A Natural Painter

Hay Field Evening

30 x 40
Available at Hildt Galleries, Chicago

For the last two years I have been running after pictures, and seeking the truth at second hand. I have not endeavoured to represent nature with the same elevation of mind with which I set out, but have rather tried to make my performances look like the work of other men…There is room enough for a natural painter. The great vice of the present day is bravura, an attempt to do something beyond the truth.
John Constable

As readers of this blog may know, I count J.M.W. Turner, the great 19th century English landscape painter, as one of the influences on my work. Turner and John Constable have come down to us in art history as the twin stars of early 19th century landscape. And though Constable has always had my admiration, it has only been in the last year that I have come to feel a deep kinship with his art and aesthetic point of view.

In art history, Turner plays the shooting star to what seems at first glance to be a more earthbound Constable. And in fact, Turner did burst on the London art scene, becoming the youngest member ever elected to the Royal Academy at age 24 , while it took Constable over twenty years to achieve that status. Both exhibited artistic courage by raising the art of landscape from its third class status and laid the groundwork for the Barbizon School and the Impressionists. Turner's emphasis was on the Sublime and his audacious use of color and technique nevertheless were often used in service of history or classical themes which found more favor at the Royal Academy than the pure landscape paintings of Constable.

Constable's art was based upon a deep and abiding affection for the landscape in which he grew up and to which he returned during his entire life as a source of inspiration, saying that for him "painting was but another word for feeling" and that his art "could be found under every hedge and down every lane". Constable's approach to his art, grounded upon plein air work and close observation, combined with painterly technique was in fact, quietly revolutionary.

At a time when representational landscape painting is once again beneath consideration, if not contempt by the post modern art world (today's self protective gatekeepers as surely as the Academy was in its day), I take great comfort in Constable.

I should paint my own places best, for they made me a painter.
John Constable