(Skip to bullet points (best for students))
Born: 1776
Died: 1837
Summary of John Constable
Constable had a major impact on European art, particularly in France. When compared to other landscape painters of the time, Constable opted for more realistic depictions of the natural world based on careful study. More than 100 portraits and a large number of preliminary drawings were completed in oil by Constable, who is best known for his pastoral paintings in the Stour Valley.
As he experimented with a more open style of depiction, he found that he was able to convey changes in the environment caused by natural elements with greater spontaneity in his final works. His primary goal remained the same regardless of medium or technique: to accurately and realistically portray the countryside he observed, even if his sketches are far more impressionistic and less precise than his exhibition paintings.
As a pioneer in advocating realistic depictions of nature, Constable was an important figure. When it comes to landscape painting, “the greatest vice of the present day is bravura, an attempt to do something beyond the truth,” he said. His own style of depiction was centred around accurately capturing what he saw on the page.
He was enthralled by the shifting patterns of clouds, weather, and light, and he tried to capture them in his oil paintings. He used broad, free brushstrokes to convey an overall impression of what he saw, rather than focusing on the tiniest details.
When he completed his work, Constable avoided the usual invisibility of brushstrokes that were expected in academic art at the time. A palette knife was his preferred tool for applying paint on his canvases, which gave them an uneven and textured surface that added to the authenticity of his work.
As a result, Constable drew inspiration from the colours he observed in nature and applied it to his work more extensively than was customary at the time. To represent the sparkle of light on water, he used pure white accents in his paintings.
Childhood
John Constable was the second son of Golding and Ann (née Watts), rich grain merchants who owned Flatford Mill in East Bergholt and subsequently Dedham Mill in Essex. He was born in East Bergholt, a hamlet in Suffolk, England. Constable’s older brother (also known as Golding) suffered from seizures and was deemed unsuitable to take over the family company from his father. As a result, John was assigned the task, and after graduating from Dedham High School, Constable joined his father in the corn business, a position for which he lacked enthusiasm and aptitude. Golding Jnr went on to become a land warden despite his disability, and the two brothers remained close throughout their lives.
Constable had five siblings in total: three sisters and another brother, Abram, who was the family’s youngest. Constable sketched the countryside around his home as a child, and these landscapes later became the subject of much of his work. “I associate my careless boyhood with all that lies on the banks of the Stour; those scenes made me a painter.” he later said. Sir George Beaumont, a collector, exposed him to Claude Lorrain’s Hagar and the Angel (1646), which served as an early source of inspiration for him. Although John Thomas Smith, an artist and family friend, supported his passion in art, he firmly pushed him to stay in his father’s company rather than pursue painting professionally.
Early Life
Constable convinced his father to let him pursue a career as an artist after seven years working in the maize business. He was granted a small stipend and was accepted into the Royal Academy Schools, where he studied life drawing and became acquainted with the Old Masters’ works. He turned down the job of drawing master at Great Marlow Military School after completing his studies, opting instead to pursue a career as a professional landscape painter.
‘For the previous two years… I have not attempted to portray nature with the same elevation of thought with which I began out… There is room enough for a natural painter,’ he said in a letter to John Dunthorne. From 1802 forward, he began showing at the Royal Academy.
Constable developed a routine of spending his summers sketching and painting at East Bergholt and then returning to London in the winter, with the exception of a two-month visit through the Lake District in 1806. He resorted to portraiture to supplement his little income after failing to find customers or commissions for his landscapes, and while he produced a number of beautiful portraits, he found the process tedious compared to the joy he had in landscape painting.
Constable paid a visit to Bishop John Fisher and his family in Salisbury in 1811; the two had met when Fisher was Rector of Langham Church in Essex, near to East Bergholt. Bishop Fisher became one of Constable’s most ardent supporters, and the city of Salisbury inspired some of his most famous paintings. Constable met his nephew, Reverend John Fisher, through the Bishop, and the two established a lifelong connection.
Mid Life
Constable proposed to Maria Bicknell, whom he had met when she was twelve years old, in 1809. Her grandfather, on the other hand, prohibited the marriage and threatened Maria with disinheritance since he considered the Constable family to be of lower social standing. Constable’s father died in 1816, and he was unable to support a wife and family on his meagre salary. The pair had a secret correspondence but were unable to marry until after his father’s death. Constable’s brother Abram continued to operate the company for the benefit of the entire family, and John Senior made provisions for each of his children.
Despite the fact that this did not make Constable affluent, it did offer the essential financial security for marriage. The pair married at St Martin in the Fields in London and spent their honeymoon at Osmington, Dorset, with Bishop Fisher and his wife, followed by a tour of the south coast of England. On this journey, Constable was inspired to use a looser brushwork and experiment with conveying greater emotional depth in his work, notably in his depictions of the sky and water, by sketching the sea at Brighton and Weymouth. Constable returned to London after his honeymoon, first settling in Bloomsbury with his new wife before moving to Hampstead in 1819.
Constable struggled to make a living as a painter, but things changed in 1819 when he sold his first significant piece, The White Horse (1819), a large-scale canvas known as a six-footer. He was made an Associate of the Royal Academy in the same year. The Hay Wain (1821) was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1821. It was shown in the Salon de Paris in 1824, along with two other of his works, and received a gold medal from Charles X. Constable declined to cross the Channel to promote his work, writing to Francis Darby, a fellow artist and friend, that he “would rather be a poor man in England, than a rich man abroad.”
Maria, Constable’s wife, had been a frail kid who had suffered from bad health for the majority of her childhood. Constable moved his family to Brighton, an increasingly popular holiday destination, in 1824, on the advice of doctors, to enjoy the pure sea air. Her health improved over time, and they stayed in town for the following four years. Although he despised the people of Brighton, characterising it as “the offscouring of London… and the beach is Piccadilly by the sea” in a letter to his friend John Fisher, he adored the surrounding scenery, which he captured in a series of experimental oil drawings.
Constable was frequently compared to Turner throughout his life, and tales imply that the two had a heated and personal rivalry. Turner began his career painting in the academic style and was quickly accepted by the English art establishment, where he found a mentor in Joshua Reynolds. His style evolved and varied as time went on, becoming increasingly impressionistic.
While the style of Constable’s oil sketches and Turner’s later work are similar, their goals are different. Turner, unlike Constable, often chose his subjects, compositions, and lighting for dramatic effect, rather than seeking the truth of what he saw. He used his images to pass comment on contemporary issues and to elicit an emotional response in the viewer.
Late Life
Maria’s father died in March 1828, and her considerable fortune meant their financial troubles were resolved. Happiness, on the other hand, was fleeting. Maria died of TB in November 1828, at the age of 41, after being weakened by the birth of their seventh child. “hourly do I feel the loss of my departed Angel… the face of the World is totally changed to me.” Constable wrote to his brother Golding.
Constable was admitted to the Royal Academy in February of the following year, at the age of 52. Constable never really recovered from the loss of his wife and struggled to raise their seven children on his alone. On Bishop Fisher’s advice, he painted his final six-footer, Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (1831), in 1831.
Constable gave public lectures on landscape painting at the Royal Institution, the Hampstead and Literary and Scientific Society, and the Worcester Athenaeum in the last few years of his life. He also attempted to publish a folio of mezzotints, but was unable to get enough subscribers to make the enterprise financially viable, despite the fact that they are now much sought for. He died at his Bloomsbury studio in 1837 and was buried in Hampstead Parish Church in London.
Constable was one of the first Romantic artists to paint landscapes straight from nature rather than the idealised and dramatic portrayals preferred by other artists of the time, and he helped to establish Naturalism in Britain by doing so. His use of vivid, realistic colours, as well as his use of light and paint application, set him apart. Constable inspired important personalities in European painting, including Richard Parkes Bonington and Delacroix, through the display of his works in Paris. Constable’s style is described in Delacroix’s diaries, notably his use of “broken colour and flickering light”
Famous Art by John Constable
Dedham Vale
1802
Constable painted this when he was 26 years old, and it was one of his first significant works. The serenity of the painting belies the larger political upheaval. It was painted in the brief period between the end of the French revolutionary conflicts and the commencement of the Napoleonic wars the following year. While the methods that would eventually serve Constable so well are not yet completely established, the picture immediately displays his dedication to close study of nature, as seen by the precise portrayal of the trees and sky.
The Hay Wain
1821
Although it was deemed unimpressive when it was originally displayed, the Hay Wain is today one of Constable’s most renowned and well-known paintings. He portrays the River Stour, which runs through Suffolk and Essex counties. The cottage of Willy Lott is visible to the left of the photograph, and it is also visible on The White Horse (1819). It’s conceivable that the cart is submerged in water to prevent the wooden wheels from shrinking and loosening their metal rims in the sun.
Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows
1831
Constable began painting Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows immediately after the loss of his wife and continued to work on it until his death in 1837, despite the fact that it was first displayed in 1831. Constable felt that one day, this painting, the last of his huge six-foot canvases, will be regarded his best work. The religious subject matter, the stormy sky, and the insertion of the rainbow, which would be a meteorological impossibility given the other weather circumstances, all depict the anguish Constable felt at this season of grief.
BULLET POINTED (SUMMARISED)
Best for Students and a Huge Time Saver
- Constable, together with J. M. W. Turner, revolutionised nineteenth-century landscape painting, and his works had a significant and far-reaching impact on European art, notably in France.
- Constable broke away from the period’s anticipated standard of highly idealised landscapes, favouring realistic portrayals of the natural world developed via careful study.
- Constable is most known for his pastoral paintings in and around the Stour Valley, but he also painted over 100 portraits and a large number of preparatory drawings, many of which were finished in oil.
- He experimented with a more open manner of depiction in these works, which allowed him to portray the impacts of elemental change on the countryside with a spontaneity that he was able to translate to his final works.
- Despite the fact that his sketches are far more impressionistic and less precise than his exhibition paintings, his primary goal remained the same, regardless of medium or technique: to accurately and realistically portray the countryside he observed.
- Constable was a forerunner in advocating realistic representations of nature.
- He created emotive depictions using broad, free brushstrokes that portrayed an overall impression of what he observed rather than minute details.
- His drawings can be viewed as a forerunner to the Impressionists’ work thirty years later.
- Constable also used colour in a more extensive way than was customary, reflecting the colours he saw in nature.
- He is most known for adding pure white accents to his paintings, which he used to symbolise the sparkle of light on water.
Information Citations
En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.
