John Constable: Picture

“I am glad you encouraged me with the 'Stoke' [his painting 'Stoke-by-Nayland', circa 1835] What say you to a summer morning? July or August, at eight or nine o’clock, after a slight shower during the night, to enhance the dews in the shadowed part of the picture, under 'Hedge row elms and hillocks green.' Then the plough, cart, horse, gate, cows, donkey, &c. are all good paintable material for the foreground, and the size of the canvas sufficient to try one's strength, and keep one at full collar.”

John Constable

Letter to William Purton (6 February 1836), as quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable (Tate Gallery Publications, London, 1993), p. 380
1830s

Horse , Summer , Parting , Painting

“It is much to my advantage that several of my pictures should be seen together, as it displays to advantage their varieties of conception and also of execution, and what they gain by the mellowing hand of time which should never be forced or anticipated. Thus my pictures when first coming forth have a comparative harshness which at the time acts to my disadvantage.”

John Constable

Quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable (Tate Gallery Publications, London, 1993), p. 516
posthumous, undated

Time

“The sky is the 'source of light' in nature, and governs every thing. Even our common observations on the weather of every day, are suggested by them, but it does not occur to us. Their difficulty in painting both as to composition and execution is very great, because, with all their brilliancy and consequence, they ought not to come forward, or be hardly thought about in a picture… I know very well what I am about, and that my skies have not been neglected, though they have often failed in execution, no doubt, from an over-anxiety about them, which will alone destroy that easy appearance which nature always has in all her movements.”

John Constable

Letter to Rev. John Fisher (23 October 1821), as quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable (Tate Gallery Publications, London, 1993), p. 229 and also in Richard Friedenthal, Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock (Thames and Hudson, London, 1963), p. 42
1820s

Nature , Light , Appearance , Painting

“I have added some ploughmen to the landscape form the park pales which is a great help, but I must try and warm the picture a little more if I can… but I look to do a great deal better in future. I am determined to finish a small picture in the spot for every one I intend to make in future. But this I have always talked about but never yet done – I think however my mind is more settled and determined than ever on this point.”

John Constable

Quote in his letter to John Dunthorne (14 February 1814), as quoted in Constable (Tate Gallery Publications, London, 1993), p. 151
1800s - 1810s

Thinking , Future , Help

“My picture [A Boat Passing a Lock, 1823-6] is liked at the [Royal] Academy, indeed it forms a decided feature and its light can not be put out. Because it is the light of nature — the Mother of all that is valuable in poetry — painting or anything else… my execution annoys most of them and all the scholastic ones – perhaps the scarifies I make for 'lightness' and 'brightness' is too much but these things are the essence of Landscape.”

John Constable

Letter to Rev. John Fisher, 1824, as quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable (Tate Gallery Publications, London, 1993), p. 288
1820s

Nature , Light , Painting

“My friend Bonner has just set off to Charlotte Street to pack your picture (an old painting) and forward it; it is a beautiful representation of a summer's evening; calm, warm and delicious; the colour on the man's face is perfect sunshine. The liquid pencil of this school is replete with a beauty peculiar to itself. Nevertheless, I don't believe they had any 'nostrums,' but plain linseed oil; 'honest linseed' as old Wilson called it. But it is always right to remember that the ordinary painters of that day used, as now, the same vehicle as their betters, and also that their works have all received the hardening and enamelling effects of time, so that we must not judge of originality by these signs always.”

John Constable

Quote from John Constable's letter to Rev. John Fisher (20 December 1833), as quoted in Richard Friedenthal, Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock (Thames and Hudson, London, 1963), pp. 45-46
1830s

School , Beauty , Time , Summer

“The landscapes of Ruysdael present the greatest possible contrast to those of Claude, showing how powerfully, from the most opposite directions, genius may command our homage. In Claude's pictures, with scarcely an exception, the sun ever shines. Ruysdael, on the contrary, delighted in, and has made delightful to our eyes, those solemn days, peculiar to his country and to ours, when without storm, large rolling clouds scarcely permit a ray of sunlight to break the shades of the forest.”

John Constable

Quote from 'The History of Landscape Painting,' third lecture, Royal Institution (9 June 1836), from notes taken by C.R. Leslie; as quoted in: 'A brief history of weather in European landscape art', John E. Thornes, in Weather Volume 55, Issue 10 Oct. 2000, p. 366-67
1830s, his lectures History of Landscape Painting (1836)

Sun , Country

“And however one's mind may be elevated, and kept us to what is excellent, by the works of the Great Masters — still Nature is the fountain's head, the source from whence all originally must spring — and should an artist continue his practice without referring to nature he must soon form a manner, & be reduced to the same deplorable situation as the French painter mentioned by Sir J. Reynolds, who told him that he had long ceased to look at nature for she only put him out.For the last two years I have been running after pictures, and seeking the truth at second hand. I have not endeavoured to represent nature with the same elevation of mind — but have neither endeavoured to make my performances look as if really executed by other men….. There is room enough for a natural painter. The great vice of the present day is bravura, an attempt to do something beyond the truth.I am come to a determination to make no idle visits this summer, nor to give up my time to common-place people. I shall return to Bergholt, where I shall make some laborious studies from nature — and I shall endeavour to get a pure and unaffected manner of representing the scenes that may employ me.”

John Constable

3 quotes in Constable's letter to John Dunthorne (29 May 1802), from John Constable's Correspondence, ed. R.B. Beckett (Ipswich, Suffolk Records Society, 1962-1970), part 2, pp. 31-32
1800s - 1810s

Men , People , Truth , Spring

“I had on Friday a long visit from Mr. --- alone; but my pictures do not come into his rules of whims of the art, and he said I had "lost my way." I told him that I had, perhaps other notions of art than picture admirers have in general. I looked on pictures as 'things to be avoided,' connoisseurs looked on them as things to be 'mitated'; and that, too, with such a defence and humbleness of submission, amounting to a total prostration of mind and original feeling, as must serve only to fill the world with abortions… But he was very agreeable, and endured the visit, I trust, without the usual courtesies of life being violated. What a sad thing it is that his lovely art is 'so wrested to its own destruction!' Used only to blind our eyes, and to prevent us from seeing the sub shine — the fields bloom — the tree blossom — and from hearing the foliage rustle; while old — black — rubbed out and dirty canvases take the place of God's own works.”

John Constable

Letter to Rev. John Fisher (2 April 1833), as quoted in Richard Friedenthal, Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock (Thames and Hudson, London, 1963), p. 45
1830s

Love , Life , God , World

“It is always my endeavour however in making a picture that it should be without a companion in the world. At least such should be a painters ambition.”

John Constable

Letter to a client, Mr Carpenter (23 July 1828), as quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable (Tate Gallery Publications, London, 1993), p. 291
1820s

World

“Still I should paint my own places best; painting is with me but another word for feeling, and I associate "my careless boyhood" with all that lies on the banks of the Stour; those scenes made me a painter, and I am grateful; that is, I had often thought of pictures of them before ever I touched a pencil, and your picture ['The White Horse'] is one of the strongest instance I can recollect of it.”

John Constable

Quote from John Constable's letter to Rev. John Fisher (23 October 1821), from John Constable's Correspondence, part 6, pp. 76-78
1820s

Feeling , Horse , Painting

“We must bear in recollection that the sentiment of the picture is that of solemnity, not gaiety & nothing garish, but the contrary — yet it must be bright, clear, alive fresh, and all the front seen.”

John Constable

Letter to David Lucas (15 February 1836), on the mezzo print of the 'Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows'; as quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable (Tate Gallery Publications, London, 1993), p. 37
1830s

“Painting is a science and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature. Why, then, may not a landscape be considered as a branch of natural philosophy, of which pictures are but experiments?”

John Constable

Quote from 'The History of Landscape Painting,' fourth lecture, Royal Institution (16 June 1836), from John Constable's Discourses, ed. R.B. Beckett, (Ipswich, Suffolk Records Society, 1970), p. 69.
1830s, his lectures History of Landscape Painting (1836)

Law , Nature , Science , Painting

“I am going on very well with my pictures… the park [ Wivenhoe Park ] is the most forward — the great difficulty has been to get so much in as they wanted (his client, the Slater-Rebows) to make them acquainted with the scene — on my left is a grotto with some elms — at the head of a piece of water — in the center is the house over a beautifull wood and very far to the right is a Deer House — what it was necessary to add. So that my view comprehended to many degrees — but to day I got over the difficulty and I begin to like it 'myself'… I live in the park and Mrs. Rebow says I am very unsociable.”

John Constable

Letter to his future wife, Maria Bicknell (26 August 1816), as quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable (Tate Gallery Publications, London, 1993), p. 119
1800s - 1810s

Water , Housing

“When I sit down to make a sketch from nature, the first thing I try to do is to forget that I have ever seen a picture.”

John Constable

As quoted in Richard Friedenthal, Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock (Thames and Hudson, London, 1963), p. 40
1800s - 1810s

Nature , Forgetting