John Constable: 1826 Academy Show

"Gillingham Mill, Dorset"
John Constable's Entry in the 1826 Academy Show

"My Dear Fisher, I am now busy at the Academy, and am writing early, as after breakfast I must be there. It is a delightful show. Turner never gave me so much pleasure or so much pain before. Callcott has a fine picture of a picturesque boat driven before the wind on a stormy sea. It is simple, grand, and affecting. He has another large work not so good, rather too quakerish, as Turner is too yellow, but every man who distinguishes himself stands on a precipice.

Sir Thomas Lawrence's portraits of Peel and Canning are very fine. He has a lady playing on a guitar hanging by Turner, and you seem to hear its imperfect sounds over his 'wide watered shore.' 'Canning' is over the fireplace, 'An Entombment,' by Westall, at the bottom of the room, and Etty's 'Judgment of Paris' on the west side centre. The details of this show we shall soon analyze together.

Chantry loves painting, and is always upstairs. He works now and then on my pictures, and yesterday he joined our group, and after exhausting his jokes on my landscape, he took up a dirty palette, threw it at me, and was off."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Life and Letters of John Constable, R.A." by Charles Robert Leslie.)