Birth Year : 1776
Death Year : 1837
Country : United Kingdom
John Constable was the son of a miller in Suffolk, England. Though Sir
George Beaumont introduced him to the work of Claude Lorrain,
Constable painted sketched by himself until he was twenty-four, when he
entered the Royal Academy School in London. Constable believed that landscape
painting must strive to include "a pure apprehension of natural effect"
and he painted typical scenes from the southern English countryside. He
worked with watercolors and directly from the motif while outdoors, then
enlarged his sketches in oil once indoors. These landscapes differ from
those of his predecessors because of Constable's primary concern with light,
air, and sky rather than with exact landscape details. He considered the
sky "the key-note ... and chief organ of sentiment," and delighted in registering
its changes and in using it as a foil for the more stable land. As a result,
he developed a broad, free technique that gives his work a particularly
romantic softness.
Although he was the first to treat landscapes with spontaneity and emotion,
his first exhibition in 1802 passed almost unnoticed since the demand in
England was for portraits. In fact, for years, Constable painted portraits,
for which he cared little, in order to earn his meager living, while he
continued to paint the landscapes in which his real interest lay. When
he was forty-eight, he sent several landscapes to the Paris Salon. The
French were highly impressed and awarded him the Gold Medal (1824) for
"The Hay Wain". Even so, it was only five years later that Constable was
elected, with full membership, to the Royal Academy. Nevertheless, Constable
considered this honor as having come too late, and he lived out his last
years lonely and embittered. Complete recognition of his talents and his
technique of using broken touches of color to convey movement and light
did not come until after his death.
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John
Constable
Salisbury
Cathedral
John
Constable
Haywain,
The
John
Constable
View
on the Stour near Dedham
John
Constable
Mill
at Dedham
John
Constable
Salisbury
Cathedral
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