Constable had a happy, uneventful life and a quiet death. A happy life? Yes. For the loss of friends and the depression of spirits that clouded his closing years are events that happen to not a few who have lived the major portion of their lives pleasantly and successfully. Practical, level-headed, industrious, there is no hint of the aberrations or eccentricities of genius in the orderly and fruitful sixty-one years of his existence, which began in 1776, and ended in 1837.
Probably the severest blow in his life was the death of his wife in 1828, leaving him with seven children. It came, almost without warning, the year after the family had settled so contentedly in Well Walk, Hampstead.
"This house," he wrote, "is to my wife's heart's content; it is situated on an eminence at the back of the spot in which you saw us, and our little drawing-room commands a view unsurpassed in Europe, from Westminster Abbey to Gravesend. The dome of St Paul's in the air seems to realise Michael Angelo's words on seeing the Pantheon; 'I will build such a thing in the sky.'" After his wife's death Constable returned to his former residence in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square; but he retained Well Walk, and often sojourned there.
PLATE IV.—FLATFORD MILL ON THE RIVER STOUR.
National Gallery.
Painted in 1817. Constable was then forty-one, a somewhat mature age for a man to produce what may fairly be called his first important work. 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.
