Landscape Paintings: A Summary Of John Constable And John Constable

The sky has always been an integral part of every landscape painting. It usually serves as a background element and not a centre piece. There have been made very few in-depth studies of the sky, for example, Jan van Eyck (1390-1441), who produced very accurate skies and was a master of aerial perspective, but none have been as authentic as John Constable’s, who depicted them with such precision and detail that they were used as scientific references.
John Constable is considered as one of the greatest English landscape painters, who is known for his idyllic scenes of early 19th century English countryside and seascape. However, during theVictorian age, his paintings were not as admired as they are now. His scenes of daily life did not hold great interest, because people looked for something romantic, with a wild and dangerous landscape. He is remarkable in the aspect that he painted nature truthfully and aimed to catch its freshness and sparkle. Constable spent numerous hours in open air sketching the landscape, the sky, and the sea. He rebelled against the idea that a landscape painting should be an oil painting done in a studio, rather than a direct impression captured in open air.
Constable believed that landscape artists need both imagination and scientific understanding to create a painting. He has remarked in his lecture on landscape
In the beginning of his career, his skies did not have this special quality and fell mostly flat and did not stand out in any way. The experience gained from sketching numerous skies and clouds showed in his magnificent depictions of the sky. When comparing his skies to the real one, they are nearly identical. No one, in my opinion, has achieved such a lifelike quality. Constable’s storm clouds have this rocky and layered structure and his lighter clouds are cotton-like, fluffy and airy, just like the ones that can be seen when looking up in the sky every