Art Gallery

Constable, John (1776 East Bergholt - 1837 London), English painter, a master of romantic landscape painting. He was the son of a prosperous mill-owner in Suffolk, a landscape whose scenery became central to his work. He took painting lessons in Suffolk but was largely self-taught. In 1795 he went to London and took courses at the Royal Academy in 1799. As a student he copied the works of the old landscape painters, in particular Jacob van Ruisdael. He was especially impressed by the work of Claude Lorrain and the water-colour paintings of Thomas Girtin; but to him the actual study of nature was still more important than any artistic model. He refused to "learn the truth second-hand" Unlike any other painter before him, he based his work on precisely drawn sketches made directly from nature. His early work also included portraits and some religious pictures, but from 1820 onwards he devoted himself almost exclusively to landscape painting.

He painted in the open air rather than in a studio and was fascinated by reflections on water and by light on clouds. His themes were taken from the parts pf England that he knew the best, mainly Suffolk and Essex, and also Brighton. In his pictures, Constable succeeded in capturing the light-and-shade effects of clouds and the various moods of landscape. Constable discarded the brown underpainting traditionally used in landscapes and applied broken bits of color with a palette knife to achieve more natural lighting effects. After 1820/21, a period in which he produced a series of cloud studies, the "wind and weather" and their varying light conditions determined his landscapes as never before. His oil sketches were mostly of the same size as the finished picture, if not larger, this leads to the conclusion that to him the study was the original, containing all that mattered. And although public recognition was slowly growing, the critics never tired of pointing out that his works often resembled sketches rather than finished pictures. He was admired by impressionists and painters of the Barbizon School. Constable's works include The Cornfield (1826) and Valley Farm (1835), both in the National Gallery, London, and Wivenhoe Park, Essex (1816) in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. In 1824 his paintings were shown in Paris and were an instant success, crowned by a gold medal from the Salon. Constable's art became an enduring influence on French painting. In 1829 he became a Member of the Royal Academy.