CONSTABLE, John (East Bergholt, 1776 – Hampstead, 1837)
The fourth child of Ann Watts and of the wealthy corn merchant Golding Constable, John Constable began to work in his father’s business at the age of seventeen. In 1795 he met the patron and artist Sir George Beaumont, a connoisseur of the works of Claude Lorrain. A year later he befriended the antiques dealer Thomas Smith, who introduced him to the Dutch painters and to the concept of picturesque landscape. After obtaining his family’s consent to allow him to study art in London, Constable enrolled at the Royal Academy School as an apprentice in 1799. In 1802 he exhibited his first paintings, but success eluded him.
During the first decade of the 19th century, Constable made many drawings and sketches, and copied works by Claude Lorrain, Ruisdael, Rembrandt and Gainsborough. His technique gradually matured, until he developed his own vibrant and naturalist style, which he put into practice in The Dedham Vale, Morning (1911), his first great landscape.
After the death of his father in 1816, Constable inherited a substantial sum of money, which enabled him to marry Maria Bicknell. They settled in London, but Constable did not severe his links with his native landscape. His “six-footers” (1817–1825), large-size paintings with which he tried to grab the attention of the critics, were painted in London and Hampstead from sketches made in the Stour valley. The public exhibition of The White Horse (1819) earned him a place as an associate member of the Royal Academy.
In 1819 Constable rented a summerhouse in Hampstead. In these new surroundings, he carried out a type of work open to artistic experimentation in which his studies of the clouds and of natural phenomena stand out. Constable continued to show his large compositions to the public. The Hay Wain (1921), initially exhibited at the Royal Academy, received a gold medal at the Paris Salon of 1824, where it caused a strong impression on painters such as Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix.
Due to her poor health, Maria had to move to Brighton in 1824. Constable continued working in London and Hampstead, paying frequent visits to Brighton, where he painted luminous sea views. He also visited Salisbury in order to depict the surroundings of the cathedral, commissioned by Bishop Fisher. His last “six-footers”, The Lock (1824) and Jumping Horse (1925), show a greater artistic concentration and a more sketch-like technique.
Maria’s death from tuberculosis in 1828 constituted an emotional blow for Constable, and not even his election to full membership of the Royal Academy in 1829 soothed him. Isolated, prone to sudden changes in his mood, and incapable of understanding a rapidly modernising society, Constable executed more expressive works in his treatment of light and impasto, and included a new element : the rainbow. In the last years of his life, Constable gave lectures and wrote an essay entitled The English Landscape, illustrated with etchings of his works, and published posthumously.
John Constable died in his Hampstead home on 31 March 1837.
J A L M
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