Constable/Introduction
INTRODUCTION
Constable's father, Golding Constable, came of an old Yorkshire family which had been settled in Suffolk for two generations. By inheritance, by marriage, and by purchase he had, in course of time, become the owner of a considerable amount of property, including Flatford Mill, which stands just above the tidal waters of the Stour, a water-mill at Dedham, and two windmills at East Bergholt. Near this village he built for himself the house in which his second son John was born on 11th June 1776. This house was pulled down many years ago, and exists only on Constable's canvas. An engraving by Lucas, from one of his numerous sketches of it, forms the frontispiece to his "English Landscape Scenery." Several other views of the house may be seen in the room devoted to Constable's work at South Kensington.
Though delicate as an infant, John Constable grew up into a healthy child, and afterwards became remarkable for good looks and physical strength. He was first sent to a boarding school not very far from his home at the age of seven; was transferred later to an establishment in the pretty, little town of Lavenham, where he suffered much at the hands of a flogging usher; and finally went to the Grammar School at Dedham, where he remained till he was about seventeen years old. Here his fondness for painting became noticeable, and was treated with indulgence by the headmaster. Though he acquired a fair knowledge of Latin, he was not a brilliant scholar, and was remarkable chiefly for his fine penmanship. At home he practised painting from nature in company with John Dunthorne, a plumber and glazier, an ingenious and original man, who shared the boy's enthusiasm for art. As in the case of Crome, who, as a boy, was apprenticed for seven years to a coach, house, and sign painter, this early acquaintance with men who used paint in the broadest and simplest manner was doubtless of much use in saving Constable from any pettiness or timidity in the handling of pigment.
As a practical man Golding Constable could not help seeing that painting was not a remunerative profession, and, since his son displayed no inclination for taking orders, it was settled that he should become a miller. With that end in view, the young man worked for a year in his father's mills. However, while thus engaged he made the acquaintance of Sir George Beaumont, whose mother lived at Dedham, and saw for the first time Sir George's favourite Claude—the little "Landscape with figures," now in the National Gallery (No. 61)—which impressed him deeply. Sir George also owned a small collection of drawings by Girtin, which he advised Constable to study. The young man's passion for art increased with time, though he was exact in performing his duties as a miller, till Golding Constable consented to his visiting London with the view of ascertaining his prospects as a professional painter.
He was furnished with a letter of introduction to Joseph Farington, R.A., whose name is now only remembered on account of the coloured aquatints after his landscape drawings which are common objects in curiosity shops. Though Farington was not himself a great artist, having most of the mannerisms of his master Wilson and few of his excellences, he was sufficiently open-minded to be able to recognise the young man's originality, and informed him that his style of landscape would some day form a distinct feature in the art. Constable also made the acquaintance of "Antiquity" Smith, the biographer of the sculptor Nollekens, who gave him much sound advice. He corresponded freely with Smith during the next few years, chiefly on matters relating to art; and in 1797, when his prospects of painting seemed worse than uncertain, we find him writing:
"I must now take your advice and attend to my father's business, as we are likely soon to lose an old servant (our clerk), who has been with us eighteen years; and now I see plainly it will be my lot to walk through life in a path contrary to that in which my inclination would lead me."
Nevertheless, two years later, before he was twenty-three years old, he had given up business for ever, and become a student at the Royal Academy. Judging from his letters to Dunthorne, he seems at first to have devoted most of his time to copying the works of the old masters, with the intention of acquiring a skill in execution which would enable him to face nature more boldly. In 1800 he writes that he is working from nature in Helmingham Park, about ten miles north of Ipswich; and in 1801 he paid a visit to Derbyshire. In 1801 he exhibited for the first time at the Academy. He had been greatly helped in his work by the advice and encouragement of the President, Benjamin West, who now did him a still greater service by preventing him from accepting a drawing-mastership which had been offered him. A year later Constable went in an East Indiaman from London to Deal. On the voyage he executed a large number of sketches, which, owing to a hurried departure, he left on board ship. Ultimately he had the good luck to recover them, and they gave him material for several of his exhibited works. In 1805 he spent two months in the Lake District, where, if one may judge from his sketch-books, he seems to have been chiefly impressed by the lower end of Borrowdale. During the next few years he made the acquaintance of Stothard, Wilkie, and Jackson, an acquaintance that ripened into a lifelong friendship; while his technical powers were notably improved by a commission from the Earl of Dysart to copy a number of family pictures, chiefly by Sir Joshua Reynolds. A time of trial, however, was in store for the artist which prevented this improvement from having much immediate effect upon his prospects.
In 1800, during one of his visits to Suffolk, Constable had made the acquaintance of a little girl, the granddaughter of Dr. Rhudde, the rector of Bergholt, and daughter of Charles Bicknell, Solicitor to the Admiralty. This acquaintance by the year 1811 had ripened into a warmer attachment, which met with active opposition from the lady's relatives. Dr. Rhudde was not on good terms with Golding Constable, and objected, not altogether without reason, to the limited means and uncertain prospects of the young painter. Mr. Bicknell does not seem to have opposed the union so strongly, but he did not wish his daughter to be disinherited by her grandfather, who was very rich, and so was bound to side with Dr. Rhudde.
The correspondence of the two lovers as given by Leslie should be read in extenso by all who are interested in Constable's personality, and is of no little interest as a human document. It is amusing to contrast the two young people. The artist is ardent, hopes and despairs alternately, turns for a time to portrait-painting as a means of making money, but is always intent upon bringing matters to a climax. Maria Bicknell's attachment is of a more sober and practical kind; her sentiments are the sentiments of a young lady who has been well brought up, and takes a quite proper view of filial duty and the discomforts of love in a cottage. "Indeed, my dear John," she writes on one occasion, "people cannot live now on four hundred a year—it is a bad subject, and therefore adieu to it." And again, when Dr. Rhudde found out by accident that Mr. Bicknell was allowing Constable to pay occasional visits to his house: "The Doctor has just sent such a letter that I tremble with having heard part of it read. Poor dear papa, to have such a letter written to him! He has a great share of feeling, and it has sadly hurt him ... I am sure your heart is too good not to feel for my father. He would wish to make us all happy if he could. Pray do not come to town just yet." What a picture Miss Austen might have drawn of poor Mr. Bicknell's dilemma between his daughter's happiness and his father-in-law's money!
The Gordian knot was cut in 1816 by Constable's friend, Archdeacon Fisher, who brought matters to a crisis. Miss Bicknell's answer to Constable's proposal is characteristic: "Papa is averse to everything I propose. If you please, you may write to him; it will do neither good nor harm. I hope we are not going to do a very foolish thing ... Once more and for the last time it is not too late to follow papa's advice and wait ... Notwithstanding all I have been writing, whatever you deem best I do. This enchanting weather gives one spirits." There can be little doubt as to the tenor of Constable's reply. The two were accordingly married by the Archdeacon at St. Martin's Church on 2nd October 1816, and went down after the wedding to stay with him at his vicarage of Osmington, near Weymouth.
Archdeacon Fisher, the eldest son of Dr. Fisher, Master of the Charterhouse, had become Constable's greatest friend, though sixteen years his junior. He was chaplain to his uncle, the Bishop of Salisbury, and spared neither his influence nor his purse to help the struggling artist. His letters show him to have been gifted with unusual knowledge, taste, and enthusiasm in matters of art, and also as a man of an affectionate nature and sound common sense. He was the first really to appreciate Constable's art, and to show his appreciation in a practical form; while it would be hard to overpraise his tact and tenderness in times of trouble.
During the last two years of his courtship Constable met with trouble enough, apart from the anxieties arising from the uncertainty of success in his profession. He lost his mother in the spring of 1815, and his father about a year later. The death of his mother was an especially heavy blow to his affectionate nature. She had not only done all she could to bring his courtship to a successful issue, but had continued to encourage his artistic efforts, when his professional prospects seemed most desperate. In 1811, after the British Institution had bought a picture of Benjamin West's for £3000, she writes to her son: "In truth, my dear John, though in all human probability my head will be laid low long ere it comes to pass, yet, with my present light, I can perceive no reason why you should not, one day, with diligence and attention, be the performer of a picture worth £3000." Eighty years after her death this fond wish was more than realised when Constable's Stratford Mill fetched nearly £9000 at the Huth sale.
The young married couple lived for the next few years at a small house, No. 1 Keppel Street, Russell Square, where their two eldest children, John and Maria, were born. In 1819 Constable's anxieties were lessened by the receipt of his share (£4000) of his father's property, while Mrs. Constable inherited a similar amount from her grandfather Dr. Rhudde. How much his professional reputation had increased may be judged from the fact that he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy towards the end of the year. His art was never more perfect than at this period, but his pictures did not sell readily; and though Archdeacon Fisher bought The White Horse and Stratford Mill, Constable was still unable to regard his landscape work as a certain source of income—even three years later we find him writing to his friend for the loan of twenty or thirty pounds. In 1822, however, he moved into a larger house, 35 Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, which had belonged to Joseph Farington, R.A., whom he had consulted twenty-seven years earlier as to his chance of success as a painter. The move had become almost a necessity, as his family had been increased by the birth of a son and a daughter (Charles and Isabel), and the artist needed more room for his painting. In the autumn of 1823 he spent more than a month with Sir George Beaumont at Coleorton Hall—the longest time he ever spent apart from his wife and children. A year later, after long negotiations, two of his large pictures, one of them being The Haywain, now in the National Gallery, were exhibited in the Louvre. Here their merit and originality were soon recognised; they were removed to places of honour, they raised a storm of discussion in the papers, and finally, when Charles x. visited the Exhibition, they gained the artist a gold medal. In the following year he won a similar distinction at Lille with his White Horse; and in November his third son Alfred was born. Alfred Constable, who inherited something of his father's artistic taste, was drowned by the upsetting of a boat at Goring, when he had just completed his twenty-seventh year. In 1827 Constable moved to Well Walk, Hampstead, and we find him writing to Fisher: "So hateful is moving about to me that I could gladly exclaim, 'Here let me take my everlasting rest!' ... This house is to my wife's heart's content, it is situated on an eminence at the back of the spot in which you saw us, and our little drawing-room commands a view unsurpassed in Europe—from Westminster Abbey to Gravesend. The Dome of St. Paul's in the air seems to realise Michelangelo's words on seeing the Pantheon, 'I will build such a thing in the sky.'"
Shortly after their move to Hampstead (2nd January 1829) Constable's fourth son Lionel was born. The painter's anxieties as to the future of his family were removed about the same time by a legacy, of £20,000 from Mr. Bicknell. Mrs. Constable, however, had been unwell for some time, and her illness now became serious. Symptoms of consumption developed, and she died towards the end of the year. Her death was a terrible blow to her husband, who wore mourning for the rest of his life. Even his election to full membership of the Academy did not revive his spirits. "It has been delayed," he said, "till I am solitary and cannot impart it." Thus when calling, in accordance with custom, to pay his respects to the President, he intimated to Lawrence that his admission was an act of justice rather than of favour; and a month or two later he writes to Leslie: "Can you tell me whether I ought to send it (his Hadleigh Castle) to the Exhibition? I am grievously nervous about it, as I am still smarting under my election." His resentment was not wholly unnatural, for he was in his fifty-third year.
The next few years of his life were made busy by the duties inseparable from the membership of the Selection Committee and as visitor of the Life Class. He was also much occupied with the engraving of the plates in his "English Landscape"—an undertaking of which he bore the cost, and which proved a failure from the first. Towards the end of 1831 Constable was taken seriously ill, and the depression consequent upon his weak health was not lessened by the knowledge that he must shortly lose his assistant John Dunthorne, the son of his friend at East Bergholt. Poor young Dunthorne died in November 1832. Two months earlier Constable lost his constant friend and patron Archdeacon Fisher. In 1833 the painter delivered a lecture in the Assembly Room at Hampstead, with the title "An Outline of the History of Landscape Painting." In the spring of the following year Constable suffered once more from an attack of acute rheumatism. In the summer he visited a namesake and patron, Mr. George Constable, at Arundel, and was greatly charmed with the castle and the splendid scenery round it. In the autumn he paid a visit to Lord Egremont at Petworth, with its magnificent collection of pictures. In May and June 1836 he delivered four lectures on Landscape at the Royal Institution, and in July he lectured at Hampstead to the Literary and Scientific Institution on the same subject. During these last years Constable seems to have devoted himself to his art more entirely than ever, though the starting of two of his sons in life also occupied his attention. John, the eldest, did not long survive his father: wishing to take orders, he went to Cambridge, but died of scarlet fever, caught while studying medicine in a hospital. Charles Constable, the second son, who inherited much of his father's artistic talent, went to sea about a year before his father's death, entered the East India Company's service, and retired at length with the rank of Commander.
Constable's health had long been far from satisfactory, though, in spite of his sedentary habits, he retained to the last an unusually youthful appearance, and his sudden death on the evening of 31st March 1837 could only be traced to a severe attack of indigestion. Nevertheless, as he himself had observed long before, the nervousness of his temperament was wont to react strongly upon his physical nature. He was never really a happy man after the death of his wife, so that when the attack came it fell upon a constitution that had long been undermined. He was buried at Hampstead in the vault in the south-east corner of the churchyard, which contained the remains of his wife, under a tablet bearing the inscription by which he had commemorated her loss:
Eheu, quam tenui a filo pendet
Quidquid in vita maxime arridet.
Before Constable's pictures were dispersed a subscription was raised by his friends and admirers, with the result that The Cornfield was purchased and presented to the National Gallery, where it now hangs.
In a short abstract such as this it is impossible to give a fair impression of the painter's character, of the simplicity and earnestness of his nature, of the kindness of his heart, and the sense of humour which together served to gain the affection of those with whom he came in contact, even more than his enthusiasm for his art, and the patience, originality, and skill with which he practised it. In Leslie's delightful pages Constable the man is revealed as clearly as Constable the painter, and it is difficult to say which of the two is the more attractive. Somewhat undue stress has been laid upon Constable's reputed poverty, and the want of appreciation with which his painting was received. As a young man Constable certainly may not have been rich, but he was never reduced to any desperate straits, and later by various bequests inherited nearly £30,000. If his art was too original to command the ready sale which attends the commercial painter who has learned to paint down to the level of the public, he was at least admired and respected by a fair number of his brother-artists, he was a regular exhibitor at the Academy, and his success on the Continent was sufficiently spontaneous and remarkable to have satisfied any ambition. That the impression he left on his contemporaries was not that of the anxious, dispirited man, whom the letters not infrequently reveal, may be judged from the number of anecdotes that survive of his general good temper and sense of humour. Of these only one can be quoted. An artist complained in the hall of the Royal Academy of the way in which his picture had been hung; and when Constable and Leslie went down to pacify him he began to accuse some of the members of jealousy, adding, "I cannot but feel as I do, for painting is a passion with me." "Yes," replied Constable, "and a bad passion."
The few quotations of Constable's words included in this brief notice give but a faint idea of the natural charm of his style. Had his taste not lain in other directions, he might, I think, have occupied a distinguished place among the masters of English prose, and his simple eloquence is never seen to better advantage than when he is describing the subjects of his sketches.
The enormous, and in many respects well deserved, reputation of Ruskin compels a brief note on his attacks upon Constable, which, as he himself admitted, were called forth by Leslie's affectionate admiration. Such resentment may explain, but does not excuse, the utter injustice of his remarks upon one whom he regarded as a possible rival of Turner. He writes, for instance: "Unteachableness seems to have been a main feature of his character, and there is corresponding want of veneration for Nature herself. His early education and associations were also against him; they induced in him a morbid preference of subjects of a low order." And again: "Constable perceives in a landscape that the grass is wet, the meadows flat, and the boughs shady; that is to say, about as much as, I suppose, might be apprehended between them by an intelligent fawn and a skylark. Turner perceives at a glance the whole sum of visible truth open to human intelligence." The modesty of the last sentence indicates sufficiently the writer's sense of proportion and lack of prejudice. Three lines later he classes Constable with Berghem!
As to Constable's unteachableness, it is impossible to have two opinions when one knows his work. He was all his life a devout student of the old masters, he learned to paint by copying and imitating them, and in his lectures on Landscape he speaks of them always with all possible sympathy, affection, and respect. To accuse him of want of veneration for Nature is even more absurdly false, and may be best answered in Constable's own words. In the course of the last of his lectures on Landscape, delivered the year before his death, he says: "The young painter who, regardless of present popularity, would leave a name behind him, must become the patient pupil of Nature.... The landscape painter must walk in the fields with a humble mind. No arrogant man was ever permitted to see Nature in all her beauty. If I may be allowed to use a very solemn quotation, I would say most emphatically to the student, 'Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth.'"