John Constable: An Influence on French Painting

"A Lock on the Stour, Suffolk" by John Constable

"My Dear Fisher, When you wrote my Frenchman was in London, we were settling about work, and he has engaged me to make twelve drawings, to be engraved here and published in Paris, all from this book. I work at these in the evening. 

My Paris affairs go on very well. Though the Director, the Count Forbin, gave my pictures very respectable situations in the Louvre in the first instance, yet, on being exhibited a few weeks, they advanced in reputation, and were removed from their original situations to a post of honour, two prime places in the principal room. 

They are struck with their vivacity and freshness - things unknown to their own pictures. The truth is, they study - and they are very laborious students - pictures only; and, as Northcote says, 'They know as little of nature as a hackney-coach horse does of a pasture.' In fact, it is worse. They make painful studies of individual articles - leaves, rocks, stones, etc. so that they look cut out, without belonging to the whole, and they neglect the look of nature altogether under its various changes. 

I leart yesterday that the proprietor asks twelve thousand francs for them. They would have bought one, 'The Waggon,' for the nation, but he would not part them. He tells me the artists much desire to purchase and deposit them in a place where they can have access to them. Reynolds is going over in June to engrave them, and has sent two assistants to Paris to prepare the plates. 

In all this I am at no expense, and it cannot fail to advance my reputation. It is certain they have made a stir, and set the students in landscape to thinking. Now, you must believe me, there is no other person living but yourself to whom I could write in this manner, and all about myself, but take away a painter's vanity, and he will never touch a pencil again."

To be continued

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