John Constable

The son of a prosperous mill-owner at East Bergholt in Suffolk, John Constable was born in 1776. His most significant training as an artist came from his early access to the art collection of Sir George Beaumont. Highly inspired by the landscapes of Claude and Girten, Constable began to capture the vistas of his native Suffolk on canvas. In his early career, he struggled to gain recognition for his landscape paintings and despite exhibiting regularly at the Royal Academy from 1802 onwards, it was only around 1816 that his work began to attract attention. In his determination to fully understand the complexities of nature in changing light, Constable painted his pictures outdoors and began experimenting with his brushwork and the colour of his palette. He developed an unusual practise of laying one colour aside another without blending in order to recreate the scintillating effects of the reflection of light. During the height of his career, he was celebrated for his 'six-footers', a term he coined to describe his large canvases of life along the River Stour, and his extraordinary series of sky studies. Indicative of his interest in natural history and science, he strove to capture the movement of air masses and play of light in a moisture-laden atmosphere. The Haywain and A View on the Stour won him the Gold Medal at the Paris Salon of 1824 and marked the beginning of a new Romantic attitude to landscape painting. His concentration on atmospheric effects was influential for the development of French landscape painting, especially that of the Barbizon School and the Impressionists. John Constable died in London on 31st March 1837.

Reference: Images and Insights Exh. Cat. (Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin 1993), 188.