11 June: Boreham on John Constable

Sublimation of Reality
In the art criticisms of the day it is pleasant to notice an increasing tendency to exalt the work and influence of John Constable. Constable, whose birthday this is, was one of those outstanding and arresting figures whose art was native to their personalities. His genius, so far from being the result of education, training, or environment, was woven into the very warp and woof of his striking and distinctive individuality. With nothing to awaken it, and nothing to develop it, it nevertheless asserted itself in early childhood and remained the passion of his soul to the end. With beauty indigenous to his own soul, he would have discovered and unveiled a subtle charm in any surroundings, however sordid. There are a hundred mills in England far more beautiful, and standing in a much more romantic setting, than Flatford Mill which, owned by his father, Constable has made famous by his paintings. Yet people today walk round Flatford Mill and affect to see in it scintillations of elegance and comeliness that, but for Constable, nobody would ever have suspected.

The fact is that the real beauty dwelt, not in the structure of the mill, but in the mind of John Constable. In the days of his fame he would speak of the fascination that certain things held for him, things that would have made no appeal to anybody else. "The sound of water escaping from mill dams; leafless willows; old rotten planks; slimy posts and crumbling brick-work: I love such things. As long as I am able to handle a brush, I shall never cease to paint them. They have always been my delight." And anybody who takes the trouble to examine his pictures with understanding and discernment will recognise that their value consists, not in the surpassing loveliness of the objects portrayed, but in the skill with which the painter has communicated to their canvas their own infectious pride in the magnetic lure of quite ordinary scenes.

Pilgrimage From Iron To Gold
The career of Constable may be divided into two distinct periods, each lasting about twenty years. The first period was the Iron Age; the second the Golden Age. The two decade's that make up the Iron Age represent a period of the most intense application, yet of the most desolating discouragements. Although he worked early and late, young Constable found it almost impossible to earn enough money to keep body and soul together. Indeed, he would have been forced to the conclusion that he was pursuing a phantom, a chimera, a will o' the wisp, had not one or two propitious happenings fortified his conviction that there really was something in him.

On one of his darkest days a canvas from his easel attracted the notice of Benjamin West, who had succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as President of the Royal Academy. West urged him at any cost to persevere, and in 1802 a work by Constable graced the academy walls. Thus heartened, Constable struggled on, pouring his very soul into every picture that he painted. It was a heart-breaking ordeal, made all the more excruciating by the fact that the young artist had fallen in love with a charming girl whose guardian sternly declined to hear a word about marriage until Constable had won his spurs and established his position. At the age of 35, however, he painted "Dedham Vale," a picture that set all the critics chattering. From that hour his destiny shone clear. In 1816, he being then 40, his father died leaving him £4,000, and on the strength of this inheritance, together with the growing prosperity of his work, he was at length able to marry. And, with his marriage, the Iron Age comes to an end. During the next 20 years it seemed as if nothing could go wrong with him. The Golden Age had dawned.

The Responsibilities Of Individuality
It was the glory of Constable that he shattered, and shattered for ever, a particularly stubborn tradition. As Mr. E. V. Lucas says, "he brought the English people face to face with England—the delicious, fresh, rainy, blowy England that they could identify; the real England. Hitherto there had been landscape painters in abundance; but Constable painted something new; he painted weather!" There is a famous story to the effect that, Henry Fuseli, the historical painter, who in Constable's time, was keeper of the Academy, was seen one day engrossed in the contemplation of one of Constable's paintings. It represented an English landscape in a drizzling rain. Lost to all the world, the old man became saturated in the spirit of the picture that he was so ardently admiring, and, to the astonishment of the onlookers, he suddenly put up his umbrella.

A sturdy original, an intrepid pioneer, Constable resolutely refused to turn from his self-imposed task in order to conform to the conventions of any school, and, as a result, he will be remembered as one of the most sincere and honest workers that the realm of art has ever known. The lesson of his life shines clear. It is the duty of every painter, every writer, every politician, every man whose duty it is to write a newspaper article, address a public audience, or preach a sermon to realise that his view of God and of Man and of the Universe is essentially an individualistic view. His craftsmanship must not be based on the conventional. He sees as nobody else sees. He must therefore paint or write or speak as nobody else does. He must be himself; must see with his own eyes and pass on to his constituency the vision that he has seen in the terms that are native to his own distinctive and unique personality. He must, as Rudyard Kipling puts it, paint the thing as he sees it for the God of things as they are. And, expressing his naked and transparent soul by means of his palette, platform, or pen, he will sooner or later discover, as Constable did, that wisdom is justified of all his children.

F W Boreham

Image: John Constable's The Haywain