John Constable (East Bergholt, June 11, 1776 - London, March 31, 1837) was an English painter, considered along with William Turner to be one of the greatest landscape painters of Romanticism.
Born in Suffolk, Constable is mainly known for his paintings depicting Dedham Vale, an area of countryside located in close proximity to his native village. Among his most famous works are notably The Hay Wagon and Salisbury Cathedral as seen from the Bishop's Grounds.
John Constable's Biography
Boyhood and youth
John Constable was born on June 11, 1776, in East Bergholt, a village in Suffolk, the son of Golding and Ann Constable.
His father was a wealthy grain merchant who owned two watermills, one at Flaftford and the other at Dedham, along the course of the Stour River, and ran a horse-drawn barge transport business; as his mentally retarded older brother, John, as the second son, was destined to become the natural successor in his father's business.
After a brief stint at Lavenham boarding school, he continued his studies at Dedham, then left school and began working in his father's farm business; soon, however, he began to manifest a sincere artistic vocation, prompted in part by his friendship with John Dunthorne, an amateur painter with whom he painted en plein air pictures.
Having grown up in the green and peaceful English countryside, his love of nature and landscape came almost naturally to him, so much so that in his youth Constable made numerous amateur sketches of the bucolic scenery of Suffolk and Essex.
He himself would later exclaim, "it is these scenes that have made me a painter, and I am thankful for them!" acknowledging his unconditional love for "the sound of water escaping mill dams, willows, old soggy planks, marshy places and brick buildings."
In 1795 he befriended Sir George Beaumont, an influential collector with an infectious taste for painting who encouraged him to cultivate his own inspiration: it was his association with Beaumont, and his love of landscape, that persuaded Constable to embrace painting studies for good.
His father was rather disappointed not to be able to count on John to run the mills (their operation was eventually taken over by Abram, his younger brother); nevertheless, he did not hinder his pictorial vocation, instead agreeing to protect him during his years of study in London with generous financial aid.
Constable's early training in painting took place under the tutelage of John Thomas Smith, an extravagant artist involved in several legal misadventures: he, however, proved equally capable of imparting to him the first rudiments of the craft, with which Constable succeeded in being admitted to the Royal Academy in 1799.
During these formative years he practiced extensively on the great masters, showing great sensitivity to the work of Thomas Gainsborough, his first model, but also to the classicist landscapes of Poussin, Lorrain, Rubens, Rembrandt, and Jacob van Ruisdael.
The fruits of so much enrichment could not be delayed: in 1802, having returned to Suffolk, Constable began to paint his first works of undisputed value.
These are oil sketches, executed outdoors, depicting the banks of the Stour and the Dedham countryside, the places where he spent his boyhood and which remained his favorite subjects throughout his painting career.
Maturity
In 1809 Constable became hopelessly infatuated with one of his youthful friends, Maria Elizabeth Bicknell: sympathy soon turned into intimacy, although the relationship was openly opposed by her parents, who despised Constable because of his financial straits and low social standing.
It was not until October 1816-with the death of the artist's parents and the collection of the inheritance-that the two were able to celebrate their wedding, which would prove to be a very happy one and was also crowned by the birth of seven children.
Constable's economic situation, however, was not consolidated at all: he, in fact, was unable to sell his paintings, and in order to earn a living he also turned to portraiture and religious painting, genres that he, however, always looked down on.
It was in 1819 that the painter consecrated his professional achievement with his association with the Royal Academy and the sale of his first major painting, The White Horse, the first in a long series of six footers, or ambitious large-scale paintings executed with the intention of having a great impact on the public.
In the 1820s Constable worked tirelessly. In 1821 he exhibited at the Royal Academy The Hay Wagon, an oil on canvas depicting a quiet, idyllic country scene in which man, animals, nature, and man-made elements coexist in serene harmony: although it did not meet with favor in academic circles, the work was a dazzling success, sanctioned by the enthusiastic praise of Théodore Géricault and the Barbizon painters and by winning the gold medal at the Paris Salon, where it was exhibited in 1824.
This painting was followed by Constable's Horse Jumping, Wheatfield and other paintings that only consolidated his European notoriety.
Beginning in 1827, however, Constable's successes were intermittent. Bicknell, in fact, began to experience the first symptoms of tuberculosis; Constable, therefore, decided to move with his family first to Hampstead and then to Brighton, hoping that the milder, healthier climate would benefit his wife's health.
In these two locations he had the opportunity to perform numerous studies of skies and airy landscape and marine compositions.Bicknell's health, however, did not improve at all despite her husband's loving care.
The seventh pregnancy finally weakened her health, and she died on November 23, 1828, leaving Constable in the darkest despair. This, in fact, was a blow from which he would never recover and which would also have health and physical consequences: not even his appointment as a full member of the Royal Academy in 1829 could relieve him of his deep prostration.
Nevertheless, he continued to work hard, executing a series of paintings destined to remain famous, such as Hadleigh Castle (1831), Salisbury Cathedral seen from the Meadows (1831), The Opening of Waterloo Bridge (1832), and The Farm in the Valley (1835).
John Constable finally passed away on the night of March 31, 1837, in London, crushed by a heart attack: sincerely mourned by his contemporaries, he was buried in the same grave as his beloved Mary at Hampstead Cemetery.
John Constable's Stile
John Constable is considered, along with William Turner, to be one of the greatest exponents of English landscape painting. Although indebted to the earlier landscape tradition, Constable revealed a new sentiment, repudiating ideal or imaginary landscapes and taking as his subject the bucolic and idyllic scenery offered by his native lands.
Constable's artistic production, centered almost entirely on the theme of landscape, is in fact animated by boundless skies, moving clouds, leafy trees, roaring mills of water and other elements related to the sphere of nature.
Constable was strongly convinced of the scientific nature of painting. This can be inferred from a number of letters the painter wrote that were published within a book entitled John Constable's Discourses by R. B. Beckett. In one of his letters he wrote "painting is a science, it should be cultivated as if it were an inquiry into the laws of nature."
Constable is an artist who, when confronted with the subject to be depicted, poses with the curiosity of a scientist, considering nature the field of his experimentation. He likens painting to a scientific investigation of the laws of nature, in which paintings turn out to be nothing more than experiments.
The landscapes he depicts, which are those of his childhood, are investigated and perused in every most insignificant detail. What characterizes his painting is precisely his ability to investigate the visual elements that make up the landscape. This scientific approach of his to nature and painting would prove to be fundamental to his cloud studies.
Nature, in fact, was a subject very dear to nineteenth-century artists: Caspar David Friedrich, for example, was interested in discovering the mystical, symbolic, visionary side of nature and finding in it the imperious power that frightens and terrifies man.
Constable, on the other hand, approached nature with a different spirit, concerned rather with discovering there pleasant and welcoming corners, in which natural and man-made elements coexist harmoniously, confronting each other in a serene balance.
These paintings, while far removed from Friedrich's poetics of the sublime, were rendered with great lyrical intensity, so much so that Constable can rightfully be considered a Romantic painter.
Among Constable's favorite natural elements was the sky, a theme to which he devoted hundreds of canvases. In 1803, Constable embarked on a sea voyage from London to Deal aboard a trading ship with the East Indies.
It was during this period that Constable began to make the various studies of the sky and the effects of clouds.
The latter are constituent elements of the British landscape and come in infinite forms and with innumerable chromatic and luministic variations: by dwelling on these qualities, Constable was able to bring his cloud banks to life, making them interpreters of a Nature that could be both sweet mother and terrible stepmother, in full accord with Romantic sensibilities.
In order to have a precise documentation of the appearance of the sky and the many atmospheric conditions, he decided to record in notes or directly behind sketches the various observations of the phenomena.
For greater knowledge of atmospheric effects, he made a constant study of the same subject in different seasons and parts of the day.
He could capture eloquent atmospheric instants, painting with equal skill light white clouds illuminated by the Sun and leaden skies laden with atrocious stormy omens. Regarding his cloud studies Constable expressed himself as follows.
Constable was not the only one to make studies of clouds: in fact, during the same period Turner also tried his hand at sky sketches, specifically in Valenciennes, France. What sets Constable apart is that he was the only one to add the date, time, direction, and strength of the wind on the back of the sketches.
The light he favored was midday, with the sun high enough to stay off the canvas, and with scattered clouds to practice light and shadow. He also favored wet earth, which allowed him to be able to create vibrant and shimmering light effects.
Technically, Constable applied color directly to the canvas with quick, intense brushstrokes, without relying, therefore, on compositional design, vigorously shaping volumes and colors so as to create a strong contrast between the vibrancy of light and shadows, which he called "natural chiaroscuro."
He attached great importance to the chiaroscuro of nature. Constable mainly sought natural light, shaded by clouds or reflected by water.
chiaroscuro is always present in each of his works, as it represents one of his fundamental peculiarities.
It was Constable himself who declared the importance of this technique, as can be seen from some of the letters that have come down to us today thanks to Charles Robert Leslie, a close friend of the artist, who decided to publish it in the book Memoirs of the life of John Constable, considered the first real biography of the artist.
Especially in a letter he wrote to Leslie himself, "I have always been convinced that my paintings should have chiaroscuro," hinting at the importance of this technique. For Constable, therefore, the effect of chiaroscuro was to be achieved at any cost in order to make the atmospheric envelopment more real.
Constable's naturalism was also to fully understand the laws and dynamics that governed nature. Constable abolished the idea of landscape painting as a mere imitation of nature, as the artist's aim was to tend to discover the spirit of nature itself, going beyond its outward appearance.
To penetrate into the meanderings of it, into all that lies beneath its surface, was meant to get in touch with nature, to understand it in all its extraordinariness and to make oneself a participant in the creative impulse.
Only in this way could one go beyond mere imitation, coming to create like nature itself. In his paintings, therefore, there is not so much contemplation as the artist's adherence to and identification with the natural landscape.
John Constable's Works
Boat under construction (1815);
Weymouth Bay: Bowleaze Cove and Jordon Hill (1816-17);
Flatford Mill (1816);
Salisbury Cathedral and Leadenhall as seen from the Avon River (1820);
Dedham Lock (1820);
The Hay Wagon (The Hay Wain, 1821);
The Cornfield (The Cornfield, 1826);
Chain Pier, Brighton (1827);
Salisbury Cathedral as seen from the fields (Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, 1829);
The Cenotaph (Cenotaph to the Memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1836);
Dedham Vale, (1828);
Salisbury Cathedral, (Salisbury Cathedral, 1825);
Salisbury Cathedral as seen from the Bishop's Grounds (Salisbury cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds, 1823);
Brighton Beach with Colliers (1824);
Boat building at Flatford Mill (Bootsbau in Flatford, 1815).
Study of Clouds at Hampstead (1821).