John Constable The Seasons

John Constable started Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows just a year after his wife had died of tuberculosis. While many artists use their work to convey some type of political message or important event, such as the Industrial Revolution this piece of art seems to focus solely on his wife. Nature is used many times in the painting to symbolize Constable’s different thoughts. He displays his turbulent and constantly changing thoughts, continued belief in the church, and his loyalty to his wife to name a few. When he first displayed the painting, he also paired it with lines from James Thomson’s poem The Seasons to add extra meaning. Constable uses his mastery over landscape painting to convey his emotions ensuing his beloved wife’s death.
Constable studied artists such as Claude Lorrain, Tiziano Vecelli, Rembrandt, Jacob van Ruisdael, and Thomas Gainsborough. The most influential of them being Claude Lorrain. “Le Lorrain,” as he was known, was a French artist in the 1600s. His art focused on, “Depictions of an ideal world where man and nature are integrated into a perfected balance harmonized by subtle effects of light.” To understand how important Lorrain was to Constable, even before he went to the Royal Academy, he described seeing Landscape with Hagar and Angel as, “An important epoch in his life.” Constable went so far as to describe Lorrain as, “‘The most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw.’” Lorrain was an inspiration to Constable to paint nature. Constable was especially drawn to clouds. A year after displaying his first piece of art at the academy, he sailed from London to Deal, to draw ships. He saw what he described as, “‘The natural history of clouds,’” and became fascinated with them. They became something that he payed attention to and researched for the rest of his life. Constable said that the sky was the “chief organ of sentiment,” and, “‘That landscape painter who does not make his skies a very material part of his composition neglects to