John Constable

What made Constable different from the majority of his contemporaries was his attitude towards the things that he saw. He was not, like so many other landscape artists, a conscious seeker of the picturesque. As an artist he was virtually self-taught and his periods of formal study amounted to little more than process of directive discipline. His real master was his own sensitive and perceptive eye (Peacock, 15). It was through a study of nature rather than by a study of academic principles that his artistic philosophy was evolved. It was at East Bergholt on the Suffolk side of the river Stour on 11 June 1776 that artist John Constable was born. The house where John was born is now disappeared, but its prosperous Georgian solidity exists for us in a number of his paintings (Peacock, 15). Golding, Jonh’s father, was a miller and the owner of water mills at Flatford and Dedham, and two windmills at East Bergholt (Taylor, 10). The Constables were a large family, John was the fourth of six children. Though much is not recorded of John’s first school experince , he was sent to Lavenham at age seven (Shirley, 39). There like most of the pupils, ill-used, he finished it in Dedham grammar school under a Dr. Thomas Grimwood. John did not do well in his studies to justify seeking a career in the church like his father had wished (Taylor, 11). In fact, Constable’s only record of excellence at Dedham was in penmanship, and so he was quickly directed into the family business, becoming locally known as “the handsome miller” (Shirly, 39). For a year John worked in his father’s mills and so acquired first-hand knowledge of the miller ’s trade. In the mills what John learned probably stood him in a better stead that all the formal instruction in art he would ever receive (Peacock, 16). In 1796 he went on an apprenticeship in London. John apprenticeship to John Thomas Smith, a draughtsman and engraver, known as “Antiquity Smith”. Constable assisted by making sketches that might be

Cited: Baskett, John: Constable Oil Sketches; Watson-Guptill Publications, NY, 1966. Canaday, John: English Landscape still lives on in Constable Country, NA (Magazine clipping) Peacock, Carlos: John Constable, The Man and His Work; Graphic Society Greenwich, CN, 1965. Shirley, Andrew: A portrait of John Constable; Michael Joseph, London, 1949. NA: The Art Book, Phadon Press Limited; London, 1994. |