes of the sane tranquil cast did Hobbima and Waterlo
find the subjects of those soothing pictures, the spell of which is
acknowledged equally by the profound student of art and the simple admirer
of nature. Scenes not materially different in their character did Ruysdael
envelope in grandeur, depicting, as Constable expresses it in one of his
lectures, "those solemn days peculiar to his country, and to ours, when,
without storm, large rolling clouds scarcely permit a ray of sunlight to
break the shades of the forest." And amidst the selfsame scenes--the same
forest-lanes, and brooks, and woods, and waters--with the same happy
accompaniments of rustic incidents, occupations, or amusements--did
Constable's predecessor, Gainsborough, find his academy.
Very early in Constable's career, he adopted the principle which regulated
through life the character of his painting. "There is room enough," he
writes, after considering the Exhibition of 1802--"_There is room enough
for a natural painter_. The great vice of the present day is bravura--an
attempt to do something beyond the truth. Fashion always had, and always
will have, its day; but truth in all things only will last, and can only
have just claims on posterity." Here, indeed, he felt, and justly, that
there was an opening for him in the school of English landscape.
Gainsborough, who had first communicated truth and life to the treatment
of the genuine scenery of England, was no more. It is true, the grosser
absurdities of the Smiths of Chichester, and the other compounders of
landscapes _secundum artem_, with which we are familiar in the engravings
of Woollet, in whose performances a kind of pictorial millennium appears
to be realized; where the English cottage stands side by side with the
Italian villa, and Norfolk bumpkins are seen making love to Arcadian
shepherdesses knitting beneath the pillars of a Doric temple--these
noxious grafts of a conventional taste upon the healthy stem of our native
landscape-painting had disappeared. But still, the influence of this
conventional taste in a great measure remained--shown in the established
belief that _subject_ made the picture, and necessitating, as was
supposed, the exclusive adoption of certain established modes of
composition, colouring, and treatment, from which the hardy
experimentalist who should first attempt to deviate was sure, for a time
at least, to encounter opposition; or, what was more probable, entire
neglect.
"In art," says Constable, writing in 1829, "there are two modes by which
men aim at distinction. In the one, by a careful application to what
others have accomplished, the artist imitates their works, or selects and
combines their various beauties; in the other, he seeks excellence at its
primitive source, nature. In the first, he forms a style upon the study of
pictures, and produces either imitation or eclectic art; in the second, by
a close observation of nature, he discovers qualities existing in her
which have never been portrayed before, and thus forms a style which is
original. The results of the one mode, as they repeat that with which the
eye is already familiar, are soon recognised and estimated; while the
advances of the artist on a new path must necessarily be slow--for a few
are able to judge of that _which deviates from the usual course, or are
qualified to appreciate original studies_." In this passage is contained,
both the principle of Constable's painting, and the history of its
results: for, strange as it may seem, so little do general observers look
at nature with an observing and pictorial eye--so much are their ideas of
what it contains received at second-hand, by reflection from
pictures--that the forms under which artists have combined to represent
her (forms representing, it may be, a portion of the truth, but certainly
not the whole truth) have, in the great majority of cases, superseded the
stamp and authority of nature; and truth itself, where it did not steal in
under a conventional garb, has been refused admittance by more than one
committee of taste. "What a sad thing," Constable writes to Leslie, "that
this lovely art is so wrested to its own destruction! Used only to blind
our eyes, and to prevent us from seeing the sun shine, the fields bloom,
the trees blossom, the foliage rustle; while old black rubbed-out and
dirty canvasses take the place of God's own works!"
With his mind made up as to the course to be adopted, Constable betook
himself to the study of nature on the spot. Careful _drawing_ was his
first object, as the substance to which the embodiment of colour and
chiaroscuro was to be applied, and without which, though there might be
effect, there could be no truth. His studies of trees and foreground are
said to have been eminently beautiful. These, however, he loved to exhibit
in their vernal, rather than their autumnal character. "I never did admire
the autumnal tints, even in nature--so little of a painter am I in the eye
of common connoisseurship. I love the exhilarating freshness of spring."
Buildings he did not court, but rather avoided--though in later life he
grappled successfully even with architectural detail, as in his pictures
of Salisbury Cathedral;[2] but, in general, he dealt with it sparingly.
Shipping and coast-scenes he considered "more fit for execution than for
sentiment." What he luxuriated in was the study of atmospheric effects,
and the principles of light and shadow as applied to his sylvan and
pastoral landscapes. "I hold the genuine pastoral feeling of landscapes,"
said he, writing in 1829 to his friend Archdeacon Fisher, "to be very
rare, and difficult of attainment. It is by far the most lovely department
of painting, as well as of poetry." "Painting," he says in another letter,
"is with me but another word for feeling, and I associate my careless
boyhood with all that lies on the banks of the Stour. These scenes made me
a painter, and I am grateful." "Whatever may be thought of my art, it is
my own; and I would rather possess a freehold, though but a cottage, than
live in a palace belonging to another."
Thus feeling intensely the charm of nature--and confident that by the
vivid representation of pastoral English landscape, he could enable it to
exercise upon other minds something of the same spell which it produced on
his own--his whole efforts, as he says himself, were directed to forget
pictures, and to catch if possible the precise aspect which the scenery
which he endeavours to portray presented at the moment of study. And here
particularly it is, that the genius of Constable is visible. A man of less
reach of mind, beginning, as he did, with this minute attention to the
vocabulary of detail, would probably have ended there. We should have had
a set of pictures perfectly painted in parts, but forming no consistent
whole. All general effect would have been sacrificed to the impression to
be produced by particulars. The very love of nature often leads to this
error--as in the once-popular Glover, and many others. But no one had a
fuller sense than Constable, that by this means pictures never can be
created; that literal imitation of the details of nature is a delusion;
because not only is the medium we use entirely inadequate, but paint as we
may, with the most microscopic minuteness of detail, the thousand little
touches and reflexes of light and shade, which soften and harmonize all
things in nature, are essentially evanescent, and incapable of being
transferred to canvass. He felt that a certain _substitute_ for nature,
awakening a corresponding impression upon the mind, was all that he could
be afforded by painting--that the spirit and not the letter of her
handwriting was to be imitated. The object of painting, as he himself
expressed it, "was to realize, but not to feign: to remind, but not to
deceive."
Hence, while he perfectly succeeded in catching the spirit of the spot--so
much so, that Mr Leslie, visiting the scenes of his pictures for the first
time after his death, declares, "that he was absolutely startled by the
resemblance"--he yet exercised over the whole that creative, at least
compounding art, which arrayed the objects in the forms most harmonious to
the eye, and grouped the details into a whole, telling in the most
effective manner the story, or conveying the impression it was intended to
create. The composition of a picture, he used to say, "was like a sum in
arithmetic--take away, or add the smallest item, and the whole was certain
to be wrong."
As a consequence, we think, of this conviction, that nature is not to be
_literally imitated_ in her colours or forms, but that some compromise is
to be found, by which, though on a lower key, a similar impression is to
be made on the eye, and through that on the mind, is the general
abstinence from positive colour, which distinguishes Constable's
paintings. It was not that he adopted the conventional orange and brown of
the continental school, or shrank from endeavouring to carry the full
impression of the dewy verdure of English landscape. For these subterfuges
in art he had an abundant contempt. "Don't you find it very difficult to
determine," said Sir George Beaumont, (who, with all his fine feelings of
art, certainly looked at nature through a Claude Lorraine medium,) "where
to place _your brown tree_?" "Not in the least," was Constable's answer,
"for I never put such a thing into a picture." On another occasion, when
Sir George was recommending the colour of an old Cremona fiddle as a good
prevailing tone for every thing, Constable answered the observation by
depositing an old Cremona on the green lawn in front of the house at
Cole-Orton. But what we mean is this--that to produce the effect which
green or red produces in nature, it does not follow that green or red are
to be used in art, and that the impression of these colours will often be
better brought out by tints in which but a very small portion of either is
to be found.
Mr Leslie has remarked this peculiarity in several of Constable's
pictures. Speaking of Constable's _Boat-building_, he observes--"In the
midst of a meadow at Flatford, a barge is seen on the stocks, while, just
beyond it, the river Stour glitters in the still sunshine of a hot
summer's day. This picture is a proof, that in landscape, what painters
call warm colours are not necessary to produce a warm effect. It has,
indeed, no positive colour, and there is much of gray and green in it; but
such is its atmospheric truth, that the tremulous vibration of the heated
air near the ground seems visible." Again, with regard to a small view
from Hampstead heath. "The sky is of the blue of an English summer day,
with large but not threatening clouds of a silvery whiteness. The distance
is of a deep blue, and the near trees and grass of the freshest green; for
Constable could never consent to patch up the verdure of nature to obtain
warmth. These tints are balanced by a very little warm colour on a road
and gravel-pit in the foreground, a single house in the middle distance,
and the scarlet jacket of a labourer. Yet I know no picture in which the
mid-day heat of summer is so admirably expressed; and were not the eye
refreshed by the shade thrown over a great part of the foreground by some
young trees that border the road, and the cool blue of water near it, one
would wish in looking at it for a parasol, as Fuseli wished for an
umbrella when standing before one of Constable's showers."
It was probably the manner of Constable's execution, as much as any thing
else, which for a time interposed a serious obstacle to his success;
particularly with artists or persons accustomed to attend to the executive
detail of painting. "My pictures will never be popular," he said, "for
they have no handling; but I do not see _handling_ in nature." His aim, in
fact, though we must admit it was not always successful, was to exhibit
art, but not artifice--to efface all traces of the mere mode of
execution--to conceal the handwriting of the painter, and to imitate those
mysterious processes by which nature produces her effects, where all is
shadowy, glimmering, indefinable, yet pregnant with suggestion. In Turner
more than any other modern artist--for in this respect we think he far
excelled Constable--is this alchymy of art carried to perfection. Look
closely at his pictures, and a few patches, dashes, and streaks only are
visible, which seem a mere chaos of colour; but retire to the proper
distance, what magnificent visions grow into shape; how the long avenue
lengthens out for miles; how the sun-clad city brightens on the
mountain--the stream descends _from_ the eye--the distance spreads out
into infinity!--all these apparently unmeaning spots or accidents of
colour, in which it is difficult to detect the work of the hand or pencil
at all, being, in fact, mysterious but speaking hieroglyphics, based on
profound combinations of colour and light and shadow, and full of the
finest harmonies to all who can look at nature with the eye of
imagination.
Constable, a we have said, was not always successful in this, the most
hazardous of all attempts in painting. If the touches of pure white, which
he seemed to scatter on his trees as if from a half-dry brush, sometimes
assisted the dewy effect which he loved to produce, they very often, from
the absence of that power of _just calculation_ which Turner seems so
unerringly to possess, produced a spotty effect, as if the trees had been
here and there powdered with snow. Very frequently he exchanged the pencil
for the palette knife, in the use of which he was very dexterous, but
which, Mr Leslie admits, he occasionally carried to a blamable excess,
loading his pictures with a _relievo_ of colour, and provoking the remark,
that if he had not attained breadth, he had at least secured thickness.
On the whole, Constable, though now and then missing his
object--sometimes, it would seem, as in his skies, from overlabouring his
effect, and trying too studiously to arrest and embody fleeting
effects--was eminently successful in the result at which he aimed--that of
conveying vividly, and almost irresistibly, the sentiment and delineative
character of the scene. We have already quoted Fuseli's well-known remark,
when standing before one of his showery pictures. "I feel the wind blowing
on my face," was honest Jack Banister's remark, (no bad judge by the by,)
while contemplating another of his breezy scenes, with the rolling clouds
broken up by means of sunshine, and the bending trees turning out their
lighter lining to the gale. "Come here," was the remark of a French
painter, in the exhibition of the Louvre in 1824; "look at this picture by
an Englishman--_it is steeped in dew_." "We never ask," said Mr Purton,
"whether his figures be well or ill placed; _there they are, and unless
they choose to move on, there they must remain_." This truth and
artlessness, and natural action or repose of his figures, only equalled in
the English landscape by those of Gainsborough and Collins, he probably
owed, in some measure, to an observation of an early acquaintance--
Antiquity Smith, as he was nicknamed by his brother artists, who, at the
commencement of his studies, had given him this judicious advice:--"Do not
set about _inventing_ figures for a landscape _taken_ from nature; for you
cannot remain an hour on any spot, however solitary, without the appearance
of some living thing, that will, in all probability, accord better with the
scene and time of day than will any invention of your own."
With Constable's strong natural tastes, and his long-considered views of
landscape--at least that landscape for which he felt a vocation--it may be
doubted whether he would have gained any thing by an acquaintance with
continental scenery, leading, as it generally does, to the adoption of a
certain fixed mode of treatment, or even by a more familiar intercourse
with the grander features of our own country. He seems to have felt that
his originality was, in some degree, connected with the _intimacy_ of his
acquaintance with that domestic nature, the study of which he chiefly
cultivated, and which was matured by constant repetition and comparison of
impressions. A circuit of a few miles, in fact, bounds his bosky bourne
from side to side; a circuit of a few hundred yards embraces the subject
of nearly half his favourite studies. "The Dutch," he says in one of his
journals, "were _stay-at-home_ people; _hence_ the source of their
originality."
"In the education of an artist," says Mr Leslie with great good sense, "it
is scarcely possible to foresee what circumstances will prove advantageous
or the reverse; it is on looking back only that we can judge of these
things. Travelling is now the order of the day--and it may sometimes prove
beneficial; but to Constable's art, there can be little doubt that the
confinement of his studies with the narrowest bounds in which, perhaps,
the studies of an artist ever were confined, was in the highest degree
favourable; for a knowledge of atmospheric effects will be best attained
by _a constant study_ of the same objects, under every change of seasons
and of the times of day. His ambition, it will be borne in mind, was not
to paint many things imperfectly, but to paint a few well."
A motto, in truth, worthy of any of the seven sages--applicable to many
things besides painting--and which can scarcely be applied in vain to any.
_Not many things imperfectly, but a few well!_
* * * * *
With these imperfect remarks on the general character of Constable's
pictures, we pass at once to a few extracts from the correspondence,
which, as we have already said, makes up the substance of the present
volume. Among the letters, by much the most striking and amusing are those
of Constable's early and steady friend, Archdeacon Fisher--an admirable
judge of art, and himself a very respectable artist. His excellent
sense--his kindness--his generosity--which laboured to make its object
forget the boon, or at least the benefactor; his strong attachment to his
order, yet with a clear perception of the drawbacks inherent in the
English hierarchical system; the caustic and somewhat cynical turn of his
remarks on contemporary art--communicate great spirit, liveliness, and
interest to his letters. In many things he resembles Paley, of whom he
seems to have been a warm admirer. He had a thorough appreciation of the
excellences of Constable, both moral and professional; but he had a keen
eye also to the occasional weaknesses, want of method, and inattention to
trifles, which now and then disfigured them. "Pray," he enquires on one
occasion, "how many dinners a-week does your wife get you to eat at a
regular hour and like a Christian?" "Where real business is to be done,"
said he, speaking of and to Constable, on another occasion, "you are the
most energetic and punctual of men. In smaller matters--such as putting on
your breeches--you are apt to lose time in deciding which leg shall go in
first."
Such an adviser and critic was of the utmost use to Constable; for he
never failed to convey to him his candid impressions and advice--and they
were generally just, though not always followed. Being of opinion that
Constable was repeating too often the same effects, he writes: "I hope you
will diversify your subject this year as to time of day. Thomson, you
know, wrote not four summers, but four seasons. People get tired of mutton
at top, mutton at bottom, and mutton at the side, though of the best
flavour and size." This was touching a sore point, and Constable replies:
"I am planning a large picture, and I regard all you say; but I do not
enter into that notion of varying one's plans to keep the public in
good-humour. Change of weather and effect will always afford variety. What
if Vander Velde had quitted his sea-pieces, or Ruysdael his waterfalls, or
Hobbima his native woods? The world would have lost so many features in
art. I know that you wish for no material alteration; but I have to combat
from high quarters--even from Lawrence--the plausible argument, that
_subject_ makes the picture. Perhaps you think an evening effect might do;
perhaps it might start me some new admirers, but I should lose many old
ones. I imagine myself driving a nail: I have driven it some way, and, by
persevering, I may drive it home; by quitting it to attack others, though
I may amuse myself, I do not advance beyond the first, while that
particular nail stands still. No one who can do any one thing well, will
be able to do any other different thing equally well; and this is true
even of Shakspeare, the greatest master of variety." Constable was in a
condition, in fact, to quote the Archdeacon against himself; for in 1827
Fisher had written: "I must repeat to you an opinion I have long held,
that no man had ever more than one conception. Milton emptied his mind in
the first part of _Paradise Lost_. All the rest is transcript of self. The
_Odyssey_ is a repetition of the _Iliad_. When you have seen one Claude,
you have seen all. I can think of no exception but Shakspeare; he is
always varied, never mannered."
Here is a graphic sketch by Constable of one who had known better days,
and whom it is probable those conversant with art about that time may
recognise. We shall not fill up the asterisks. "A poor wretched man called
to see me this morning. He had a petition to the Royal Academy for
charitable assistance--it was * * *. His appearance was distress itself,
and it was awful to behold to what ill conduct may bring us; yet calamity
has impressed even on this man an air of dignity: he looked like Leslie's
Don Quixote. When I knew him at the Bishop's he wore powder, had a soft
subdued voice, and always a smile, which caused him to show some decayed
teeth; and he carried a gold-headed cane with tassels. Now, how changed!
His neck long, with a large head, thin face, nose long, mouth wide, eyes
dark and sunken, eyebrows lifted, hair abundant, straight, erect, and very
greasy, his body much emaciated and shrunk away from his dismal black
clothes, and his left arm in a sling from a fall, by which he broke the
left clavicle. I shall try the Artists' Fund for him. I cannot efface the
image of this ghostly man from my mind."
Here are two clerical sketches as a _pendant_, by Fisher:--"I write this
sitting in commission upon a dispute between a clergyman and his
parishioners, and compose while the parties argue. There is a brother
parson arguing his own case, with powder, white forehead, and a very red
face, like a copper vessel newly tinned. He is mixing up in a tremulous
note, with an eager bloodshot eye, accusations, apologies, statements,
reservations, and appeals, till his voice sounds on my ear as I write like
a distant waterfall."
"* * * and * * * have been together on the visitation for three weeks.
They have neither broken bread nor spoken together, nor, I believe, seen
one another. What a mistake our Oxford and Cambridge apostolic
missionaries fell into when they made Christianity a stern haughty thing!
Think of St Paul with a full-blown wig, deep shovel-hat, apron, round
belly, double chin, deep cough, stern eye, rough voice, and imperious
manner, drinking port-wine, and laying down the law as to the best way of
escaping the observation of the Curates' Residence Act!" The Archdeacon
himself was not without a little vanity, however, on the subject of his
sermons, and once received a quiet hit from Constable on the subject.
Having preached an old sermon once, (which he was not aware that Constable
had heard before,) he asked him how he liked it. "Very much indeed,
Fisher," replied Constable; "_I always did like that sermon._"
Like most men of original mind, Constable had a very just and manly taste
in other matters besides painting. He read but few poets, but he read
these with understanding and hearty enjoyment. To arouse his attention, it
was necessary that they should be original and vigorous. For the mere
artistic skill or cultivated taste displayed by some of the popular poets
of the day, he had no sympathy. Of Milman, for instance, he writes: "It is
singular that I happened to speak of Milman. No doubt he is learned, _but
it as not fair to encumber literature_. The world is full enough of what
has been already done; and as in the art there is plenty of fine painting,
but very few good pictures, so in poetry there is plenty of fine writing,
and I am told his is such, and, as you say, gorgeous, _but it can be
compared. Shakspeare cannot, nor Burns, nor Claude, nor Ruysdael; and it
has taken me twenty years to find this out._" It was on this principle
that he classed together Dutch and Italian art--Claude and Ostade, Titian
and Ruysdael. For, different as their modes of execution were, they
fulfilled his prime condition of having furnished the world with something
self-consistent, independent, and original. "Every truly original
picture," he would say, "is a separate study, and governed by laws of its
own; so that what is right in one would be often literally wrong if
transferred to another."
It may be anticipated that Constable, who had no half opinions on any
subject, would know his own worth, and rate himself at his due value. To
his friend Fisher he does not hesitate to praise his own pictures with a
_naivete_ that is amusing, but which was in harmony with his general
severity and dislike of affectation. He would not even affect a false
modesty, but spoke of his own performances as he would have done of those
of others. "My Lock," he says in one of his letters, "is now on the easel:
it is silvery, windy, and delicious--all health, and the absence of any
thing stagnant, and is wonderfully got together. The print will be very
fine." "My new picture of Salisbury," he writes in another, "is very
beautiful; but when I thus speak of my pictures, remember it is _to you_,
and only in comparison with myself." Mr Leslie mentions that he had
retained these and similar effusions contrary to the advice of one with
whose opinion on other points he generally coincided. He has guessed
rightly; for, without such revelations, we should be but imperfectly
acquainted with the man. He adds with truth, "The utterance of a man's
real feelings is more interesting, though it may have less of dignity than
belongs to a uniform silence on the subject of self; while the vanity is
often no greater in the one case than in the other."
Of his tender, domestic, affectionate disposition, almost every letter in
this volume exhibits proofs. We cannot better illustrate this than by
quoting some passages from his letters to his wife while on a visit to Sir
George Beaumont at Cole-Orton: while these letters exhibit one of the most
delightful pictures of the country life of an accomplished gentleman, an
excellent artist, and a kind patron. It is true, that between Sir George
and Constable not a few differences in point of taste existed; the
baronet was rather an ingenious eclectic than an original painter; his
natural belief was, that beyond the pale of Claude and Wilson, an artist's
salvation was at least doubtful; but he was too accomplished, too
keen-sighted an observer not to be shaken in his theories by the sight of
high and original art, and too liberal not to admit at last--as Toby did
in the case of the fly--that the world was wide enough for both.
"_To_ MRS CONSTABLE.
"_November 2d._--The weather has been bad; but I do not at all regret
being confined to this house. The mail did not arrive yesterday till
many hours after the time, owing to some trees being blown down, and
the waters out. * * * I am now going to breakfast before the
Narcissus of Claude. How enchanting and lovely it is! far, very far,
surpassing any other landscape I ever beheld. Write to me. Kiss and
love my darlings. I hope my stay will not exceed this week."