I have just concluded, with all the throes of imprudent pleasure, the
purchase of a large picture by Constable, of which, if I can continue in
the mood, I will enclose you a sketch. It is very good: but how you and
Morton would abuse it! Yet this, being a sketch, escapes some of
Constable's faults, and might escape some of your censures. The trees
are not splashed with that white sky-mud, which (according to Constable's
theory) the Earth scatters up with her wheels in travelling so briskly
round the sun; and there is a dash and felicity in the execution that
gives one a thrill of good digestion in one's room, and the thought of
which makes one inclined to jump over the children's heads in the
streets. But if you could see my great enormous Venetian Picture you
would be extonished. Does the thought ever strike you, when looking at
pictures in a house, that you are to run and jump at one, and go right
through it into some behind-scene world on the other side, as Harlequins
do? A steady portrait especially invites one to do so: the quietude of
it ironically tempts one to outrage it: one feels it would close again
over the panel, like water, as if nothing had happened. That portrait of
Spedding, for instance, which Laurence has given me: not swords, nor
cannon, nor all the Bulls of Bashan butting at it, could, I feel sure,
discompose that venerable forehead. No wonder that no hair can grow at
such an altitude: no wonder his view of Bacon's virtue is so rarefied
that the common consciences of men cannot endure it. Thackeray and I
occasionally amuse ourselves with the idea of Spedding's forehead: we
find it somehow or other in all things, just peering out of all things:
you see it in a milestone, Thackeray says. He also draws the forehead
rising with a sober light over Mont Blanc, and reflected in the lake of
Geneva. We have great laughing over this. The forehead is at present in
Pembrokeshire, I believe: or Glamorganshire: or Monmouthshire: it is hard
to say which. It has gone to spend its Christmas there.
[A water-colour sketch of Constable's picture.]
This you see is a sketch of my illustrious new purchase. The two animals
in the water are cows: that on the bank a dog: and that in the glade of
the wood a man or woman as you may choose. I can't say my drawing gives
you much idea of my picture, except as to the composition of it: and even
that depends on the colour and disposition of light and shade. The
effect of the light breaking under the trees is very beautiful in the
original: but this can only be given in water-colours on thick paper,
where one can scratch out the lights. One would fancy that Constable had
been looking at that fine picture of Gainsborough's in the National: the
Watering Place: which is superior, in my mind, to all the Claudes there.
But this is perhaps because I am an Englishman and not an Italian.
_To W. H. Thompson_. {79a}
[18_th_ _Feb._ 1841.]
* BOULGE HALL, WOODBRIDGE.
* Doesn't this name express heavy clay? {79b}