Enamel Medal
John Constable 1776 to 1837 and his Life and QuotesAnother one of my favourite artists is John Constable who is widely known and esteemed for his English Country Scenes. John Constable was born in East Bergholt a village on the River Stour in Suffolk to Golding and Ann (Watts) Constable on 11th June 1776. He is mainly best known for his Landscape Paintings of Dedham Vale the area surrounding his home—now known as "Constable Country"—which he invested with an intensity of affection. "I must paint my own places best", he wrote to his friend John Fisher in 1821, "painting is but another word for feeling". His most widely known and esteemed paintings include Dedham Vale of 1802 and The Hay Wain of 1821. Although his paintings are now amid the most ordinary and valuable in British art, he was never financially successful and did not become a fellow member of the institution until he was elected to the Royal Academy at the age of 52. During his lifetime he sold more paintings in France than here in his native England. List of John Constables Quotes:
Here I am rather alone amongst the Oaks and solitudes of Helmingham Park. I have taken quiet possession of the parsonage finding it rather empty. A woman comes up from the farm house (where I eat) and makes the bed; and I am left at liberty to wander were I please for the duration of the day. There are abundance of fine trees of all sort; through the place upon the whole affords good objects [rather] than fine scenery, but I may severely judge yet what I may have to shew You. I have made one of two... drawing that may be usefull. I shall not come home yet.
I paint by all the daylight we have and that is little enough, less perchance than you have by much... imagine to yourself how a purl ought to look through a burnt glass.
And nonetheless one's mind may be elevated, and held us to what is excellent, by the works of the Great Masters — still Nature is the fountain's head, the source from whence all in the first place ought to spring — and must an artisan proceed his exercise without referring to nature he ought to soon form a manner, & be scaled down to the same deplorable circumstance as the French painter cited by Sir Joshua Reynolds who told him that he had long ceased to look at nature for she only put him out. For the last two years I have been running after pictures, and seeking the truth at second hand. I have not endeavoured to represent nature with the same elevation of mind — but have neither endeavoured to make my performances look as if actually executed by other men.I am come to a determination to make no idle visits this summer, nor to give up my time to common-place people. I shall return to Bergholt, where I shall make galore laborious studies from nature — and I shall endeavour to get a pure and unaffected manner of representing the scenes that may utilise me.
There is room sufficient for a natural painture. The great vice of the present day is bravura, an undertake to do something beyond the truth. In endeavouring to do something better than well, they do what in reality is good for nothing. Fashion always had, & will have, it is day — but truth (in all things) only will last, and may only have just claims on posterity.
But You know Landscape is my mistress — 'tis to her that I look for fame — and all that the warmth of the imagination renders dear to Man.
I have been living a hermit-life, even though always with my pencil in my hand... How much real delight have I had with the study of landscape this summer! Either I am myself bettered in the art of seeing nature, which Sir Joshua call painting, or nature has unveiled her beauties to me less fastidiously. Perhaps there is something of both, so we will divide the compliment.
I have added a lot of ploughmen to the landscape form the park pales which is a outstanding help, but I must try and warm the picture a little more if I can... but I look to do a outstanding deal better in future. I am determined to finish a little picture in the spot for each one I intend to make in future. But this I have always talked when it comes to but never yet done – I think notwithstanding my mind is more settled and determined than ever on this point.
I am going on very well with my pictures... the park (Wivenhoe Park) is the most forward — the outstanding difficultness has been to get so much in as they wanted to make them acquainted with the scene — on my left is a grotto with a good deal of elms — at the head of a piece of water — in the centre is the house over a beautifull wood and very far to the right is a Deer House — what it was necessary to add. So that my view comprehended to a lot of degrees — but to day I got over the difficultness and I begin to like it 'myself'... I live in the park and mrs Rebow says I am very unsociable.
How sweet and beautifull is each place & I visit my old Haunts with renewed delight... not one thing may exceed the gorgeous green of the meadows which are beginning to fill with butter Cups — & respective flowers — the birds are singing from morning trill night but most of all the Sky larks — How delightfull is the Country.
They [French critics of the Paris Salon of 1824, where his painting 'the Hay Wain' received a gold medal] are very funny and acute — but very shoal and feeble. Thus one — after saying: "'it is but justice to admire the truth — 'the color' — and 'general vivacity' & richness —" – yet they want the objects more formed and specified &c, and say they are like the rich preludes in musick, and the full harmonious warblings of the Aeolian lyre, which means 'nothing,' and they call them orations — and harangues — and high-flown conversations affecting a careless ease — &c &v &c - Is not some of this 'blame' the most eminent 'praise' – what is poetry? – What is Coleridge's Ancient Mariner (the very best modern poem) but something like this?
My picture [A Boat Passing a Lock, 1823-6] is liked at the [Royal] Academy, without doubt it forms a decisive feature and it is light may not be put out. Because it is the light of nature — the Mother of all that is priceless in poetry — painting or anything else... my execution annoys most of them and all the scholastic ones – perhaps the scarifies I make for 'lightness' and 'brightness' is too much but these things are the essence of Landscape.
Our little drawing Room commands a view unequalled in Europe — from Westminster Abbey to Gravesend — the dome of St Paul's in the Air — realizes Michael Angelo's Idea on seeing that of the Partheon — 'I will build such a thing in the Sky.'
I had on Friday a long visit from Mr. --- alone; but my pictures do not come into his rules of whims of the art, and he said I had "lost my way." I told him that I had, perhaps other notions of art than picture admirers have in general. I looked on pictures as 'things to be avoided,' connoisseurs looked on them as things to be 'mitated'; and that, too, with such a defence and humbleness of submission, amounting to a total prostration of mind and introductory feeling, as must serve only to fill the world with abortions... But he was very agreeable, and endured the visit, I trust, without the frequent courtesies of life being violated. What a sad thing it is that his lovely art is 'so wrested to it is own destruction!' Used only to blind our eyes, and to prevent us from seeing the sub shine — the fields bloom — the tree blossom — and from hearing the foliage rustle; while old — black — rubbed out and dirty canvases take the place of God's own works.
My friend Bonner has just set off to Charlotte Street to pack your picture (an old painting) and forward it; it is a beauteous representation of a summer's evening; calm, warm and delicious; the colour on the man's face is perfective sunshine. The liquid pencil of this school is replete with a beauty queer to itself. Nevertheless, I don't believe they had any 'nostrums,' but plain linseed oil; 'honest linseed' as old Wilson called it. But it is always right to do not forget that the usual painters of that day used, as now, the same vehicle as their betters, and likewise that their works have all received the hardening and enamelling effects of time, so that we will have to not judge of originality by these signs always.
I ought to respect myself for my friends' sake, and my children's. It is time, at fifty-six, to begin, at least, to recognise oneself, — and I do know what I am not, and your regard for me has at least awakened me to believe in the possibleness that I may yet make a good deal of impression with my "light" — my "dews" — my "breezes" — my bloom and freshness, — no one of which calibers has yet been perfected on the canvas of any painter in the world.
My canvas soothes me into forgetfulness of the scene of turmoil and folly — and worse — of the scene around me. Every gleam of sunshine is blighted to me in the art at least. Can it consequently be wondered at that I paint continual storms? "Tempest o'er tempest roll'd" — still the "darkness" is majestic.
I am anxious that the world must be inclined to look to painters for data when it comes to 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, create works that are to stand by a comparison with realities.
The initial impression and a natural one is, that the fine arts have risen or declined in symmetry as patronage has been given to them or withdrawn, but it will be found that there has many times been more cash lavished on them in their worst periods than in their best, and that the most eminent honours have ofttimes been bestowed on artists whose names are hardly now known.
The climax of absurdness to which the art may be carried, when led away from nature by fashion, may be best seen in the works of Boucher... His landscape, of which he was plainly fond, is pastoral; and such pastorality! the pastoral of the Opera house.
He [the artist] ought to have 'these powerful organs of expression' — colour and chiaroscuro — wholly at his command, that he may use them in each possible form, as well as that he may do with the most perfective freedom; therefore, whether he wishes to make the subject of a joyous, solemn, or meditative character, by flinging over it the cheerful aspect which the sun bestows, by a proper disposition of shade, or by the appearances that embellish it is arising or it is setting, a unfeigned "General Effect" will have to never be lost sight of.
I am glad you encouraged me with the 'Stoke' [his painting 'Stoke-by-Nayland', circa 1835] What say you to a summer morning? July or August, at eight or nine o'clock, after a slight shower for the duration of the night, to heighten the dews in the shadowed part of the picture, beneath 'Hedge row elms and hillocks green.' Then the plough, cart, horse, gate, cows, donkey, &c. are all good paintable material for the foreground, and the size of the canvas sufficient to try one's strength, and keep one at full collar.
Many of my Hamptstead friends may do not forget this 'young lady' [an ash tree] at the entrance to the village. Her fate was distressing, for it is scarcely too much to say that she passed away of a broken heart. I made this drawing [Study of Trees, pencil on paper, circa 1821] when she was in full health and beauty; on passing a lot of times afterwards, I saw, to my grief, that a wretched board had been nailed to her side, on which was written in big letters: 'All vagrants and beggars will be dealt with according to law.' The tree seemed to have felt the disgrace, for even then a heap of of the top subdivisions had withered. Two long spike nails had been driven far into her side. In another year one half became paralysed, and not long after the other shared the same fate, and this pretty creature was cut down to a stump, just high sufficient to hold the board.
We will have to bear in recollection that the sentiment of the picture is that of solemnity, not gaiety & not one thing garish, but the contrary — yet it will have to be bright, clear, alive fresh, and all the front seen on the mezzo print of the 'Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows'.
He seems to paint with tinted steam, so evanescent, and so airy.
The world is wide; no two days are alike, nor even two hours; neither were there ever two leaves of a tree similar since the creation of the world. There is not one thing 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. Some of John Constable's Fab Paintings
In 1835, his last lecture to the students of the RA, in which he praised Raphael and called the R.A. the "cradle of British art", was "cheered most heartily". He passed from physical life on the night of the 31st March, apparently from indigestion, and was buried with Maria in the graveyard of St John-at-Hampstead, Hampstead. (His children John Charles Constable and Charles Golding Constable are also buried in this family tomb.). Please visit my John Constable Art Prints Collection @ http://www.fabprints.com/CONST.html My other website is called Directory of British Icons: http://fabprints.webs.com The Chinese call Britain 'The Island of Hero's' which I think sums up what we British are all about. We British are curious and competitory and are always looking over the horizon to the next adventure and discovery. Copyright © 2011 Paul Hussey. All Rights Reserved.
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