John Constable: Approaches to Landscape Painting

"View on the Orwell near Ipswitch" in "English Landscape"
by John Constable

"John Constable was now engaged in preparing the 'English Landscape' for publication, having secured the valuable assistance of Mr. David Lucas, and it led to the magnificent engravings that gentleman afterwards executed of 'The Corn Field,' 'The Lock,' which Reynolds had contemplated, and the 'Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows,' on a large scale, and the 'Stratford Mill' and 'Hadleigh Castle' of a lesser size. 

A prospectus of the 'English Landscape' was printed, saying, 'It is the desire of the Author in this publication to increase the interest for, and promote the study of, the rural scenery of England, with all its endearing associations, and even in its most simple localities; of England with her climate of more than vernal freshness, in whose summer skies and rich autumnal clouds, 'in thousand liveries dight,' the observer of nature may daily watch her endless varieties of effect.'

He was by this time fully aware of the obstacles that existed to a just estimation of his art, and he drew up a preface to his work, in which the following passage seems to me to be a true statement of the case between the public and himself:

'In art, there are two modes by which men aim at distinction. In the one by a careful application to what others have accomplished, the artist imitates their works, or selects and combines their various beauties; in the other, he seeks excellence at its primitive source - nature. In the first he forms a style upon the study of pictures, and produces either imitative or eclectic art; in the second, by a close observation of nature, he discovers qualities existing in her which has never been portrayed before, and thus forms a style which is original. The results of the one mode, as they repeat that with which the eye is already familiar, are soon recognized and estimated, while the advances of the artist in a new path must necessarily be slow, for few are able to judge of that which deviates from the usual course, or are qualified to appreciate original studies.'

To be continued

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