John Constable: life and paintings of the master of the English landscape

The fate of this artist is amazing. During his lifetime, he did not achieve a worthy recognition at home, and today John Constable is one of the most beloved and famous British landscape painters. The eastern county of Suffolk, whose species became the main content of its canvases, is called Constable Country - Constable Land.

Son of a miller

June 11, 1776 in the south-east of England, in East Bergholt, in a family that owned several flour-mills, the future singer of English landscapes John Constable was born. His biography is full of opposition to life's circumstances. Since childhood, his favorite pastime has been walking around the neighborhood with an album where he tried to portray the surrounding nature, but his father assumed that John would become a continuer of the family business. He did not at once resign himself to his decision to enter the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and devote himself to the unreliable craft of the artist. The main training time in the academy, he spent on independent work on the nature and study of the works of masters of the past. The influence of the works of Claude Lorrain, Rubens, Jacob van Ruysdael, Annibale Carrachy, and his passion for poetry led to the fact that John Constable developed a special manner of depicting nature full of poetry and romanticism.

Revival of the genre

Dutch landscape of the XVII century - a moment of brief glory of this type of paintings. Portraits and paintings on historical and mythological themes were the main genres for artists and the public of that time. John Constable, whose works portrayed familiar to him rural landscapes of the English remote area, together with Turner and other masters stood at the roots of the revival of interest in the landscape.
He tried to write portraits and religious subjects to improve his material situation, but did not achieve this success. It was his landscapes, full of a special emotional component, that became the main content of his work, which for a long time was ignored in his homeland. Critics noted the high dignity of paintings, which John Constable exhibited at various times: "Arable land" (1826), "White horse" (1819), "View of the cathedral in Salisbury" (1831). But they did not accept his unusual free manner of writing and the "low" topic of most of his works.

Innovation style

The creative method of the master was ahead of time. For the first time he spent a lot of time working on the open air, observing nature and searching for the right color combinations. His sketches, which preceded the writing of paintings in the studio, are recognized by many as the first experience of painting with oil paints in the open air. His attention to the state of the sky and clouds was of the nature of meteorological observations. Numerous full-scale sketches, he accompanied with records of the state of the weather, the characteristics of physical phenomena in the atmosphere. This gave tremendous results. In all landscapes, John Constable uses the sky not as a neutral background, but as a powerful means of emotional impact, impressive by the realism of the image.

And the technique of painting was unaccustomed. Applying the relief colorful strokes from different angles, he achieved unprecedented hitherto effects. Energy, which gave birth to a similar manner, will be used by masters of the following generations, the first of which will be impressionists. And then John Constable, whose paintings critics called unfinished, was accused of negligence and unprofessionalism.

Parisian glory

Still, his work was well received by contemporaries. In 1824, four paintings by Constable were exhibited at the Paris Salon, among which was the "Cart for Hay". A small genre scene from rural life was only part of the landscape, impressive with realism and dramatic emotions. This canvas was admired by the great French masters of romanticism: Theodore Gericault and Eugene Delacroix. The skill of the Englishman exerted a strong influence on their painting, and their techniques were used in their works. Constable was able to sell in France about twenty of his paintings.

Personal drama

But the main thing for the master remained recognition at home. The material position of his improved after receiving the inheritance, but was never completely stable. He was considered an unprofitable party for Maria Biknell, whom he knew and loved since childhood. Against the marriage with her, which was concluded in 1816, all her relatives protested.

The bright period in Constable's family life was overshadowed by the poor health of his beloved wife. From the death of Mary (1828), he never recovered and mourned for the rest of his life. Gloomy nature acquired and many of his paintings, created in the last period of his life. John Constable died in 1837 and was buried next to Maria.

The Legacy of the Master

In many ways Constable was an innovator. He was against the conviction of contemporaries that the main thing in the landscape is imagination. Its accuracy in the image of nature, when it is easy to determine the type of tree or plant, the use of meteorological observations for a realistic display of weather conditions makes it a man of the Enlightenment era, coming along with the industrial revolution. The choice of the main topic for canvases also speaks about the novelty. For the first time, an artist appeared who proclaimed the value of the natural world, which is exposed to human influence. This topic became increasingly relevant with the development of cities, with the growth of the power of people.

Reformatory ways of reflecting the world around the end of the XIX century led to the emergence of a new Impressionist painting. Many of them called among their direct predecessors and John Constable.