After Constable's marriage he went on a visit to Sir George Beaumont, and there an amusing incident occurred which is known to-day as the story of Sir George's "brown tree." It seems that Constable's ideas of colour for his landscapes were so true to nature that a good many people did not approve of them, and one day while painting, Sir George declared that the colour of an old Cremona fiddle was the best model of colour tone that a landscape could have. Constable's only answer was to place the fiddle on the green lawn in front of the house. At another time his host asked the artist, "Do you not find it very difficult to determine where to place your brown tree?" "Not at all," was Constable's reply, "for I never put such a thing into a picture in my life."
In painting one picture many times he declared, "Its light cannot be put out because it is the light of nature." A Frenchman called attention to one of his pictures thus: "Look at these landscapes by an Englishman. The ground appears to be covered with dew."
Notwithstanding the little fortune of his wife and himself, Constable was not quite carefree, because he had to raise a good sized family of six children so that when his wife's father died and left his daughter £20,000 he said to a friend: "Now I shall stand before a six-foot canvas with a mind at ease, thank God!" In the very midst of this happiness, his beloved wife became ill with consumption, and was certain to die. He no longer cared very much for life and wrote very sadly:
"I have been ill, but am endeavouring to get work again, and could I get afloat upon a canvas of six feet, I might have a chance of being carried from myself." When he became a member of the Royal Academy, he said: "It has been delayed until I am solitary and cannot impart it," meaning that without his dear wife to share his good fortune, it seemed an empty honour to him.
Strange things are told which show how little his work was valued by his countrymen. After he had become a member of the Academy one of his small pictures was entered but rejected; nobody knowing anything about it. It was put on one side among the "outsiders." Finally, one of his fellow members glancing at it was attracted.
"Stop a bit! I rather like that. Why not say 'doubtful'?" Later Constable acknowledged the picture as his, and then they wished to hang it, but he refused to let them. Another Academy story is about his picture "Hadleigh Castle." On Varnishing Day, Chartney, a brilliant critic, told Constable that the foreground of the picture was "too cold," and so he undertook to "warm it," by giving it a strong glaze with asphaltum with Constable's brush which he snatched from the artist's hand. Constable gazed at him in horror. "Oh! there goes all my dew," he cried, and when Chartney's back was turned he hurriedly wiped the "warmth" all away and got back his "dew."
Even the amusing things that happened to him, seem to have a little sadness about them. He wrote to a friend: "Beechey was here yesterday, and said: 'Why d--n it Constable, what a d--n fine picture you are making; but you look d--n ill, and you've got a d--n bad cold!' so," added Constable, "you have evidence on oath of my being about a fine picture and that I am looking ill."
An illustration of his painstaking and truthfulness to nature is that he once took home with him from a visit bottles of coloured sand and fragments of stone which he meant to introduce into a picture; and on passing some slimy posts near a mill, he said to his host, "I wish you could cut those off and send their tops to me."
Constable was a loyal friend, the most persistent of men, and several anecdotes are told of his characteristics. His friend Fisher said to him:
"Where real business is to be done, you are the most energetic and punctual of men. In smaller matters, such as putting on your breeches, you are apt to lose time in deciding which leg shall go in first."