Life and letters of John Constable, R.A.

Contents

Constable's Native Scenery — Parentage — Birth — School Days — His Love of Painting — John Dunthorne — Constable employed in his Father's Mills — Introduced to Sir George Beaumont— His First Sight of a Picture by Claude — Girtin's Drawings — Constable's First Visit to London- — Farrington — Antiquity Smith — Constable engaged in his Father's Counting-house — Returns to the Study of Painting — Becomes a Student of the Royal Academy — -His Drawings at Helmingham — Visits Derbyshire — Anatomical Studies — Exhibits at the Academy — Samuel Strowger — Mr. West — Situation of a Drawing-Master offered to Constable — Dissuaded by Mr. West from accepting it — Voyage from London to Deal — Altar-piece for Brantham Church — Visits Westmoreland and Cumberland — Introduced to the Earl and Countess of Dysart — Altar-piece for Neyland Church — Jackson— Wilkie .

West's Picture of Christ Healing the Sick — Constable's Art — Traits of his Character — His Health affected — Sir George Beaumont's Prescription — Another Prescription — Attachment to Miss Bicknell — Their Marriage objected to by her Friends — Visit of Miss Mary Constable to her Brother — Correspondence with Miss Bicknell — Exhibition at the Royal Academy, 1812 — Archdeacon Fisher — Mr. Stothard — Constable engaged on Portraits — Fire at his Lodgings ..............

Constable's Pictures in the Exhibitions of 1813 — Exhibition at the British Gallery of the Works of Reynolds — Turner — J. Dunthorne, Jun. — Willy Lott's House — Sale of two of Constable's Pictures — His Pictures at the Academy, 18 14 — Excursion in Essex — Picture of Boat-Building — Constable's Disposition to shun Society »

Introduction

It is more than fifty years since the second edition of my father's " Memoir of John Constable" was published, in the Preface to which he says : " I regret that it must appear without the beautiful engravings with which, in its first state, it was adorned." This first edition was published in 1843, w^tn more than twenty plates after Constable, by David Lucas. Both this, and the second edition published in 1845, have long been out of print.

Owing, however, to the vast improvement and refinement in the various methods of reproducing good engravings and original sketches, it is now possible to offer to all lovers of Constable and his art, an edition of my father's book, not only with the plates in the earlier folio edition, but with others afterwards engraved by Lucas under my father's own careful supervision ; together with reproductions from some of Constable's pictures and sketches.

Few painters' lives were more completely identified with their work than Constable's ; and in his case the difficulty has been, not which of his pictures to select in illustrating it, but which, if any, to omit.

Though Constable left many well-filled sketch-books and small oil studies from nature, he was far from being a prolific painter, and left comparatively few important large finished works. In spite of which, for some years after his death, the few pictures of xii

his which changed hands did so at quite moderate prices ; while a proof by Lucas after him might often then be picked up for a few shillings. Time has so changed all this, that to-day the following quotation from Bacon, found among Constable's papers by my father, reads almost like prophecy. " Let great authors have their due, but so as not to defraud time, which is the author of authors and parent of truth." Substituting painters for authors half a century has certainly proved a kind parent to the fame of John Constable, and the truth of his art.

About sixty years ago I remember seeing nearly all his more important works upon the walls of a large studio formed by him out of the drawing-room of 35, Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square. When he died the greater number of these, after being bought in for the family by my father and other friends at his sale in Foster's Rooms, remained crowded together on the walls of a small house in St. John's Wood, which then became the home of his children ; and, with the exception of a portion allotted to his second son, Captain Charles Constable, which have since been sold, all these pictures and studies remained there until, on the death, in 1888, of his last surviving daughter Isabel, they became the property of the nation.

During the fifty years which elapsed between Constable's death (in 1837) and this bequest of his pictures to the nation, any work of his that chanced to change hands, at first slowly, but afterwards very rapidly, rose in value ; and many imitations of his pictures have during this interval been sold, and even publicly exhibited. One marked feature of all these productions being founded upon the mistake, that in order to manufacture an authentic Constable, it was only needful to load so many square feet of old canvas with

INTRODUCTION.

xiii unmeaning dabs of paint, clumsily laid on with something like a small trowel. Constable, no doubt, in certain of his later works employed the palette knife freely, but it was never used until he had secured the drawing, tone, and effect of the picture with the brush.

During the last years of his life he, at times, also touched upon some of his earlier pictures in this way as they hung on the walls of his studio, leaving for a moment a work on his easel to do so. Though I have heard my father say that in this way Constable himself thought he often injured a picture, or as he said once, " was cutting his own throat with the palette knife."

As the schoolfellow and neighbour of his sons, Alfred and Lionel, I spent many happy hours among Constable's finest pictures, until I believe I became more intimate with them, and his sketches, than I was with my own father's work. And while able to speak with some authority upon Constable's work in his best period, I can also do so upon his use of the palette knife, because some time after the sale of those few of his pictures at Foster's, not bought in for his family, two sketches upon six-foot canvases, of the " Hay Wain " and " Leaping Horse," were, for want of room elsewhere, stored at my father's house.

Though wonderfully fine in sparkle and effect, both were more or less mere masses of colour, loaded on with brush and knife, and in spite of a goodly assemblage of dealers and others at the sale, no bid above £^ was made for them.

They remained with my father for some time, and after he and I had removed the dirt and London smoke with which they were covered, he asked me to make two small copies of them ; and I shall not soon forget the difficulty I met with in doing this, so as xiv

INTRODUCTION.

to retain, upon a small scale, the sparkle obtained by the use of the palette knife, without losing their fine general effect and intention.

Both these studies are now at South Kensington ; but I feel sure that Constable merely looked upon them as unfinished experiments upon a large scale for more finished pictures.

I was with my father the whole time he was engaged in compiling both his first and second editions of Constable's memoirs, and remember well the pains and labour — though in his case a true labour of love — the vast amount of correspondence, writing, and rewriting they cost him before a single page left his hand. During the whole of this period, and especially after the publication of this book, spurious Constables were constantly brought to my father by dealers ; at times singly, at others in batches ; nearly all being of the extreme palette knife type, or what would now, perhaps, be called "impressionist" examples. One such batch, I remember, was brought by a well-known London dealer, who, though too good a judge himself to be deceived, wished my father to see them, because, as he said, "the source from which he had them should have placed their authenticity beyond doubt." This was nearly ten years after Constable's death, and yet, on examination, most of the meaningless lumps of paint with which they were loaded proved to be still soft.

I never saw my father so completely upset as he was by this crop of forgeries, because, from the name given by the dealer, he at once foresaw an unlimited supply of the same kind of rubbish. And judging from the quantity of works sold and exhibited under the name of Constable, I should not be surprised if the number of forgeries now greatly exceeded that of his genuine pictures.

INTRODUCTION.

xv

One of the worst evils of the multiplication of such things is, that the public eye— never too discriminative— is gradually led to look, not at or for Constable, as seen in the more finished work of his best period, but only at those examples which display the mannerism of his later style. A style to which I agree with my brother George, " both he and Turner were goaded by a desire, natural to such men, of seeing their pictures eclipse, in sparkle and brilliancy, those of others upon the walls of the Academy." Writing on this subject in his " Handbook for Young Painters," my father says, " The truth is that the pictures in which he most used this instrument, are those of which there are the greatest number of forgeries. A practised eye will, however, generally detect thes~, as in such imitations one colour is smeared over another, so as to have the muddled and filthy look of the rags with which a painter cleans his palette. . . . While the dashes of colour from Constable's knife have the look of gems, and the more they are magnified the more beautiful they appear."

Any one who examines a few square inches of Constable's " Cenotaph" in the National Gallery with a lens will, I think, at once acknowledge the truth of this.

Among art critics, no one has more undervalued Constable, or deplored his influence for evil upon the English and French schools of landscape, than Mr. Ruskin. But with my father, I think this to be very much owing to the fact that Mr. Ruskin's judgment of Constable was hastily formed, in almost complete ignorance of his really finest work, and at a time when his careful studies from nature, and power of drawing either with brush or pencil, were almost unknown. " I have never," he says in " Modern Painters," " seen a work of Constable in which there is any sign of his being xvi

INTRODUCTION.

able to draw." After quoting which in his " Handbook for Young Painters," my father says, " I can only conclude from it that Mr. Ruskin has either never seen a genuine Constable, and that his impression is derived from the numerous forgeries of his work in circulation, or that he has seen pictures by him without looking at them ; which often happens where we are not interested."

Again, in the preface to " Modern Painters," Mr. Ruskin in a note says, ''The feelings of Constable with respect to his art might be almost a model for the young student, were it not that they err a little on the other side, and are perhaps in need of chastening and guiding from the works of his fellow men. . . . Constable, in his dread of saint-worship, depriving himself of much instruction from the Scripture to which he holds, because he will not accept aid in reading it from the learning of other men." "How far," my father says, "this charge is just, the reader will determine when told that Constable's first known attempts at art were pen-and-ink copies of the prints from the cartoons ; his next, copies of the etchings of Ruysdael, Rubens, Teniers, and Claude ; copies some of which might pass for the originals ; while his walls were covered with pictures, drawings, and prints of the great landscape and other painters." Then again, Mr. Ruskin says, " Unteachableness seems to have been a main feature of his — Constable's — character, and there is a corresponding want of veneration in the way he approaches Nature herself." " I think," adds my father, " the first of these charges has been sufficiently answered, and to the second I will oppose the following words from one of Constable's lectures, where he says, ' The landscape painter must walk in the fields with an humble mind. No arrogant man was ever permitted to see nature in all her beauty ; and if I may be allowed

INTRODUCTION.

xvn to use a very solemn quotation, I would say most emphatically to the student, Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth.' "

Constable's much-talked-of influence, especially as an impressionist, upon the French school of landscape, has, I think, been greatly exaggerated. And certainly when Charles X. of France and the Mayor of Lille awarded him those gold medals for his pictures of the "Hay Wain" and "White Horse," it was for nothing of this character about them.

Turner, in his later art, indeed, far exceeded that of Constable in this way ; and the real gospel, which the French artists were the first to receive and recognise as true from Constable, was, that so-called romantic scenes or subjects, go little toward making a picture interesting, compared with those of every-day life humbly studied among an artist's immediate surroundings.

Of the literary merits and taste of my father's book I am far less able to speak than the editor of my father's own autobiography — Mr. Tom Taylor — who said of it, " Among examples of artist biography, Leslie's ' Life of Constable ' deserves, I think, to rank as a model. Affection for his subject may have had as much to do in guiding Leslie through his task as any theory of editorial duties. But to whatever cause we are to ascribe the result, I know of no more striking example of perfect good taste than Leslie's part in this book. It seems to me difficult to praise too highly the subordination, all through, of the editor to his subject, his industry in research, his arrangement ; the skill with which he has left the subject of the biography to tell his own story in letters judiciously chosen, and carefully linked by brief explanatory statements ; the

simple earnestness with which the editor has conveyed his admira-

c xviii

INTRODUCTIONtion and affection for the subject of his memoir, till he creates a kindred feeling in those who read what he has written."

Beyond some additional notes and personal recollections I have not therefore ventured to alter a word of my father's book. And in conclusion, have only to offer my best thanks to Mr. Clifford Constable, son of Captain Charles Constable, and grandson of the great painter, for the loan of many valuable engravings ; also to my friend Mr. J. P. Heseltine, Mr. T. Armstrong of the Science and Art Department, South Kensington, my brother, G. D. Leslie, R.A., and my brother-in-law, Mr. A. P. Fletcher.

Robert C. Leslie.

Preface

TO C. R. LESLIE'S FIRST ILLUSTRATED FOLIO EDITION OF CONSTABLE'S LIFE, PUBLISHED IN 1843.

The lives of painters are considered to afford but few materials that can engage the attention of the generality of readers ; they are not often diversified with what is called " stirring incident " ; yet at a time when the arts seem to attract more notice than they have hitherto received in this country, the adventures of the mind of so original a painter as John Constable cannot be entirely devoid of interest even beyond the sphere of his own profession.

The number of his letters placed in my hands has enabled me to give the following pages, however unskilfully I may have done it, almost the form of an autobiography. Very few of these papers are printed entire, and the difficulty of selecting such portions of them as might best compose a narrative of his studies has not been trifling. It may perhaps be thought that too many circumstances merely of a domestic nature have been dwelt on ; but in Constable the affections of the heart were so inseparably blended with all that related to painting that it did not seem to me possible to give a true impression of his character as an artist without making the reader intimately acquainted with him in the private relations of life.

XX

PREFACE.

The series of engravings from his pictures and sketches entitled " English Landscape," formed a work which, to use the words of Coleridge, was " a secret committed to the public, and very faithfully kept." These plates will, therefore, to most eyes be new.

Their subjects are all connected with Constable's personal history, and the permission that has been obtained to make use of them, enables me to adorn a volume, chiefly from his pen, with some beautiful productions of his pencil.

T must here offer my thanks to the members of his family, and to others of my friends, for much valuable assistance in a task which I have only undertaken from the fear that if I did not engage in it, it would perhaps be deferred until many particulars of his life remaining only in the memories of those who knew him intimately, might be lost.

C. R. Leslie.

MtBlfiai

WIS

5:

Constable's Native Scenery. — Birth and Parentage. — Employed in his Father's Mills. — Visit to London. — Student of The Royal Academy. — Mr. West. — Voyage to Deal. — Paints an Altar-piece.

East Bergholt, or, as its Saxon derivation implies, Wooded Hill, is thus mentioned in the " Beauties of England and Wales" : " South of the church is Old Hall, the manor-house, the seat of Peter Godfrey, Esq., which, with the residences of the rector, the Rev. Dr. Rhudde, Mrs. Roberts, and Golding Constable, Esq., give this place an appearance far superior to that of most villages. It is pleasantly situated in the most cultivated part of Suffolk, on a spot which overlooks the fertile valley of the Stour, which river separates the county on the south from Essex. The beauty of the surrounding scenery, its gentle declivities, its luxuriant meadow flats sprinkled with flocks and herds, its well-cultivated uplands, its woods and rivers, with numerous scattered villages and churches, farms and picturesque cottages, all impart to this particular spot an amenity and elegance hardly anywhere else to be found."

This is Constable's description of the " scenes of his boy-

B

THE LIFE OF JOHN CONSTABLE.

[Chap. I.

hood," which he was fond of saying "made him a painter." From among them most of the subjects of his pencil were selected. The frontispiece to the "English Landscape," a series of engravings published by him late in life, is from a sketch of the house in which he was born,* and the passage I have quoted accompanies the plate. Fearful of having said too much, and yet unwilling to say less, he adds, " Perhaps the author, with an overweening affection for these scenes, may estimate them too highly, and may have dwelt on them too exclusively."

His ancestors were from Yorkshire, where the name is frequent. His great-grandfather, Hugh Constable,"]* carried it into Suffolk, and settled as a farmer at Bures, on the border which separates that county from Essex. Golding Constable, the artist's father, inherited considerable property from a rich uncle, who was childless, including the water-mill at Flatford ; he afterwards purchased a water-mill at Dedham, and two windmills in the neighbourhood of East Bergholt ; at the latter place he built the house which has been mentioned, and to which he removed in the year 1774, having before that period married Miss Ann Watts, who brought some accession to his wealth, but more to his happiness, for she possessed, in a high degree, the virtues best suited to domestic life.

The children of this marriage were three sons and three daughters. John Constable, the second son, was born on the 1 ith

* This house was pulled down some time ago, and sold for the value of the material of which it was built.

t The name is obviously derived from the ancient office of trust, as the constable of Chester, the constable of the Tower, &c, and from the list or table of Battle Abbey, printed in How's Chronicle, the first Constable came to England with William the Conqueror.

BIRTH.— SCHOOL DAYS.

of June, 1776, and baptized on the same day, not being expected to live. He became, however, a strong and healthy child, and, when seven years old, was placed at a boarding-school about fifteen miles from Bergholt. He was afterwards removed to a school at Lavenham, the master of which, being in love, left the care of his scholars to an usher, who flogged them so unmercifully as to incur the hatred of them all, and Constable secretly resolved to repay his own share of the castigation in kind, if, as men, he and the tyrant should ever meet — a resolution he was well qualified to put in practice, unless the usher had been a man of uncommon personal strength. From Lavenham he was removed to the grammar school of the Rev. Dr. Grimwood, at Dedham, where he met with an indulgent master, with whom he became a favourite. Dr. Grimwood had penetration enough to discover that he was a boy of genius, although he was not remarkable for proficiency in his studies, the only thing he excelled in being penmanship. He acquired, however, some knowledge of Latin, and subsequently took private lessons in French, in which he made less progress. He was at this time sixteen or seventeen years of age, and had become devotedly fond of painting. During his French lessons a long pause would frequently occur, which his master would be the first to break, saying, " Go on, I am not asleep. Oh ! now I see you are in your painting-room."

But his painting-room was not under his father's roof. He had formed a close alliance with the only person in the village who had any love for art, or any pretensions to the character of an artist, John Dunthorne, a plumber and glazier, who lived in a little cottage close to the gate of Golding Constable's house. Mr. Dunthorne possessed more intelligence than is often found in

THE LIFE OF JOHN CONSTABLE.

[Chap. L the class of life to which he belonged ; at that time he devoted all the leisure his business allowed him to painting landscapes from nature, and Constable became the constant companion of his studies. Golding Constable did not frown on this intimacy, although he was unwilling that his son should become a professional artist, and Constable's attempts were made either in the open air, in the small house of his friend, or in a hired room in the village.

It argued no want of affection or of foresight in his father that he opposed his son's choice of a profession in which future excellence cannot with any certainty be predicted from early attempts, and which, even if attained, is less sure than excellence in many other pursuits of securing a competence. He would have educated him for the Church, but finding him disinclined to the necessary duties, he determined to make a miller of him. For about a year Constable was employed in his father's mills, where he performed the duties required of him carefully and well. He was remarkable among the young men of the village for muscular strength, and being tall and well formed, with good features, a fresh complexion, and fine dark eyes, his white hat and coat were not unbecoming to him, and he was called in the neighbourhood the "handsome miller."

The windmill, in an engraving from one of his sketches entitled "Spring," is one of those in which he worked; and its outline, with the name of "John Constable, 1792," very accurately and neatly carved by him with a penknife, still remains on one of its timbers. His acquaintance with the picturesque machinery both of wind and water-mills was very useful to him in after life. His younger brother, Mr. Abram Constable, said to me, " When I look at a mill painted by John, I see that it will go round, which

JOHN CONSTABLE Aged 20.

1KOM A PAINTING BY GAKOtNKR.

A SILVERY SPRING DAY.

is not always the case with those by other artists." By a windmiller every change of the sky is watched with peculiar interest ; and it will appear from Constable's description of this plate that the time spent as one was not wholly lost to him as a painter.

" It may perhaps," he says, " give some idea of those bright and silvery days in the spring, when at noon large garish clouds, surcharged with hail or sleet, sweep with their broad shadows the fields, woods, and hills ; and by their depths enhance the value of the vivid greens and yellows so peculiar to the season. The natural history, if the expression may be used, of the skies, which are so particularly marked in the hail squalls at this time of the year, is this: The clouds accumulate in very large masses, and from their loftiness seem to move but slowly : immediately upon these large clouds appear numerous opaque patches, which are only small clouds passing rapidly before them, and consisting of isolated portions detached probably from the larger cloud. These floating much nearer the earth may perhaps fall in with a stronger current of wind, which, as well as their comparative lightness, causes them to move with greater rapidity ; hence they are called by wind-millers and sailors, messengers, and always portend bad weather. They float midway in what may be termed the lanes of the clouds ; and from being so situated, are almost uniformly in shadow, receiving a reflected light only, from the clear blue sky immediately above them. In passing over the bright parts of the large clouds they appear as darks; but in passing the shadowed parts, they assume a grey, a pale, or a lurid hue."

Mrs. Constable procured for her son an introduction to Sir George Beaumont, who frequently visited his mother, the Dowager

THE LIFE OF JOHN CONSTABLE.

[Chap. I.

Lady Beaumont, then residing at Dedham. Sir George had seen and expressed himself pleased with some copies made by Constable in pen and ink from Dorigny's engravings of the Cartoons of Raphael ; and at the house of the Dowager Lady Beaumont the young artist first saw a picture by Claude, the " Hagar"* which Sir George often carried with him when he travelled. Constable looked back on the first sight of this exquisite work as an important epoch in his life. But the taste of a young artist is always the most affected by contemporary art. Sir George Beaumont possessed about thirty drawings in water-colours by Girtin, which he advised Constable to study as examples of great breadth and truth ; and their influence on him may be traced more or less through the whole course of his practice. The first impressions of an artist, whether for good or evil, are never wholly effaced ; and, as Constable had till now no opportunity of seeing any pictures that he could rely on as guides to the study of nature, it was fortunate for him that he began with Claude and Girtin.

In the year 1795 his father consented to his visiting London, for the purpose of ascertaining what might be his chance of success as a painter, and on this occasion Priscilla Wakefield furnished him with a letter of introduction to Farrington, of whom, it has been said, he became a pupil. But this was not the case, though he, no doubt, received many valuable hints from a landscape painter who, though not a man of genius, possessed a great deal of good sense, and could tell him much of the practice of Wilson. Farrington predicted Constable's future excellence, and said, at

* This little treasure is now in the National Gallery, where it is called " The Annunciation " ; but the spring by which the female is seated, and the action of the angel who points to the buildings in the distance, leave little doubt that Claude's intention was to represent the first flight of Hagar from the presence of her mistress.

1 795.] INTRODUCTION OF FIGURES IN LANDSCAPE.

an early period of their acquaintance, that his style of landscape would one day " form a distinct feature in the art."

Soon after his arrival in London, Constable became acquainted with John Thomas Smith, known then as a clever draughtsman, engraver, and local antiquary ; since more generally, I cannot say better, known as the writer of the " Life of Nollekens." Constable's intercourse with "Antiquity Smith," as he was called, tended, no doubt, to strengthen that fondness for localities which had so much to do with, if indeed it was not the basis of, his art ; and it may be inferred that the advice he received from his new friend was generally sound, from the following specimen : " Do not," said Smith, " set about inventing figures for a landscape taken from nature ; for you cannot remain an hour in any spot, however solitary, without the appearance of some living thing that will in all probability accord better with the scene and time of day than will any invention of your own." Often has Constable, in our walks together, taken occasion to point out, from what we saw, the good sense of Smith's advice.