John Constable: Observations

"Cottages on High Ground," watercolor sketch
by John Constable

"While at Petworth, where John Constable spent a fortnight, he filled a large book with sketches in pencil and watercolors, some of which he finished very highly. It was on this occasion only that, as an inmate of the same house, I had an opportunity of witnessing his habits. 

He rose early, and had often made some beautiful sketch in the park before breakfast. On going into his room one morning, and not aware that he had yet been out of it, I found him setting some of these sketches with isinglass. His dressing table was covered with flowers, feathers of birds, and pieces of bark with lichens and mosses adhering to them, which he had brought home for the sake of their beautiful tints. Mr. George Constable told me that, while on the visit to him, Constable brought from Fittleworth Common at least a dozen different specimens of sand and earth, of colours from pale to deep yellow, and of light reddish hues to tints almost crimson. The richness of these colours contrasted with the deep greens of the furze and other vegetation on this picturesque heath, delighted him exceedingly, and he carried these earths home carefully preserved in bottles, and also many fragments of the variously-coloured stone. In passing, with Mr. G. Constable, some slimy posts near an old mill, he said, 'I with you could cut off and send their tops to me.'"

To be continued

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