John Constable : “the emulous artist” Introduction In a paper in the Oxford Art Journal, Will Vaughan1 challenges Charles Leslie’s proposition that John Constable was in the mould of Hogarth, an iconoclast who sought to overturn the traditions of art. Instead, he reminds us: There is little in Constable's writings, either, to suggest that he would have welcomed being compared with Hogarth. Indeed, Constable's allegiances were in a different direction. The great hero amongst his native forebears was Reynolds.2 While Constable was a great admirer of Hogarth as a painter, he looked to Reynolds, to use Vaughan’s phrase, as a mentor, in the sense of setting out what British artists could and should aim to achieve and of having founded the British school of painting in which Constable felt at home. Charles Leslie’s 1843 memoir,3 stresses Constable's differences from the “academic” tradition, and quotes selectively from the sources in support of this point of view. For example, Leslie makes much of the importance for Constable of completing paintings “en plein air”; to capture the exact appearance in the conditions of light and atmosphere at a particular location. Leslie attributes to Constable a suggestion that he completed Boat Building(now in the Victoria and Albert Museum) on site. Much of the Constable literature has used this as evidence that the motif, the use of a particular place and time as the subject matter of major paintings, was the defining characteristic of Constable's art. However, Boat Building is the only exhibited work for which evidence of completion in the open air exists, and even this is ambiguous, as there are notable differences between the painting and a surviving drawing, that does appear to be from the motif and which gives the main lines of the composition. In the paper cited above, William Vaughan has put Leslie's deliberate 1 construction of the Constable myth in a context of cultural politics. Leslie was part of a group trying to defend British “naturalism” against the influence of continental “academic” painting. These champions of natural art needed a hero of the English school to bolster their case. Constable would fit the bill better if his sophistication of artistic thought, dependence on inherited art theory and ambitions to produce monumental pictures, were played down in favour of a vision of landscape as simple representation of the seen. Building on Vaughan’s insights, this paper explores a particular historical instance of Constable claiming his descent from Reynolds as the father figure of a British school. This was his decision to exhibit pictures by himself together with some he owned by Richard Wilson and by Joshua Reynolds, in a context intended to draw attention to the relationships between contemporary British painters and their national predecessors. The occasion in question was the winter exhibition of 1833, of the Society of British artists and it is significant as the only time that Constable did show with the society. So the fact that he chose to show in this exclusively British exhibition, what he chose to show and, importantly, the critical reception the exhibition evoked can illuminate Constable’s self identification with the tradition of British art and thus modify the popular perception of him as a complete iconoclast and anti-traditionalist. I begin though with a brief account of some central ideas about the aesthetic aspirations for British landscape painting that Constable espoused, following and acknowledging the intellectual lead of Joshua Reynolds. “General Nature” A fundamental idea about art that they held in common was the importance of painting “general nature”, in not getting caught up only in rendering the contingent appearances of particular parts of the world. The theme recurs throughout Reynolds’ Discourses, expressed in various ways, as if Reynolds were searching for the correct form of words to communicate 2 this fundamental point. Accurate depiction of individual things is in a sense too easy to be worth the full attention of the serious painter. Mimesis, he urges, should not be conceived just as imitation of appearances, which is just a step on the road: ... the usual and most dangerous error is on the side of minuteness; and therefore I think caution most necessary where most have failed. The general idea constitutes real excellence. All smaller things, however perfect in their way, are to be sacrificed without mercy to the greater.4 Reynolds ideas here are representative of an English neo-classical concept of "general nature", which differed from the Neo-Platonic idealism that lay at the foundation of continental academic thought on art. In that tradition, the painter is divinely inspired to reveal the hidden ideas or forms, of which the physical world is just a pale reflection. The English school of thought was instead rooted in a process of observation and purposive research, to find the general principles underlying particular nature. In that sense, it reflected an empiricist bent in the culture, but empiricism aimed at deriving serviceable theoretical principles. In his own theorising, Reynolds applied this doctrine to history painting, so it was mainly human nature that he had in mind as the proper subject of significant pictures. These could and should carry high moral messages or other ennobling thoughts. He would probably not have countenanced a comparable claim to the embodiment of general principles for landscape painting, which he would have thought, had to be validated by a closer link to particular nature. Constable did, though, differ from Reynolds and make the claim that it was possible to paint “general landscape” and thus for his genre to rank with history painting in its scope of reference. In a draft prospectus,5 for his collection of mezzotints, he makes the point in the following way: 3 But why should not subjects purely English be made the vehicle of General Landscape? ‐ and, when embodied by its highest principles, be so rendered, as to become legitimate, and at the same time original and consequently classic art. General landscape is a unifying term, coined by Constable, summarising his ambitions for art including basing serious or poetical landscape on the English scene. The idea has several connotations including an intention to paint the universal properties of landscape, analogously to Joshua Reynolds’ “general history.” These include the signs of humanity, for example the typical effects of man’s agriculture on the countryside. The signs of nature’s processes have an equal share. The patterns and structures of light and shade on the earth and the sky of, arising from types of weather and atmosphere are vital to the affective content of landscape. It is a conception of the landscape painter’s art that shows a determination not to be tied to “view painting,” that is, the precise depiction of a particular place. The scenes in Suffolk, Hampstead and Wiltshire that were the staple subjects for Constable served as the feedstock for such a generalising art. They were familiar and the mere copying of their appearances was straightforward. Constable took up the greater challenge of their transformation into classic art. In this he aligns himself with the thought of Reynolds that the basis of great art lies in visual generalisation. Constable achieved his aspiration through making landscape art that evoked the characteristics of the real countryside, but with substantive reference to the achievements of the great traditions of western landscape painting. Michael Kitson, in his analysis of the oil sketches from nature of the 1810s, frequently lauded as Constable’s original contribution to landscape painting, points out the important differences between the sketches and exhibited pictures of the same period, focusing on the Mill Stream of 1814 ( now in Ipswich) which show early signs of Constable’s later, monumental style. Experiments in outdoor sketching are means towards the end of works for show, not ends in themselves.6 4 Contexts In 1829, Constable had attained the long sought election to full Royal Academician status and his subsequent productions and attitudes have to be seen in the light of that new social and professional position. He was sensitive to others reactions to his new situation: “malignity, envy and such like are the price of being eminent” he remarked in a letter to his friend John Fisher.7 On the other hand, the new position brought increased self-confidence and the advantage of eminence was that he was now free to more openly declare his allegiances, to place himself in the schools and traditions of painting that he so much admired. He could also articulate publicly his own aesthetic points of view, in a body of theory previously explored only in private, in correspondence with Fisher. He devoted much time and energy in the early 1830s to displaying his knowledge of the history of his art and of his own place within it, with a burst of explanatory material alongside or independently of the production and exhibition of images. All his acts seem to be part of a manifesto for his views on art, though typically, this does not take the form of a unified statement of principle but of a series of partly related publications and utterances. One of the forms of the manifesto was the publication of a set of mezzotint engravings after some of his earlier paintings. These were first issued in 1830, but a revised edition was published in 1832, with the addition of letterpress that summarised some of the aspirations for a significant landscape art and the principles, that had, he claimed, guided his productions from the beginning of his career. These included, in particular what he called “the chiaroscuro of nature” ‐ the basis in tonal modelling of expression in landscape, which provided an artistic rationale for putting his pictorial designs into the monochrome form of mezzotint. The notion of publishing some of his ideas on landscape art had been under discussion with Fisher during the 1820s. The intention was realised in the introduction and notes to the second edition of the mezzo-tints. The main ideas are that the expression in painting of the 5 chiaroscuro of nature is informed by close engagement with the traditions of painting, both in landscape and history, as well as close observation of nature. To consolidate and extend his message he prepared and delivered in 18338 a public lecture on the history of landscape painting. This included a quite thorough account of the history of the genre in Europe and of his own descent from this “chain of art.” Further lectures followed in 1835 and 1836.9 These were the acts of one who now felt confident enough to speak out and lay claim to a position in the canon of landscape art and the recognition of posterity. Memorialising Reynolds I have pointed out already that Constable held a life-long fascination with the thought on painting of Joshua Reynolds, often quoting his aphorisms or citing him as a model practitioner of the art. A highly pertinent manifestation of this commitment to the memory of the founder of the British School was in-hand at the time of the Society of Artists’ Exhibition. Constable was working in 1833 on his Cenotaph to the memory of Joshua Reynolds. This was a painting based on a pencil sketch of 1824, of the memorial to Reynolds erected in the grounds of Coleorton Hall by Sir George Beaumont. Constable had sketched the monument during a visit to Beaumont and taking this drawing up as the design for a work for exhibition can be placed in the context of a phase, in the early 1830s, of revisiting earlier pictures. The process was one of reconfiguration, finding new possibilities in the original design, partly through the application of his more mature style of picture making. Memorialising Joshua Reynolds was fully consistent with his practice of picture making around the time of the Society of Artists’ Exhibition. It would then have seemed fitting to acknowledge a debt to Reynolds as artist by exhibiting works that Constable owned, together with some of his own, in a show dedicated to emulation of great forerunners. 6 Society of British Artists Exhibition The 'Society of British Artists' was a fairly new body, formed on May 21st 1823 by a group of less eminent painters. Their goal was not to challenge or provide an alternative to other artists’ bodies,10 but essentially to provide an additional forum for artists to address the public and in pursuit of this aim, the society held exhibitions each Summer at its Suffolk Street premises. For three years, 1832 to 1834, the Society also put on Winter exhibitions of the works of deceased and living British painters, and one of these provided a further occasion for Constable to demonstrate allegiance to the British school of painting and to stake a claim to a place within it. These Winter exhibitions brought together in one place – though in separate rooms – the works of contemporary painters and of major British artists of the past, with a view to stimulating the efforts of the former by placing their works close to those of their forebears. As the introductory notes to the 1833 exhibition catalogue put it: … the Society have placed the productions of the living in close contact with some of the best performances of the dead; in order that, by an attentive examination, the emulous Artist of the present day may ascertain the means by which his most favoured predecessors attained their high and justly deserved reputation11. The Suffolk Street Winter shows provided an opportunity for the current generation to pit themselves against their British predecessors while also giving concrete evidence of a continuing tradition. Constable hung five pictures in his possession. One of his own landscape sketches, a portrait and a landscape by Reynolds and two landscapes by Richard Wilson.12 To demonstrate some emulation of Reynolds as a painter, both of portraits and landscape, was to signal his conscious acceptance of the founder of the British School, even in his own genre. 7 Constable looked to the whole history of European landscape painting, to Titian and Claude; Rembrandt and Ruisdael - for models of quality and comparisons and his companions in the pantheon.13 It was natural also to show allegiance to the heroes of British painting, when the opportunity arose, in an exhibition self declared as challenging contemporary painters to emulate the achievements of their predecessors. Including examples of Wilson’s work also signals an alignment of interest with the more pictorially ambitious of his predecessors, who made grand compositions both of scenes in the Roman Campagna and in the mountains of Wales. He wrote of Wilson: "He is now walking arm in arm with Milton - & Linnaeus.”14 His great predecessor in landscape was, in this view, providing a bridge between poetry and science, a role that Constable clearly saw himself fulfilling for his generation. The Sussex Street exhibition then, with the theme of emulation of the achievements of their predecessors by contemporary artists, provided an opportunity to advertise descent from the towering names of British art. Further, Constable, in showing these works together, seems almost to give a deliberate invitation for the viewer to contemplate possible points of comparison, a provocative act. And some critics responded to this stimulus, but before turning to their specific commentaries, I shall briefly outline the general tenor of criticism of Constable’s work over his lifetime. Constable Criticism Constable’s work at the major exhibitions, especially at the Royal Academy, met with a mixed reception. The tone of reactions was generally moderate.15 Some commentators saw a feeling for nature while others were sceptical of the realism of his depictions of phenomena or drew attention to the obtrusiveness of the paint and lack of “finish.” Many saw both attributes, being pleased with the sense of nature but disconcerted by excessive painterliness. The praise in these reviews of the painter’s response to nature does not fit comfortably with 8 the popular notion today that Constable was derided in his own time for excessive naturalism in his compositions. Critics focused on different issues. A typical example of mild approval appeared in The Champion on 7 March 1819,16 referring to Constable’s picture, A Mill. This artist seems to have confined his studies from nature, within a very small circle, for the pictures he has offered to the public through the different exhibitions during the last six years, have been almost invariably composed of the same materials, i.e. Water‐Mills, Water‐Locks, Navigable Canals, and a Flat Cultivated Country; it is but justice, however, to add, that Mr. CONSTABLE has made the most of his scanty materials; his Pictures are faithful transcripts of nature, of which No. 78, 'A Mill,' is a very pleasing example. This reviewer finds Constable’s obsession with the scenes from Suffolk and the variations in composition and treatment, that were the core of the exhibited work in the period, to be a limitation, but the works are carried off well, within that narrow range of subject matter. He was not alone in the comment - even Constable’s loyal friend John Fisher asked for a little more variety in his art.17 A less flattering set of comments remarking on an absence of naturalism came in a review of the Royal Academy exhibition in The Times (6 May 1831),18 of Constable’s dramatic and ambitiously conceived “Salisbury”: 169. 'Salisbury Cathedral, from the Meadows. ‘J Constable, R.A. – A very vigorous and masterly landscape, which somebody has spoiled since it was painted, by putting in such clouds as no human being ever saw, and by spotting the foreground all over with whitewash. It is quite impossible that this offence can have been committed with the consent of the artist. Constable had made his famous series of cloud studies during the early 1820s, and to the extent that this practice was aimed at perfecting a naturalism of appearance of sky in his 9 finished pictures, the remark would have been especially galling. While Constable’s pictorial aim with his clouds was as much about expression and composition as verisimilitude in depiction,19 he would have expected them to be recognised as clouds such as had been seen before. The balance of attitudes found in the art journals can be summed up in the response by the critic of The London Magazine, in his review of the British Institution exhibition of 1828,20 to Constable’s The Beach at Brighton, the Chain Pier in the distance: It is evident that Mr. Constable's lan[d] scapes are like nature; it is still more evident that they are paint. There is no attempt made to conceal art. It is a love of the material vehicle, or a pride in slovenliness and crudity, as the indispensable characteristics of national art; as some orators retain their provincial dialect, not to seem affected. Once again, Constable’s qualities as a depicter of nature are accepted, but his obtrusive use of the medium of painting is reported to be at least equally noticeable. It seems to be suggested, though, that the emphasis on material is common in British pictures, so Constable’s style was not wholly idiosyncratic but in part at least representative of a national orientation. Reviews of the 1833 Exhibition Reception of Constable’s part in the Winter 1833 Society of British Artists’ exhibition consisted of two substantial reviews. One was condemnatory, the other supportive. In both cases, however, Constable’s style was seen to derive from, or at least be related to, that of Reynolds. The condemnation came in a review of the exhibition in The Observer of 6 October 1833, in which Edward Dubois (who wrote many vitriolic reviews of Constable’s person and his art),21 opined: 10 It is not “ a secret worth knowing” but we have here learnt one ‐ the origin of the happily inimitable style of the CONSTABLE of the Roy. Acad. In the small room on the left is a Landscape by Sir Joshua ‐ several beautiful ones he painted as might be expected from the excellencies of his backgrounds ‐ but this is a mere smear, the property of Mr. Constable R.A. and evidently the exemplar of his ambition, and, we must admit, felicitous rivalry. Dubois pursued an almost pathological campaign against Constable and his art, which has been well documented by Ivy and this barb is aimed at his freedom of paint handling, the unfinished look that had been a point of criticism by others before, but not with the bitterness shown by Dubois. Here he finds the style of painting to be comparable to a minor, unstudied work by Reynolds, something thrown off for the latter’s own amusement. The similarities are taken to show that Constable tried to imitate his illustrious predecessor in this looseness of handling, but, as a much lesser talent, based his own style entirely on these borrowed traits. The dependency suggested could be dismissed as just another instance of Dubois’ antagonism, were it not for another review, from a point of view much more favourable to Constable’s style, which tends to confirm a contemporary awareness of at least a possible relationship between the two painters’ work. The supportive appraisal of Constable’s painting and the positive role of the example of Reynolds is a review of the same exhibition in the Morning Post22 of 14 November 1833 : No. 236‐A Sketch. J. Constable R.A. Had we not seen the name of the painter in the catalogue we should have pronounced this a sketch of Sir Joshua's; the same masterly arrangement is here displayed, the same feeling for colour and freedom of execution, and above all the same poetical sentiment by which the landscapes of Reynolds, in their most perfect state, are distinguished. We fear that the merits of this skilful performance are more appreciated by artists than by the 11 public in general; but the test of time will establish its value, and the name of Mr Constable would rank high in art if he had no other claim on posterity than this. This analysis is more thorough than that of Dubois and lays out some explicit critical terms. The differences in appraisal reflect wider critical debates about the value of painting to a high finish against that of palpable brush-work. But in their contrasting ways, both critics drew attention to the aspects of style shared by the two painters. The Morning Post critic, though, ascribes “poetical sentiment” to their freedom of handling and colour sense. The key terms of critical approval are the ability to combine effective composition, in “masterly arrangement”, with “colour and freedom of execution”, which together convey the poetic sense. Constable himself argues that the poetic sentiment in landscape is achieved through the conscious use of these defining characteristics of painting, “… chiaroscuro, colour and composition, are all poetic qualities.”23 The Morning Post critic here finds that these aesthetic properties define Constable’s achievement and sees them too in Reynolds’ landscape. The ascription of a common mastery of arrangement is of especial significance, on the one hand it undermines Dubois’ description of the Reynolds piece as a “mere smear” - which would hardly be able to demonstrate Reynolds’ poetic sensibilities. On the other hand it suggests that the “sketch” by Constable was sufficiently finished to manifest a command of composition. Constable expressed great satisfaction with the Morning Post review in a letter to his son. “The Morning Post spoke so nobly of my picture of the wood in Suffolk Street ... - it was very handsome indeed.”24 Constable typically did not react to criticism, so he was clearly struck by the notice and its terms of description and approbation of his work. He does not mention the comparison with Reynolds, which is central to the review and it seems reasonable to infer at least tacit approval of the parallel. A further point emerges from both reviews, neither critic makes anything of Constable’s naturalism in their discussion of the sketch, nor is any mention made of the subject of the 12 picture or its possible locale. The properties of the sketch and the points of congruence with the Reynolds picture are all discussed in terms of style. Reynolds as landscapist We have seen two critics of polar opposite attitudes to Constable’s art both advance the proposition that he took stylistic cues from Reynolds’ practice. Reynolds does not have a reputation as a landscapist for us and a suggestion that his sallies in the genre could be a model for Constable’s landscape painting may seem fanciful. As noted above, though, critics were aware of Reynolds’ landscapes, albeit these were rather few in number. The surviving corpus is very small - Mannings accepts 7 pictures as autograph.25 It is also possible to glean information about Reynolds’ landscape style from his portrait backgrounds and there is consistency through these various manifestations of Reynolds approach to landscape painting. His portrait backgrounds typically show soft outlines, light foliage and long calm vistas in pale tones, to set off the subjects and not to share attention with them. They are, though, far from perfunctory, mere adjuncts to the figures, but contribute positively to the tone and visual timbre of the whole. Eighteenth century portraitists often employed specialists to paint their settings. But both Dubois and Constable take it that Reynolds produced his own. Significantly, so too does James Northcote, his pupil and biographer, who has more intimate knowledge of life and practice in Reynolds’ studio. He describes the landscape settings of Reynolds’ portraits as “chaste and exquisite”, confirming that they were from the artist’s own hand and that their particular aesthetic qualities were recognised. He asserts that the few independent landscapes share these qualities.26 Constable was friendly with Northcote and so could well have heard details of Reynolds’ practice, including in landscape. So it was not bizarre for a critic, such as Dubois, to adduce the first President of the Royal Academy as an admirable example of landscape style. 13 One example of his work in landscape, in the Tate Gallery [Fig 1] does show the sorts of characteristics identified by the reviewers of the Society of Artists’ exhibition. The subject is the popular one of the Thames from Richmond Hill, a locale famed in pastoral poetry as well as painting. The composition is eclectic with a background including the river pushing diagonally into the picture space with a house on the far bank. This is reminiscent of a type of design often deployed by Richard Wilson, though he places the viewer (and painter) at ground level. Reynolds has blended his vista with a wooded foreground containing mixed cattle and sheep in tight groups that owes something to Dutch sources. These visual references to the tradition are quite explicit and would have been recognised by contemporary painters and connoisseurs and in that sense, this is self-conscious picturesque. The total impression is very much of an English bucolic subject, framed in a roughly Claudean composition. Within that traditional pattern, there is considerable freedom of visual organisation and of handling. Reynolds himself stated the case for eclectic landscape design in his discussion of Claude’s procedure, which, he said, entailed the use of a variety of studies to make one satisfying composition. Helmingham Dell and “general landscape” The pictures by Constable, Reynolds and Wilson displayed together in the 1833 exhibition, have not so far been identified. My suggestion, on the available evidence, set out below, is that the landscape sketch by Constable was a version of his Helmingham Dell, specifically that now in the Louvre, [Fig 2.] which is less finished than the versions shown at the various major London exhibitions, and more like an intermediate preparatory sketch, of the type that Constable typically produced for his large exhibition pictures. There are a number of extant instances of the Helmingham composition and he worked on several variants during the late 1820s and early 1830s. The best known example, now in Kansas, was his major picture in the Royal Academy show of 1830, while another27, 14 originally painted in 1825 and re-acquired by Constable on the death of its owner, was shown at the British Institution in 1833, the year of the Society of British Artists’ exhibition under discussion here. The Dell was very much part of his creative and exhibition world in the early 1830s. The series of Helmingham pictures were based on a drawing of 1802, made at a time when Constable was exploring the Suffolk countryside with eyes conditioned by the style of some of the masters of landscape, including Gainsborough, Waterloo, Ruisdael and others, largely known to him through prints.28 Constable took up this drawing more than two decades later and not only used it as the basis of works for exhibition, but explored its pictorial possibilities quite intensively. It was in effect an armature or platform for a series of experiments, introducing variations in composition and pictorial detail, to make many pictures out of one subject. This, as discussed above, was characteristic of his procedures at this stage in his career, with early drawings and oil sketches being revived as a source of ideas for major pictures, and approached as experiments in designing and realising “general landscape.” By this, Constable refers to his ambition to elevate the genre of landscape painting to that of history, through affiliation with Reynolds’ “general nature”. In the Louvre version that I am proposing as the 1833 Suffolk Street exhibit, the simple woodland scene is dramatized through contrasts of light and shade. It is in effect an exercise in visual poetics, the use of colour and chiaroscuro to “make something from nothing.”29 Confident in the power of “the art” Constable has taken up a motif from his apprentice years, as a test bed for picture making, showing what could be done with a modest original view from nature. 15 Identifying the 1833 exhibition pictures. Although there is no record of the names of the pictures exhibited at Suffolk Street, it is possible to propose the Paris Helmingham Dell as candidate for Constable’s own picture, by appealing to the evidence of various documentary sources. I have noted above Constable’s citing of the picture in Suffolk Street as a “wood” and he refers to the Helmingham Dell motif as “A Wood”, on several occasions. One instance is in correspondence30 with Archdeacon John Fisher, at the time of the showing of one of the other variants of the composition at the Royal Academy in 1830, the picture now in Kansas City. “My Wood is liked…” he remarks, probably referring to (another) good review in the Morning Post,31 which describes the composition and compares the picture favourably with the works of some of his predecessors: It has all the truth and richness of GAINSBOROUGH's best efforts, without his tameness and in brilliance and variety of colour it may vie with many of the landscapes of RUBENS. This praise will be found fully warranted by the subject of it, which is one of the best in the whole catalogue of the Artist's productions. The Louvre picture itself was also referred to as “the wood”. The occasion arose when it was in the process of being rendered into mezzotint by David Lucas, for inclusion in Constable’s book of prints English Landscape Scenery. A proof version of the design now in the Tate Gallery32 is clearly a rendition of the Louvre version. The published print33 has been amended by the addition of a cow in the water, in a similar position to, but at a different angle to the picture plane, from that in the Kansas City canvas, while greater foreground detail has also been included, enhancing the sense of space. At one stage in the preparation of the plate, ready for printing, Constable asked Lucas for “the wood” to be sent to him. One doubt that could be raised about my identification of the Louvre picture being part of the 1833 exhibit is that it does not appear to modern eyes as “sketch” like. To early nineteenth 16 century critics, though, and to the painters themselves, the very painterly handling of the piece would justify that appellation, which did not, in any case, have the implication of inconsequentiality that it has today. The term “sketch” applied to a painting could signal a number of different types of work and was more finely nuanced then than now. Indeed painters’ and critics’ vocabulary in France distinguished very clearly between types of sketch. The esquisse, was the artist’s original pictorial conception for the work in hand; an etude was the more slowly and careful rendered representation of an object or scene, aimed at capturing particular appearances. The ebauche, was a partially complete work, wanting only the final layers of paint to be a highly finished picture. While English commentators did not employ an explicit lexicon of terms in this way, congruent distinctions were actively in use in this country.34 Some of the criticisms levelled at Constable’s exhibited pictures were to the effect that he had taken them only to the ebauche stage, leaving the paint work apparent, a matter of aesthetic choice for him but evidence of a lack of professional decorum, for some of his critics. In sum, then, the critics were not in general suggesting that the pictures were “sketchy” in the modern sense of the word. So when he exhibited pictures under the title of “sketch,” which he did on several occasions, Constable was signalling that the picture in question was a transitional stage, not yet complete but sufficiently advanced to demonstrate the underlying formal composition and especially the chiaroscuro. His exhibited sketches were not rough compositional designs or on the spot renditions of a view or rural object. Constable, as is well known, tended to produce well worked up full size “sketches” for the major exhibited works. I interpret this practice as taking his compositions to the ebauche stage, with the objective of developing the visual architecture of light and shade, and then painstakingly working up the final version on a new canvas, referring to the ebauche itself as the model for the broad masses of colour and light, but adding the finer tones and depictions of details. It is likely that the Louvre picture is in fact the ebauche stage that was 17 subsequently developed into the canvas, shown at the Royal Academy in 1830.35 Whilst there are certain differences, this can be regarded as typical of the refinements that would occur in this finalizing process. If this interpretation is correct, Constable could have had the Louvre picture to hand and available for exhibition in 1833 and have accurately described it as a “sketch” in the sense I have been defining. Although a strong case can be made for the identity of the Constable painting, those that he exhibited by Reynolds and Wilson remain more elusive. Another of the landscapes accepted as autograph in the recent Complete Works of Reynolds36 is Woodland and River Scene now in Leeds. This has more of the characteristics that could be described as a sketch or smear. If autograph, it shows Reynolds engaging in the occluded vista type of design with a ground level viewpoint and dominating trees, a compositional form a little closer to Constable’s Helmingham. The Leeds picture is not in good condition and the forms, tonality and handling cannot be well discerned, so there is insufficient evidence to argue that this was the picture shown in 1833. A further example, also accepted by Mannings and Postle is An Opening in the Woods, (Figure 2) a ground level viewpoint composition with a strong foreground, but with a deep background vista incorporating a snowy mountain-top.37 This picture was owned by Reynolds’ niece and was exhibited at the British Institution in 1832, providing a recent precedent for public exhibition of a Reynolds landscape. It cannot be the picture owned by Constable but it does demonstrate the stylistic properties attributed to Reynolds as landscape painter by the Morning Post critic. The handling appears soft and free, with foliage, land and water surfaces suggested by swift and expert touches of the brush. The composition has a poetic feel and a dramatic look. The Paris Helmingham Dell is also notable for its economy of depictional marks, with broad colouring and tonality. A viewer could well feel that the two painters had in common at least some technical practices, ideas of pictorial composition and aesthetic ends. 18 Concluding Remarks In most Constable literature today, no similarity is found between his art and that of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Constable has tended to be claimed for a revolutionists' camp seeking to reject inherited ideas on art and substitute unmediated access to visual experience as the basis for painting. He has, it is suggested, “…taken the knife to received ideas ..” 38 and Reynolds has always been seen as the leading spokesman for those ideas. However, John Constable waged a publicity campaign for the significance of his own art, and its membership of the great tradition. He claimed that it was no less that “general landscape” corresponding to Joshua Reynolds’ “general history. ” The campaign was mounted substantially during the years from his election as a Royal Academician in 1829. His new “eminence” provided a platform for the campaign and the personal confidence to mount it. In this paper I have concentrated on an incident in that campaign, when Constable included one of his own “sketches” – here argued to be a version of Helmingham Dell – with landscapes he owned by Richard Wilson and Joshua Reynolds, in the Society of British Artists Winter exhibition of 1833. He showed where he sought his own roots and at the same time stated his own claim to be one of the heirs of Reynolds and the great tradition of ambitious painting that the first President of the RA and his contemporaries had proposed for the aspiration of British painters. Moreover he looked up to Richard Wilson as a predecessor who had heroically followed the path of ambitious landscape design derived from “classicising” principles. I have tried to show that the huge gulf in style and ideas about art that we have tended to perceive as separating John Constable from Sir Joshua Reynolds is not so extensive after all, confirming Will Vaughan’s insight that Constable wanted to be accepted as the heir of Reynolds. Contemporaries could also receive and appraise Constable’s landscapes in the light of Reynolds’s practice of painting in that genre. The stylistic traits they found in 19 common were firmness of overall design with freedom and ease of handling of the paint. The positively inclined critic saw poetic qualities in these painterly traits, though the antiConstable commentator Dubois found only degeneracy in Constable aping the forgivably relaxed properties of Reynolds. Rather than slaughtering the ideas of Reynolds and academic art with his painting knife and departing violently from the precepts and practice of the first PRA and of the British landscape tradition, Constable creatively adapted these exemplars to his own uses and made them part of his own style of painting. 20 Illustrations. Fig 1. Joshua Reynolds, The Thames from Richmond Hill, 1788, Oil on canvas 69.8 x 90.8 cm , Tate Gallery 21 Fig 2. John Constable, View in Helmingham Park, (Suffolk). 1833. 1.0 x1.29 m. Musee du Louvre 22 Figure 3 Sir Joshua Reynolds PRA, An Opening in the Woods, 1770s Oil on Canvas, 61 x 74.9 cm, Private Collection 23 Notes 1 2 3 William Vaughan, “Constable’s Englishness,” Oxford Art Journal 19, no. 2 (1996): 17‐27. William Vaughan, “Constable’s Englishness,” 17. Charles R. Leslie, Memoirs Of The Life Of John Constable, Edited by Jonathan Mayne (London: Phaidon, 1951). 4 Reynolds, Discourses, page 58. Joshua Reynolds, Discourses on Art. (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1959), 58. 5 6 Ronald Brymer Beckett, John Constable’s Discourses (Ipswich: Suffolk Records Society, 1970). Michael Kitson, “John Constable 1810 to 1816 a Chronological Study,” Journal of the Warburg, and Courtauld Institutes 20 (1957), 356‐7. 7 Ronald Brymer Beckett, John Constable’s Correspondence Vol 6 the Fishers, vol. 6 (London: Suffolk Records Society ; HMSO, 1968), 258. 8 9 The same year as the Society of British Artists’ exhibition discussed here. Versions of the lectures, based on Constable’s preparatory notes and some records made by members of the audience, are available in Ronald Brymer Beckett, John Constable’s Discourses. 10 A group of painters met at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on May 21st 1823, to form the ‘Society of British Artists’, whose manifesto stated, “This organisation was not formed to rival existing societies but that every Member was to be at liberty to assist and support any other society.” http://www.royalsocietyofbritishartists.org.uk/about‐the‐rba.asp. Consulted on September 25, 2010. 11 12 A Xerox copy of the Catalogue is in the Library of the Paul Mellon Centre, London. Constable took over Joseph Farington's house in Charlotte St in 1822. He told Fisher on April 17 that two Wilson paintings were to be sold and that he had inquired about the price, guessing they were worth £60‐100. When he settled the cost of transfer, he penned a note recording that paintings were acquired for £80, so presumably these were the two Wilsons. It seems reasonable to suppose that, in turn, these were in the Sussex Street show in 1833. For the documentation see Leslie Parris et al., John Constable, Further Documents and Correspondence, vol. 18 (London: Tate Gallery, 1975), 214‐15. 24 13 In 1822 Fisher wrote " You are painting for the time when men shall talk of Wilson and VandeNeer and Ruisdael and Constable in the same breath. Ronald Brymer Beckett, John Constable and the Fishers the Record of a Friendship (London: Routledge and Paul, 1952), 82. 14 15 Ronald Brymer Beckett, John Constable’s Correspondence Vol 6 the Fishers, 118. All the quotations from critical commentary on Constable are from Judy Crosby Ivy, Constable and the Critics, 1802-1837 (Woodbridge: Boydell in association with Suffolk Records Society, 1991).. This excellent volume has drawn together newspaper reviews and other critical reception of Constable’s painting in his own lifetime. The references to Reynolds as an influence on Constable were cited in Conal Shield’s introductory essay to the catalogue of the 1976 Constable retrospective Ian Fleming‐Williams, Constable: Landscapes, Watercolours & Drawings (London: Tate Gallery Publications, 1976)., though without any comment on the plausibility of the connection. 16 17 Judy Crosby Ivy, Constable and the Critics, 1802-1837, 80. Fisher wrote to him in 1824: "I hope you will diversify your subject this year as to time of day. Thomson, you know, wrote not four Summers, but four Seasons. People get tired of mutton at top, mutton at bottom, and mutton at the side, though of the best flavour and smallest size." 18 19 Judy Crosby Ivy, Constable and the Critics, 1802-1837, 150. Ray Lambert, John Constable and the Theory of Landscape Painting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)., pp. 74‐80. 20 21 22 23 24 Judy Crosby Ivy, Constable and the Critics, 1802-1837, 126. Judy Crosby Ivy, Constable and the Critics, 1802-1837, 180. Judy Crosby Ivy, Constable and the Critics, 1802-1837, 181. Ronald Brymer Beckett, John Constable’s Discourses, 65. Ronald Brymer Beckett, John Constable’s Correspondence Vol 5. Various Friends, With Charles Boner and the Artist’s Children (Ipswich: Suffolk Records Society, 1967), 171. 25 David Mannings et al., Sir Joshua Reynolds : A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings (New Haven, Conn. ; London: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 2000) , 577. 25 26 James Northcote, The Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Ll.D., F.R.S., F.S.A., Etc., Late President of the Royal Academy, Comprising Original Anecdotes of Many Distinguished Persons, His Contemporaries; and a Brief Analysis of His Discourses. (London: Colburn, 1818), 184. 27 Now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/102701.html?mulR=9730. Consulted on September 25, 2010. 28 R B Beckett, who owned several drawings from this period, 1798 ‐ 1802, has commented: ‘Constable made painstaking copies from the continental prints supplied to him by Smith and then sought to adapt what he had learned to the countryside round E Bergholt.’ Ronald Brymer Beckett, John Constable’s Discourses, 7. 29 That the landscape painter could and should take these liberties with his observations of nature was one of Constable’s primary aesthetic principles, Ronald Brymer Beckett, John Constable’s Correspondence Vol 6 the Fishers, 172. 30 In a letter to Fisher of May 24 1830. Ronald Brymer Beckett, John Constable’s Correspondence Vol 6 the Fishers, 257‐58. 31 Judy Crosby Ivy, Constable and the Critics, 1802-1837, 139. This piece is by a different critic than the commentator on the 1833 exhibit, judging from the writing style. 32 A Dell, Helmingham Park, Suffolk 1830, Mezzotint on paper, image: 146 x 184 mm T06474. The relationship between the various versions of the Helmingham is cogently summed up in the entry in the 1991 retrospective catalogue:, Leslie Parris et al., Constable (London: Tate Gallery Publications, 1991), 315‐17. 33 34 Also in the Tate Gallery, T04009. For more extensive discussions of how English painters deployed these fine distinctions between types of painted sketch see Ray Lambert, John Constable and the Theory of Landscape Painting, 81‐84. 35 Graham Reynolds suggested long ago that The Louvre picture is a sketch for the version now in Kansas City. Graham. Reynolds, The Later Paintings and Drawings of John Constable (New Haven: Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 1984), 218. 36 David Mannings et al., Sir Joshua Reynolds : A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings.David Mannings et al., Sir Joshua Reynolds : A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings. 37 David Mannings et al., Sir Joshua Reynolds : A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings, 578. 26 38 Leslie Parris et al., John Constable, Further Documents and Correspondence. Leslie Parris et al., John Constable, Further Documents and Correspondence, 6. 27