John Constable
Born – East Bergholt, England 1776
Died – London, England 1837
The son of a prosperous Suffolk mill owner, John Constable was, with Joseph Turner, the major English landscape painter of the nineteenth century. Constable admired Claude and Ruisdael for their ability to draw directly from nature. After a spell at the Royal Academy, Constable returned to Suffolk and, declaring that there was “room enough for a natural painture [sic]”, began an intense study of his native countryside. Constable was not a natural draughtsman. Making sketches outside in the fields in the summer, he then tried to reproduce the exact time and weather conditions of a particular moment in his London studio during the winter months. He was a painter of the particular rather then the general and wanted to show that “no two days were alike, nor even two hours; neither were there ever two leaves of a tree alike”. Regarded by constable as preparatory works for his large paintings, his oil sketches, including the inspired Seascape Study with Rain Clouds are now greatly valued in their own right. Constable never travelled abroad, but his large composition, Haywain, caused a great stir when it was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1824.
Masterpieces:
- Haywain
- The Leaping Horse
Text: The A-Z of Art, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson.
Books About john constable
John Constable: Oil Sketches from the V&A
Mark Evans
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Constable
Jonathan Clarkson
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The Later Paintings and Drawings of John Constable (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art) (2 Volumes)
Graham Reynolds
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