Constable: Paintings, Drawings and Watercolours

JOHN CONSTABLE (1776-1837) was one of the most important British landscape painters of the nineteenth century.

He revolutionised painting. He rejected the tendency of his predecessors to produce generalised depictions of nature, based on the study of pictures rather than the study of actual landscape. He went to nature at its source.

“The sound of water escaping from Mill dams… Willows, Old rotten Banks, slimy posts and brickwork. I love such things… They made me a painter.”

This was Constable’s comment on nature and art, and it was this deep love for the English countryside, particularly for that part of the Stour valley, in East Anglia, where he was brought up, that made constable one or the most popular of English artists.

This is the first comprehensive book on Constable to have appeared for many years, and it is the only book in print in which an extensive range of his pictures is effectively reproduced. The large exhibition pictures like The Hay Wain and Flatford Mill – so original both in their handling and in their subject-matter –
are given prominent treatment, often side by side with preliminary drawings and full-scale studies. Also included are many of Constable’s charactersue of Sketches and several of his finest watercolours.

In his brilliant essay, Basil Taylor analyses the character and achievements of this important artist. He cxamines Constable’s career and writes about his marriage and the tragic death of his wife in 1828, an event which had a profound effect on his painting. The three appendixes contain extracts from Constable’s writings, both formal and informal, from which a very full understanding of his ideas and prejudices, experiences and enjoyments, is to be had. There are also descriptive notes to the plates and a select bibliography.

Basil Taylor, author of the best-selling book on George Stubbs, is a well-known writer on British art. He has held various university appointments related to the history of art, and from 1g62 to 196g he was Director of the Paul Mellon Foundation for British Art.