Background

John Constable was born on June 11, 1776 in East Bergholt, Suffolk, United Kingdom. He was the son of Ann (Watts) Constable and Golding Constable, who was a wealthy corn merchant, owner of Flatford Mill in East Bergholt and later Dedham Mill in Essex.

Education

John attended a boarding school in Lavenham and a day school in Dedham. In 1799, he entered the Royal Academy School in London, United Kingdom, where he attended life classes and anatomical dissections, as well as studying and copying Old Masters.

Career

On a visit to London in 1796, Constable met the engraver and antiquary J. T. Smith, under whose influence he made sketches of picturesque cottages. In 1802, Constable exhibited at the Royal Academy for the first time, declaring his intention to become "a natural painter". The same year, he refused the position of drawing master at Great Marlow Military College, a move, which Benjamin West counselled would mean the end of his career. The following year, he sailed from London to Deal, making drawings of ships in the tradition of the English Thames Estuary school.

In 1806, Constable spent 2 months, touring the Lake District, and the following year, he exhibited three paintings from the trip at the Royal Academy. After this, however, he broke with the tradition of picturesque travel, preferring to paint the scenes he knew and loved best, notably his native Suffolk, Salisbury, where he stayed with his friend Bishop Fisher and his family, Hampstead Heath and the Thames Estuary.

In 1824, three of Constable's oil paintings, including "The Hay Wain", were exhibited at the Paris Salon, where they were acclaimed by Eugène Delacroix and other painters and won a gold medal.

In 1829, John teamed up with the engraver David Lucas, producing mezzotints after his works, that were published as a suite of prints, entitled "English Landscape".

In 1831, John was appointed a visiting lecturer at the Royal Academy of Arts and began delivering popular lectures on the history of landscape painting, which were attended by distinguished audiences. In a series of such lectures at the Royal Institution, Constable proposed a threefold thesis: firstly, landscape painting is scientific, as well as poetic, secondly, the imagination can not alone produce art to bear comparison with reality and thirdly, no great painter was ever self-taught. In 1835, John's last lecture to the students of the the Royal Academy, in which he praised Raphael and called the Academy the "cradle of British art", was cheered most heartily.

Later, John also spoke against the new Gothic Revival movement, which he considered mere "imitation".

Much of the power of the painter's work survives in the noble series of mezzotints, made after his sketches by David Lucas, and first issued in 1833.

Achievements

• John Constable achieved a reasonable reputation during his lifetime as a respected and significant landscape painter. He represented the naturalistic aspect of Romanticism. John was revolutionary in painting large canvases consistently as sketches and, in his later years, allowed himself considerable painterly freedom in finished pictures, like the magnificent "Hadleigh Castle", subtitled "Mouth of the Thames, Morning after a Stormy Night".
  
  Through the exhibition of his canvases in Paris, Constable influenced major figures of European art, including Richard Parkes Bonington and Delacroix.
  
  John's most famous works are "Dedham Vale" (1802), "Wivenhoe Park" (1816) and "The Hay Wain" (1821).

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Self-Portrait

  • Landscape: Boys Fishing

  • The Stour Valley with the Church of Dedham

  • Traveller

  • Salisbury Cathedral From the Meadows

  • Landscape with Cottages

  • Dedham Lock and Mill

  • Yarmouth Pier

  • Pond in Branchhill

  • The Cornfield

  • Study for Poppies

  • A Lane near Dedham

  • Mrs. James Pulham Sr.

  • East Bergholt Rectory

  • The Lock

  • Scene on a River 2

  • Portrait of Maria Bicknell

  • Wooded Landscape

  • View Towards The Rectory From East Bergholt House

  • View at Epsom

  • Hadleigh Castle

  • Study of Tree Trunks

  • View Towards Dedham

  • Portrait of Mary Freer

  • Rainstorm Over the Sea

  • Weymouth Bay

  • The Edge of a Heath by Moonlight

  • East Bergholt Church

  • Boat Building

  • View on the Stour

  • View of Salisbury

  • Brighton Beach

  • The Low Lighthouse and Beacon Hill

  • Stonehenge

  • Malvern Hall

  • Salisbury Cathedral from Lower Marsh Close

  • Spring Clouds Study

  • Coast Scene with Breaking Cloud Sun

  • Cloud Study

  • The Harvest Field

  • Shoreham Bay, Evening Sunset

  • The Young Waltonians

  • Flowers in a Glass Vase

  • A Boat at the Sluice

  • Wivenhoe Park

  • Cottage, Rainbow, Mill

  • Helmingham Dell

  • The White Horse

  • Foord Rd Mill, Folkestone

  • Marine Parade and Old Chain Pier

  • Willy Lot's House

  • Hampstead Heath with a Rainbow

  • Stratford Mill

  • The Hay Wain

  • Ladies From The Family Of Mr William Mason Of Colchester

  • Branch Hill Pond Hampstead

  • A Windmill Near Brighton

  • The Vale of Dedham

  • Arundel Mill and Castle

  • Fokstone Harbour

  • Boats on the Stour

  • The Opening of Waterloo Bridge, Seen from Whitehall Stairs

  • Study of the Trunk of an Elm Tree

  • Cenotaph to the Memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds

  • Dedham Vale: Morning

  • View on the River Severn at Worcester

  • Somerset House Terrace and the Thames, A View from the North End of Waterloo Bridge with St. Paul's Cathedral in the distance

  • Hampstead Stormy Sky

  • Autumn Berries and Flowers in Brown Pot

  • Weymouth Bay with Jordan Hill

  • A Hayfield Near East Bergholt at Sunset

  • Study for The Leaping Horse (View on the Stour)

  • Celebration of the General Peace of 1814 in East Bergholt

  • Autumn Sunset

  • Salisbury Cathedral

  • Country Road

  • Hampstead

  • Spring Ploughing

  • Landscape Ploughing Scene In Suffolk

  • A Lane Near Flatford

  • Sunset Study of Hampstead, Looking Towards Harrow

  • A View On The Stour Near Dedham

  • His Majesty's Ship "Victory", Capt. E. Harvey, in the Memorable Battle of Trafalgar Between two French Ships of the Line

  • Golding Constable's Kitchen Garden

  • Landscape Evening

  • Brighton Beach with Colliers

  • Landscape with a Double Rainbow

  • Beach in Brighton

  • Water Meadows Near Salisbury

  • Hampstead Heath

  • Seascape Study with Rain Cloud

  • Shoreham Bay Near Brighton

  • The Mill Stream

  • Golding Constable's Flower Garden

  • Dedham Church and Vale

  • Flatford Mill

  • View of Salisbury Cathedral From the Bishop's Grounds

  • A Mill at Gillingham in Dorset

  • Die Valley Farm

  • Cloud Study

  • A Cottage in a Cornfield

  • View of Highgate From Hampstead Heath

  • Nuvens

  • Old Sarum

  • The Admiral's House

  • Scene on a River 1

  • The View of Salisbury Cathedral From the River, with the House of the Archdeacon Fischer

  • Stour Valley and Dedham Village

  • The Leaping Horse

  • A Church Porch

  • Flatford Mill From a Lock on the Stour

Views

Quotations: "I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may - light, shade and perspective will always make it beautiful."

"It will be difficult to name a class of landscape, in which the sky is not the key note, the standard of scale and the chief organ of sentiment."

"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."

"An artist, who is self-taught, is taught by a very ignorant person indeed."

Membership

In 1819, John was elected an associate of the Royal Academy of Arts.

• associate

  Royal Academy of Arts , United Kingdom

  1819

Connections

A happy marriage to Maria Bicknell, with whom Constable fell in love in 1809, was delayed until 1816 by the opposition of her maternal grandfather, the wealthy rector of East Bergholt.

Constable's wife, with whom he had seven children, died in 1828, shortly after he inherited a fortune from her father. Thereafter, he dressed in black and was, according to Leslie, "a prey to melancholy and anxious thoughts". He cared for his seven children alone for the rest of his life. Only his son, Charles Golding Constable, produced offspring, a son.

Father:

Golding Constable

Golding Constable was a wealthy corn merchant, owner of Flatford Mill in East Bergholt and Dedham Mill in Essex.

Mother:

Ann (Watts) Constable

child:

Charles Golding Constable

Charles Golding Constable was a member of the British East India Company's navy, joining up in his youth.

Wife:

Maria Bicknell

References

• John Constable: The Making of a Master This book reconciles the two defining aspects of Constable's work - his revolutionary painting techniques and his reverence for the old masters.
  2014
• John Constable The full range of the art of John Constable, who was best known for his exquisite sun-dappled landscapes of the English countryside, is revealed in this volume.
  1991
• John Constable: 226 Plates This art book with foreword by Maria Peitcheva contains 226 selected color plates of drawings and paintings from John Constable.
  2015
• John Constable: A Kingdom of his Own A major new biography of the great English landscape painter by longtime New Yorker writer Anthony Bailey.
  2007
• Constable This lavishly illustrated monograph of the great British landscapist John Constable presents a definitive survey of the painter's life and works.
  2010
• John Constable: The Man and His Art Book by Ronald Parkinson.
  1998
• Constable: Pictures from the Exhibition Book by Leslie Parris.
  1991
• John Constable: The Leaping Horse Book by Richard Humphreys.
  2018
• John Constable: His Palette This book by Arron Adams contains selected and annotated color plates of paintings from John Constable.
  2016
• Constable: Impressions of Land, Sea and Sky This volume focuses on 108 works by Constable with many supplementary images and six illuminating essays.
  2006