'Fifth of September 1822. Ten o'clock morning, looking south-east, brisk wind at west. Very bright and fresh, grey clouds running fast over a yellow bed, about half-way in the sky.'"
That is the real Constable speaking, the Constable who had "found himself." But we are never wholly emancipated from tradition, and knowing the difficulties of his craft he retained his admiration for the great ones among his predecessors. In 1824, he wrote: "I looked into Angerstein's the other day; how paramount is Claude..."
Maybe. But Claude had to be left alone. Constable knew that in his heart, and, as he advanced in wisdom, art at second-hand held him less and less, and art at first hand, which is Nature, more and more. He learnt to rely upon his eyes and the cunning of his hand. And when he "thanked Heaven he had no imagination," there was more in that utterance than appears on the surface.
CHAPTER V
HIS PICTURES
In one of his letters, dated 1799, Constable refers to "a sweet little picture by Jacob Ruysdael I am copying." He was then twenty-three years of age, a devoted admirer and student of his predecessors in landscape, and able, strange as it may seem to us, to call a Ruysdael sweet. In the style of the old masters he continued working until he was nearly forty, learning from them how to construct a picture, and "acquiring execution" as he expressed it. A methodical man was John Constable, a builder who spared no trouble to make his foundations sound; but during those years of spade work in his voluntary apprenticeship, he never disregarded his determination to become a natural painter. It was his custom to study and copy the old masters during his sojourn in London, but to paint in his own original way, directly from Nature and in the open air, when in the country. An early result of "being himself" during holiday time was the "Dedham Vale" oil sketch of 1802, now at South Kensington, a careful, reposeful picture with trees rising formally at the right, and the church tower visible just beyond the winding river. He utilised this sketch for the large picture exhibited, under the same title, in 1828. The influence of other painters such as the Dutch landscape men, Gainsborough and Girtin, may be traced in many of his pictures produced in the opening years of the nineteenth century when he was "acquiring the execution" on which he based his originality. He also painted portraits; indeed at one time he proposed to live by portrait painting. During 1807 and the next few years he produced several, notably Mr Charles Lloyd of Birmingham and his wife, which Mr C. J. Holmes describes as "amateurish and uncertain in drawing and execution." But there was nothing amateurish or uncertain about the "Portrait of a Boy," which I have lately seen, a ruddy country boy, clad in pretty town-like clothes, an honest, direct, rich piece of work, without a hint of affectation, just the vision of the eye set down straightforwardly. And the foxgloves that stand growing by the boy's right hand are painted as honestly as the striped pantaloons that this open-air boy wears. Just the kind of portrait that John Constable would have painted. He also produced two altarpieces—in 1804, a "Christ Blessing Little Children" at Brantham Church, Suffolk; and in 1809, a "Christ Blessing the Elements" at Nayland Church.
Eight years later, in 1817, he painted "Flatford Mill on the Stour," No. 1273 in the National Gallery, which forms one of our illustrations. Constable was then forty-one, a somewhat mature age for a man to produce what may fairly be called his first important picture. But all his past life had been a preparation for this photographic, pleasant transcript of English scenery. Nothing is left to the imagination, everything is stated, every inch of canvas is painted with equal force, yet what an advance it is upon most of the classical landscapes then in vogue. It is a picture of England, ripe, lush, carefully composed, carefully executed, but fresh as are the meadows on the banks of the Stour; and the sky across which the large clouds are drifting is sunny. This picture was bought in at the Constable sale, held the year after his death, in 1838, for the very modest sum of thirty-three guineas.
"The White Horse," called also "A Scene on the River Stour," exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1819, which is now in the possession of Mr Pierpont Morgan, was one of Constable's early successes. It attracted "more attention than anything he had before exhibited," and was bought for one hundred guineas, "exclusive of the frame," by Archdeacon Fisher, who wrote on 27th April:—"'The White Horse' has arrived; it is hung on a level with the eye, the frame resting on the ogee moulding in a western side light, right for the light in the picture. It looks magnificently." "The White Horse" realised one hundred and fifty guineas at the Constable sale, and in 1894, fifty-six years later, was bought by Messrs Agnew for six thousand two hundred guineas.
With "The White Horse" Constable also sent to the British Gallery a picture called "The Mill," which is supposed to be identical with the "Dedham Mill, Essex," at the Victoria and Albert Museum. 1819 was a successful year for Constable, a golden year. He was summoned to Bergholt to receive the four thousand pounds he had inherited from his father; in this year Mrs Constable also inherited four thousand pounds; and he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy. It was in this year while at Bergholt that he wrote to his wife from a grateful and overflowing heart a letter of which the following is an extract:—"Everything seems full of blossom of some kind, and at every step I take, and on whatever subject I turn my eyes, that sublime expression of the Scriptures, 'I am the resurrection and the life,' seems as if uttered near me." There spoke the true landscape painter, the man of deep feeling, conscious that in his painting he was interpreting God's handiwork, and expressing in his chosen medium the miracle of growth, the eternal movement of Nature from birth to re-birth. When standing in that hall at the Victoria and Albert Museum devoted to his achievement—growth, growth, growth—from pencil sketch to completed picture, there are moments when those words of his seem uttered near to us.