CHAPTER VI
HIS PERSONALITY AND OPINIONS
The personality of Constable was not romantic. In writing of him one has no moods of wonderment or bafflement, and the pen is not tempted to flights of wonder or fancy. The life of Turner might inspire a poem; but plain prose is the only vehicle for a consideration of the life of Constable. He was a sane, level-headed man compact of common-sense and practicality, a man of one great, embracive idea: that having studied the science of picture-making from the earlier masters, the landscape painter must learn from Nature and not from the derivative pictures of his contemporaries. Constable pursued that course with the single-heartedness of a man who devotes his life to some great commercial undertaking. Indeed the portraits of Constable might represent a prosperous and cultured banker, especially those of his later years, were it not for the full, observant eye that you feel surveys a wider domain than Lombard Street. Religious in the true sense, dutiful, humble before the mysteries of things; old-fashioned in the true sense, a lover and a quoter of good poetry and of the Bible, he had on occasion a sharp and shrewd tongue, but the sting was salved by the absolute sincerity of his intention. Leslie devotes considerable space to a record of Constable's opinions and sayings, many of which have been quoted in these pages. Of a certain contemporary he said—"More over-bearing meekness I never met with in any one man." Of his own pictures he said—"They will never be popular, for they have no handling. But I do not see any handling in Nature."
Here is a saying about his art which sums up the whole tendency of his life—"Whatever may be thought of my art, it is my own; and I would rather possess a freehold, though but a cottage, than live in a palace belonging to another." And here is his comment on the unintelligent connoisseurship of his time—"The old rubbish of art, the musty, commonplace, wretched pictures which gentlemen collect, hang up, and display to their friends, may be compared to Shakespeare's—
'Beggarly account of empty boxes,
Alligators stuffed,' etc.
Nature is anything but this, either in poetry, painting, or in the fields."
The lectures on Landscape Painting that he delivered at the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street, at the Hampstead Assembly Rooms, and at Worcester were never written, although an abstract of the first was found among his papers. He spoke from brief notes and made much use of a number of copies and engravings affixed to the walls. The notes taken by Leslie and embodied in his Life of Constable are the only record we have apart from the abstract of the first lecture. The belittlers of Claude should make a note of Constable's idolatry for him:—"In Claude's landscape all is lovely—all amiable—all is amenity and repose;—the calm sunshine of the heart. He carried landscape, indeed, to perfection, that is, human perfection." Constable selected four works as marking four memorable points in the history of landscape—Titian's "Peter Martyr," Poussin's "Deluge," Rubens' "Rainbow," and Rembrandt's "Mill." In the choice of the Rubens and the Rembrandt everybody must concur. As Constable never visited Italy he can only have known the "Peter Martyr" from engravings. It was destroyed by fire in 1867, but a copy exists at S. Giovanni Paolo in Venice. Constable had the courage of his opinions, and of all his opinions the most astonishing is his strong disapproval of a national collection of pictures. In 1822 he wrote—"should there be a National Gallery (which is talked of) there will be an end of the art in poor old England, and she will become, in all that relates to painting, as much a nonentity as every other country that has one. The reason is plain; the manufacturers of pictures are then made the criterions of perfection, instead of Nature."
As a lecturer Constable seems to have relied in a great measure on the inspiration of the moment. Leslie also records the charm of a most agreeable voice, although pitched somewhat too low, and the play of his very expressive countenance. His survey of the history of landscape painting closed with an eulogy of Wilson, Gainsborough, Cozens, and Girtin, and I may close with a brief passage, essential Constable, from the lecture delivered at Hampstead on 25th July 1836. "The landscape painter must walk in the fields with a humble mind. No arrogant man was ever permitted to see Nature in all her beauty. If I may be allowed to use a very solemn quotation, I would say most emphatically to the student—'Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth.'"
The plates are printed by BEMROSE & SONS, LTD., Derby and London