John Constable

John Constable (East Bergholt, Suffolk, 1776 - London, 1837) was an English landscape painter working in the Romantic tradition. He is best known for reshaping the genre with his views of the Stour valley, on the border of Suffolk and Essex, an area now called "Constable Country". His work is among the most valued in British art today, yet he earned little from it during his lifetime, and he found more success in France than in England.

Childhood and first years

The second son of Golding Constable, a prosperous miller and corn merchant, and Ann Constable, John was expected to join the family business, since his elder brother had an intellectual disability. He was largely self-taught and began drawing as a boy in his village under the influence of John Dunthorne. In 1799, with the backing of an early patron, he persuaded his father to let him pursue painting and study at the Royal Academy in London.

Masters and early works

During these years he admired Gainsborough, Reynolds, Claude Lorrain, Rubens, Annibale Carracci and Ruisdael. In 1802 he first exhibited at the Royal Academy and, in a letter to Dunthorne, declared his resolve to become a professional landscape painter. To earn a living he painted portraits, copies of old masters and religious pictures, though the last were not his strength. His early style, with its freshness of light and colour, already shows the compositional influence of Claude Lorrain. His everyday subjects, however, were out of fashion in an age that preferred ruins and wild scenery.

Working outdoors

Constable painted from nature and is regarded as one of the first to make oil sketches directly outdoors. His large sketches, with free and vigorous brushwork, were revolutionary in their time and still attract interest. He was especially concerned with light and clouds, which he recorded with the hour and the weather, convinced that the sky was the key note of a landscape.

Marriage and the "six-footers"

His childhood sweetheart, Maria Bicknell, married him in 1816 after years of opposition from her family. That year he began Flatford Mill, a large canvas that found no buyer but drew praise. In 1819 he sold The White Horse to his friend John Fisher, which gave him a financial freedom he had never known. That work led to a series of six monumental paintings of the River Stour, the "six-footers", including Stratford Mill and The Hay Wain of 1821, his most famous picture. The Hay Wain found no buyer in London but sold in Paris and won a gold medal at the Salon.

Reception in France

Constable's work impressed Géricault and Delacroix, who saw it in London, and its influence reached the Barbizon School. Delacroix noted in his journal what he had learned from the green of Constable's meadows. Although he sold little in England, in France he sold more than twenty paintings within a few years.

Brighton and the death of Maria

Between 1824 and 1828 the family lived in Brighton, seeking sea air for Maria, who had tuberculosis. Constable then painted coastal scenes and studies of clouds and sea, in a looser and gloomier style. Maria died in 1828 after the birth of their seventh child, and Constable was left to raise the children alone. In those years his speculation on engravings of his landscapes, financed with his late wife's inheritance, ended in financial loss.

Final years and legacy

He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1829. He lectured on the history of landscape and argued that landscape painting is both scientific and poetic. He died in 1837 and was buried at Hampstead beside Maria. His view of landscape as something lived rather than neutrally copied influenced the Barbizon painters and, through them, Impressionism.