PLATE II.—THE HAY WAIN.
The truth about Constable's influence on French art would seem to be midway between the opinions of Thoré and Wolff. That Constable's exhibits at the Salon of 1824, which included two smaller landscapes besides "The Hay Wain," did arouse extraordinary interest, and did have a potent influence on French landscape art, there is no shadow of doubt. So impressed was Delacroix with the naturalness, the freshness, and the brightness of Constable's pictures at the 1824 Salon, that, after studying them, he completely repainted his "Massacre of Scio" in the four days that intervened before the opening of the exhibition; and the following year Delacroix visited London eager to see more of Constable's work. There is also the testimony of William Brockedon, who, on his return from the Salon, wrote thus to the painter of "The Hay Wain." The text of the letter is printed in C. R. Leslie's Memoirs of the Life of Constable, a mine of information in which all writers on John Constable, whom de Goncourt called "le grand, le grandissime maître," must delve.
"My dear Constable," wrote William Brockedon, "You will find in the enclosed some remarks upon your pictures at Paris. I returned last night and brought this with me. The French have been forcibly struck by them, and they have created a division in the school of the landscape painters of France. You are accused of carelessness by those who acknowledge the truth of your effect; and the freshness of your pictures has taught them that though your means may not be essential, your end must be to produce an imitation of Nature, and the next Exhibition in Paris will teem with your imitators, or the school of Nature versus the school of Birmingham. I saw one man draw another to your pictures with this expression—'Look at these landscapes by an Englishman; the ground appears to be covered with dew.'"
Note these passages: They have created a division in the school of the landscape painters of France—Paris will teem with your imitators—The ground appears to be covered with dew.
Constable received the gratifying news very quietly. Writing to Fisher from Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, on 17th December 1824, he remarked—"My Paris affairs go on very well. Though the Director, the Count Forbin, gave my pictures very respectable situations in the Louvre in the first instance, yet on being exhibited a few weeks, they advanced in reputation, and were removed from their original situations to a post of honour, two prime places in the principal room. I am much indebted to the artists for their alarum in my favour; but I must do justice to the Count, who is no artist I believe, and thought that as the colours are rough they should be seen at a distance. They found the mistake, and now acknowledge the richness of texture, and attention to the surface of things. They are struck with their vivacity and freshness, things unknown to their own pictures. The truth is, they study (and they are very laborious students) pictures only, and as Northcote says, 'They know as little of Nature as a hackney-coach horse does of a pasture' ... However, it is certain they have made a stir, and set the students in landscape to thinking."
Note the passages: They are struck with their vivacity and freshness—The truth is they study pictures only.
I have quoted these letters at length, because they are first-hand authorities, and because they state, with simple directness, the effect of Constable's pictures at the Salon of 1824. The two smaller works that accompanied "The Hay Wain" we may disregard for the moment, and ask what is there in "The Hay Wain" that it should have so startled the French painting world, and that it should have marked an epoch in the history of landscape art. Stand before "The Hay Wain" in the National Gallery and ask yourself that question. If you are honest, you will admit, perhaps only to yourself, that "The Hay Wain" looks a little old-fashioned. And you will also admit that the full-sized sketch for "The Hay Wain," which you have surely noticed hanging in the Constable room at the Victoria and Albert Museum, pleases you better on account of its greater brilliance, vigour, and impulse. The finished picture, though very powerful, seems a little stolid, a little laboured, as if the painter had left nothing to "happy accident" but had worked with John Bull conscientiousness over every inch of the canvas. You have in the last decade or two seen so many landscapes—pearly, atmospheric, spacious, vivid and vibrating with sunshine, that this "Hay Wain" by honest John, this English pastoral with the great sky, the shimmering water, and the leaves carefully accented with colour to represent the flickers of light, does not astonish you. Perhaps you pass it by without a pause, without even a cursory examination. But remember this is 1909, and "The Hay Wain" made its sensation in 1824. In those eighty-five years landscape painting has progressed at a faster rate than in all the preceding centuries. In 1824 "The Hay Wain" was a fresh vision, very new and arresting. Why? Simply because Constable returned to Nature and painted Nature. Again and again has this happened in the history of art from the time of Giotto onwards. The little men falter on, copying one another, "studying pictures only," in Constable's phrase; the public accepts their wooden performances as true art; then the great man arises, often a very simple, straight-thinking, modest man like this John Constable, and the great man does nothing more miraculous than just to use his own eyes; he refuses to be dictated to by others as to what he should see and do, and lo! the world looks at what he has done, and either rejects him altogether (for a time), or says, "Here is a genius. Let us make much of him."
One thing is certain. It was not by taking thought, by planning or scheming, that John Constable made that sensation at the Salon of 1824. It was born in him to be what he became—a painter of Nature. How easy and simple it seems. Everybody paints Nature to-day; but in the early years of last century one had to be a great original to break away from tradition and from academic formulæ, and to paint—just Nature.
The awakening came to John Constable in 1802, when he was twenty-six years of age. In a letter to his friend Dunthorne, Constable wrote from London:
"For the last two years I have been running after pictures and seeking the truth at second hand ... 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 Exhibitions worth looking up to. There is room for a natural painter."
A natural painter he became—the painter of England, of simple rural scenes. At forty-seven years of age he lamented that he had never visited Italy, but the mood passed as quickly as it came, and he cries: "No, but I was born to paint a happier land, my own dear old England." And from his own dear old England he banished the brown tree. But the droll story of the Brown Tree deserves a new chapter.