John Constable: A Well-Intentioned Offer

"Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds"
by John Constable

"John Constable acknowledged many obligations to the amiable President of the Academy, Benjamin West, in whom every young artist found a friend; but the greatest was one which possibly affected the whole course of his life. In the spring of 1802, Dr. Fisher, Rector of Langham, and afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, had procured for him the situation of a drawing master in a school, but Mr. West strongly dissuaded him from accepting it, telling him that if he did so he must give up all hopes of distinction. Such advice, and from so high an authority, was very agreeable to Constable. The difficulty, however, remained of declining Dr. Fisher's well-intentioned offer without giving him offense, which Mr. West undertook and easily accomplished. To this affair Constable alludes in the following letter:

'My Dear Dunthorne, I hope I have now done with the business that brought me to town with Dr. Fisher. It is sufficient to say that had I accepted the situation offered, it would have been a death blow to all my prospects of perfection in the art I love. For these few weeks past, I believe I have though more seriously of my profession than at any other time of my life; of that which is the surest way to excellence.

I am just returned from a visit to Sir George Beaumont's pictures with a deep conviction of the truth of Sir Joshua Reynolds' observation that 'there is no easy way of becoming a good painter.' For the last two years I have been running after pictures, and seeking the truth at second hand. I have not endeavoured to represent nature with the same elevation of mind with which I set out, but have rather tried to make my performances look like the work of other men... 

I shall return to Bergholt, where I shall endeavour to get a pure and unaffected manner of representing the scenes that may employ me. There is little or nothing in the exhibition worth looking up to. There is room enough for a natural painter. The great vice of the present day is bravura, an attempt to do something beyond the truth. Fashion always had, and will have, its day, but truth in all things only will last, and can only have just claims on posterity. I have reaped considerable benefit from exhibiting. It shows me where I am, and in fact tells me what nothing else could.'"

To be continued

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