John Constable was born on the 11th of June in 1776.
He was an English Romantic painter. His mother town is Suffolk. Although he is known primarily as a landscape
painter, Constable was quite accomplished as a portrait artist as well. John Constable died on the 31st of March in 1837.
"I should paint my own places best", he wrote to his friend John Fisher in 1821, "painting is but another word for feeling".
Constable quietly rebelled against the artistic culture that taught artists to use their imagination to compose their pictures rather than nature itself. Although Constable produced paintings throughout his life for the "finished" picture market of patrons and R.A. exhibitions, constant refreshment in the form of on-the-spot studies was essential to his working method. He was never satisfied with following a formula. "The world is wide", he wrote, "no two days are alike, nor even two hours; neither were there ever two leaves of a tree alike since the creation of all the world; and the genuine productions of art, like those of nature, are all distinct from each other."
Constable painted many full-scale preliminary sketches of his landscapes in order to test the composition in advance of finished pictures. These large sketches, with their free and vigorous brushwork, were revolutionary at the time, and they continue to interest artists, scholars and the general public.
Constable's watercolours were also remarkably free for their time: the almost mystical Stonehenge, 1835, with its double rainbow, is often considered to be one of the greatest watercolours ever painted. When he exhibited it in 1836, Constable appended a text to the title: "The mysterious monument of Stonehenge, standing remote on a bare and boundless heath, as much unconnected with the events of past ages as it is with the uses of the present, carries you back beyond all historical records into the obscurity of a totally unknown period."
In addition to the full-scale oil sketches, Constable completed numerous observational studies of landscapes and clouds, determined to become more scientific in his recording of atmospheric conditions. The power of his physical effects was sometimes apparent even in the full-scale paintings which he exhibited in London.
To the sky studies he added notes, often on the back of the sketches, of the prevailing weather conditions, direction of light, and time of day, believing that the sky was "the key note, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment" in a landscape painting.
Constable's best artworks:
Wivenhoe-Park, Essex (1816)
His Wife Maria Bicknell (1816)
Salisbury Cathedral (1831)
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He is a remarkable artist and it`s amazing to observe his pictures in this blog)))
ReplyDeleteThe English landscape painter John Constable once wrote, "I should paint my own laces best." This precept guided his career, as Constable developed a unique style combining objective studies of nature with a deeply personal vision of the countryside round his boyhood home. While most landscapists of the day traveled extensively in search of picturesque or sublime scenery, Constable never left England. His name is so closely associated with his native Stour Valley that the area is sometimes referred to as "Constable country."
ReplyDeleteThe best source for information on Constable is still his own writings. The Letters of John Constable, R. A., to C. R. Leslie, R. A., 1826-1837, edited by Peter Leslie (1931), contains both the letters, rich in observations on nature and art and illustrating Constable's genius for friendship, and the notes for Constable's critical lectures on the history of landscape painting delivered to the Royal Institution of Great Britain in 1836.
ReplyDeleteI begin to admire Constable's works because of J.A.Volkova! she is really fond of it and knows his works perfectly well!
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