John Constable: Drawn to Art

Landscape with a windmill at Stoke by John Constable

"Young John Constable's 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. At that time Dunthorne devoted all the leisure his business allowed him to painting landscapes from nature, and Constable became the constant companion of his studies.

Constable's father did not frown on this friendship, although he was unwilling that his son should become a professional artist, and his son'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 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 for muscular strength, and 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. His acquaintance with the picturesque machinery both of wind and watermills was very useful to him in after life. His young brother 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.'"

To be continued

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