Memoirs of the life of John Constable, R.A

Front matter

Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy guide, In thy most need to go by thy side.

This is No. 563 of Everyman’s Library. A list of authors and their works in this series will be found at the end of this volume. The publishers will be pleased to send freely to all applicants a separate, annotated list of the

J. M. DENT & SONS LIMITED

Introduction

On Tuesday, May 15th, and on Wednesday, May 16th, 1838, the finished works, studies, and sketches of John Constable, Esq., R.A., deceased, were sold by auction by Messrs. Foster in Pall Mall. One hundred and forty lots were offered, including fourteen of the artist’s largest and most famous works, but the net result was little more than 2000 guineas. It might well seem to his friends that the unpopularity which had pursued Constable all his life was to follow him beyond the grave.

Five years later ( 1 843 ) a biography appeared by his friend C. R. Leslie, illustrated with a fine series of the mezzo-tints by David Lucas after Constable’s sketches, and was successful enough to warrant the issue of a second edition without the illustrations in 1845. Leslie’s quiet good sense, technical authority and reasoned enthusiasm, coupled with the extraordinary charm of the book as a human document, at once began to start a revulsion in Constable’s favour. External causes also were working to the same end. Constable during his life-time had become a conspicuous figure in the eyes of French artists, and the naturalism of which he was the greatest exponent had been making headway in England also. The seed sown by Leslie thus fell on a soil that was not wholly unprepared to receive it.

But the increase of Constable’s reputation must also in some degree be attributed to the conditions of the picture market. He had sold very few landscapes in his life-time, and the sale in 1838 was such a fiasco that a considerable portion of his works were “bought in ” by his family. The result was that so soon as there began to be any demand at all for Constable’s pictures it was discovered that they were exceedingly scarce. Forgers did their best, as in the case of Crome, to supply the deficit, but they could not

vii

Vlll keep prices from rising rapidly, and that in England spells fime. But even the forgers were in a difficult position. Some half dozen works in the National Gallery and at South Kensington made up practically the whole of the material for imitation; when that was exhausted they (like the public) were compelled to fall back upon the Lucas mezzo-tints, while the vast mass of Constable’s genuine work remained locked up in inaccessible private collections until the year 1888, just half a century after the disastrous sale at Foster’s. Then Miss Isabel Constable bequeathed to the nation more than 400 of her father’s pictures and studies, and a complete estimate of Constable’s achievement was at last made possible. Miss Constable’s gift was no less timely than it was precious. Though the market price of Constable’s works was rapidly rising to a height almost unprecedented for a landscape painter and an Englishman, his place as an artist, his technical skill, and the very principles on which he worked had long been challenged, and that by a very formidable enemy.

More than thirty years before, Constable’s great contemporary Turner had found a champion in John Ruskin — a champion who brooked no rival near the throne of his admiration. Ruskin ’s amazing eloquence, erudition and public spirited advocacy of unpopular causes in artistic and social matters, had in the course of years given him unrivalled authority among the English educated classes, and his influence did much to suppress, though it could not extinguish, the growing feeling in favour of Constable’s art. Ruskin himself was frank enough as to his own motives. In the first appendix to the third volume of Modern Painters (1856), he writes, “ The reader might however suspect me of ill-will towards Constable, owing to my continually introducing him for depreciatory comment. So far from this being the case, I had, as will be seen in various passages of the first volume, considerable respect for the feeling with which he worked, but I was compelled to do harsh justice upon him now, because Mr. Leslie, in his unadvised and unfortunate rechauffe of the fallacious art maxims of the last century, has suffered his personal regard for Constable so far to prevail over his judgment as to bring him forward as a great artist, comparable in some kind with Turner.”

The book which awakened this jealousy was Leslie’s

Introduction

IX

; Handbook for Young Painters, of which the first edition : had appeared in 1854, the sanest and most enlightened I practical treatise upon the arts which had appeared in England since Reynold’s Discourses. But for the moment ; its soundness made but little appeal to the general public,

‘ and Leslie’s modest voice was overwhelmed by the trumpets ; of Ruskin and the din of the Pre-raphaelite controversy.

; Only when Modern Painters has become a classic, and the 1 Pre-raphaelites have become old masters, have we slowly jj come to recognise that Leslie after all is a sounder guide than his brilliant antagonist.

I think we need some such historical prelude if we are to appreciate quite justly the value of the Life of Constable. As a painter Leslie will never rank high. It is true that his little picture in the Diploma Gallery, “ Catherine j of Aragon,” is admirable both in feeling and execution; but he rarely reaches anything like the same level, and his harshness in the matter of colouring (perhaps due to a i mistaken application of Constable’s theories) is specially noticeable. Yet his Autobiographical Recollections show ! him to have been one whom the eminent men of his age I were glad to know; as a Royal Academician he was the | champion of important reforms which have since been effected ; and as a critic he deserves a far higher rank than : is commonly accorded to him.

Almost every word that he wrote fifty years ago can be ; accepted without alteration to-day, and in his attitude towards masters like Girtin and Cozens he is wholly modern. Probably in this matter Leslie owed something to Constable, who copied Girtin in boyhood, and always spoke with rapturous enthusiasm of Cozens. But the inclusion of these masters in a serious treatise on the arts was a daring step fifty years ago, especially when they were honoured with the only two important plates which the treatise contains. Even the relentless partisanship of Ruskin might well have been softened by the loveliness of the engraving after Cozens. But it was not to be. The print 1 was seen with blind eyes, the praises fell upon ears that j could not or would not hear, and it is not until the last decade that Leslie’s foresight has been openly and j abundantly justified.

j In the Life and Letters of John Constable the same sound il

X judgment, the same foresight, is no less consistently, if less obviously, shown. Leslie had known Constable ever since his student days, but their acquaintance had only become intimate friendship during Constable’s later years. Thus for the earlier portion of Constable’s career he was dependent almost entirely upon letters written to others, chiefly to members of Constable’s own family. Some of the material he used has passed through my hands, and I can testify to the thoroughness with which he seems to have extracted from every letter all that could possibly interest a later generation, except, perhaps, in one or two cases where his natural amiability led him to suppress some forcible criticism of the art or character of his living contemporaries. Only in one period of Constable’s life, from 1803-1811, are these materials really inadequate, and from the artistic point of view the loss is serious. Everywhere else, however, the material is sufficient to provide a continuous narrative, and one of quite extraordinary interest both as a contribution to the history of painting and as a human document.

The troubles of Constable and Miss Bicknell during thenlong engagement, the persistence of the one, the not altogether culpable hesitations of the other, the perplexities of their elders, all overshadowed by the portentous figure of Dr. Rhudde, the rich grandfather whose money would be left — heaven knows where! if the young people were allowed to be happy, make up a wonderful picture of social life in England a hundred years ago. Delightful in another way is the portrait of Constable’s friend, Archdeacon Fisher: one who loved men and books and pictures and pike fishing, who bought Constable’s canvases when no one else dared to do so, and who supported him in all his trials with affectionate common sense.

But Constable himself is naturally the great figure of the book, and it is to two aspects of his career of which Leslie was unable to speak, that I should like to devote the remainder of this brief note, namely, his development as a painter, and his influence upon landscape painting.

It is easy to blame his parents for opposing Constable’s wish to be an artist; but an acquaintance with his early efforts amply justifies their reluctance. Up to the age of twenty-four Constable was a poor draughtsman and a

Introduction xi wretchedly clumsy painter. During the next six years, by unceasing efforts under the influence of such different f masters as Girtin, Ruysdael, and Benj amin West, he obtained

I a very fair acquaintance with the traditional methods of using oil and water colour, which he employed inter- 1 mitten tly in attempting to paint from nature in his beloved 1 Suffolk.

Then followed another period of four or five years in which he obtained work as a copyist of portraits, which

I brought him into contact with paintings by Hoppner and Reynolds. From them he learned much, and a few ; portrait commissions no doubt extended his technical

! experience. In the intervals of these labours he returned to his painting from nature. Here his newly-gained knowledge stood him in such good stead that by the time he was thirty-six years old (1812) he had become a capable and original artist.

The works of this time show very clearly the principles on which he worked. As with the old masters, the foundation is a warm monochrome into which the fresh sharp colours of nature are painted, at first with a sparing hand, afterwards so forcibly that the original foundation is disguised, if it is not wholly concealed. The method is specially noticeable in his large pictures, where the monochrome serves as a link to bind the masses into a compact whole. In his sketches the use of a board of a reddish colour is enough to serve the same purpose, and to prevent the cool tones of blue and green from looking cold. And the method expands with his increasing experience. As time went on and his life grew more troubled, the trouble was reflected in his workmanship. The serene subjects and the serene handling of his early years gave place to stormy moods, expressed by fierce brushwork and reinforced with touches of pure colour applied with the palette knife. But the monochrome foundation persisted to the last;

I indeed it is never more prominent than in certain works I of his later years, such as “ The Valley Farm ” and “ The Cenotaph ” in the National Gallery.

It is in virtue of this monochrome foundation that I Constable remains a pupil of the old masters. His con- | nection with the moderns rests on the sincerity with which he looked at nature, a sincerity which only a few years ago

Xll was commonly regarded as the one thing needful to great art. And of this sincerity Constable was the conspicuous champion. Turner was sincere to himself rather than to nature. Crome was sincere to nature, but never allowed his sincerity to over-rule his innate reverence for fine painting. Cox and De Wint were sincere, but their outlook was less wide, their truthfulness less unrelenting than Constable’s. So it has come about that Constable is generally held to be the father of modern landscape both in France and in England.

Yet, on the evidence, the claim must not be pressed too far. Delacroix undoubtedly repainted “ Le Massacre de Scio,” making it brighter and more luminous, after seeing Constable’s pictures at the Salon of 1824, but Rousseau, the pioneer of landscape painting in France, was then only twelve years old, Corot’s work retained its pleasant youthful stiffness for years after Constable’s death, and French painters in general would have had nothing but the memory of the few works by Constable which had been shown at the Salon to direct their sympathetic enthusiasm. It is as a tradition rather than a reality that his influence has persisted.

The causes have already been indicated which made his acceptance in England more tardy than it might otherwise have been. But after 1888, when the glamour of Ruskin’s eloquence was fading, and artists were able to judge Constable by the superb selection from his life’s work in the Victoria and Albert Museum, admiration increased by leaps and bounds. As was natural, the younger painters were those who were able to profit most by his example, and the school of which Mr. Wilson Steer is the leader, came into being. Constable’s peculiar intimacy with certain aspects of nature remains unrivalled (Daubigny’s knowledge of the scenery of the Oise is the one parallel to the Englishman’s knowledge of Dedham Vale and Hampstead), but his truth, his courage, and in some measure his skill in seizing the vital spirit of landscape, the pulsating life of clouds and trees, and shifting sunshine have been inherited by his younger disciples. There are indications already that this is not to be the last word in European landscape. Yet the message of sincerity to nature is one which no future school of painting can afford altogether to forget, and in Leslie’s

Introduction xm

Life of Constable it finds its first and most perfect expression.1 For Constable was one of the few painters who have been able to record their thoughts in lucid and eloquent words. His letters reflect the very soul of his art, and so his wise biographer, by leaving him to tell his own story, has given us not only a human document of singular charm, but also a unique record of the most momentous aesthetic revolution which Europe has experienced for at least three centuries.

C. J. H.

December 1911.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, R.A., composed chiefly of his letters, 1843, 2nd edition, 1845; New Edition, Life and Letters, etc., 1896; Handbook for Young Painters, 1855, 1870; Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds, with notices of some of his contemporaries, completed by T. Taylor, 2 vols., 1865.

Life : Autobiographical Recollections, edited with a prefatory essay on Leslie as an Artist, and selections from his correspondence, by T. Taylor, i860. See also Cunningham, Lives of the British Painters, edited by C. Heaton (Bohn’s Standard Library) ; and Redgrave. A Century of Painters of the English School, 2nd edition, 1890, 1893.

1 The admirable French translation of Leslie’s book by M. Leon Bazalgette (Paris: Floury, 1905, 6 fr.) includes an interesting introduction on Constable’s relations to “ the men of 1830,” and notes on points raised in Lord Windsor’s John Constable, R.A. (London: Walter Scott, 1903), which contains a considerable amount of new material, and my own Constable and his Influence on Landscape Painting. For the pitfalls which attend a minute study of Constable’s work, see The Burlington Magazine for August 1908, vol. xiii., pp. 286-287.

Contents

1776-1810

CHAPTER PAGE

I. 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. . . . . 1

Preface

In the first arrangement of the papers of which these Memoirs principally consist, many passages were included that, from the fear of making the book too long, were afterwards omitted. The interest, however, with which the retained portions of Constable’s correspondence were read, has encouraged me to restore, now, much that had been left out of the first edition. To this I have added a few of his early letters, recently placed in my hands, and by a careful examination of some of his papers, which I had not before seen, I have been enabled to make a few additions to the notes of his Lectures. I have also added to the quotations from the letters of Archdeacon Fisher some passages which assist the narrative, and others which appear to me well worthy of preservation on their own account.

In changing the form of the volume to one more adapted to general circulation, while I cannot but hope that its additional pages will be found to add to its value, I regret that it must appear without the beautiful engravings from Constable’s works, with which in its first state it was adorned.

I must again offer my thanks to the members of his family and to others of my friends, for their renewed assistance in a task, to me, far less easy than interesting, although, now as before, it has been little else than that of an editor.

C, R, LESLIE.

XX

MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF JOHN CONSTABLE

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.

“ East Bergholt, or as its Saxon derivation implies, Wooded Hill, is thus mentioned in the Beauties of England and Wales : — c 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 that 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 boyhood,” which he was fond of saying “ made him a painter,”

A

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 over-weening 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 a 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 nth 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

Love of Painting 3

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 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 studies, 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 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 one 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 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

Antiquity Smith 5

Dowager Lady Beaumont the young artist first saw a picture by Claude, the “ Hagar,”1 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 cotemporary 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 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 Nollekins. 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

1 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, leaves little doubt that Claude’s intention was to represent the first flight of Hagar from the presence of her mistress.