Reino Unido, Inglaterra · 1776–1837
John Constable fue un pintor inglés especializado en paisajes.
John Constable (East Bergholt, Suffolk, Inglaterra, 11 de junio de 1776 - 31 de marzo de 1837) fue un pintor inglés especializado en paisajes. El tema preferido de sus obras fue la región de Suffolk, más concretamente el Valle de Dedham, por ello dicha área es conocida como «el país de Constable». Su obra más famosa es El carro de heno.
Nacimiento · 11 de junio de 1776
East Bergholt
Carrera · London
Asks his father to let him paint
In 1799 Constable persuaded his father to let him pursue art and received a small allowance. He entered the Royal Academy Schools under the tutelage of Joseph Farington, attending life classes and anatomical dissections and copying old masters.
Evento · until 1799 · East Bergholt
Youth at the mill: sketches that made him a painter
After a short time at a boarding school in Lavenham and then a day school in Dedham he worked in his father’s corn business, though his younger brother Abram eventually ran the mills. As a young man he made amateur sketching trips through Suffolk and Essex; those scenes, he said, “made me a painter”.
Carrera
Turns down a drawing-master post
Constable declined the post of drawing master at Great Marlow Military College, which Benjamin West, then head of the Academy, said would end his career. In a letter to John Dunthorne he admitted he had spent two years seeking the truth at second hand and declared his resolve to become a professional landscape painter.
Exposición · 1802–1803 · London
First exhibitions at the Royal Academy
Constable first showed his work in 1802, and by 1803 he was exhibiting paintings at the Royal Academy.
Familia · East Bergholt
A marriage against the bride’s grandfather
Maria’s grandfather, Dr Rhudde, rector of East Bergholt, opposed the match: he thought the Constables his social inferiors and threatened to disinherit her. Constable’s parents approved but offered no support until he was financially secure; they died soon afterwards, and he inherited a fifth share of the family business.
Viaje · October 1816 · Weymouth
A honeymoon by the sea
After the wedding at St Martin-in-the-Fields, conducted by Fisher, the couple stayed at Fisher’s vicarage and toured the south coast. The sea at Weymouth and Brighton pushed Constable towards brilliant colour and lively brushwork.
Obra
“Dedham Lock and Mill”
Obra
“Stratford Mill”: the second six-footer
The second large picture of the series was shown in 1820, and The Examiner thought it looked more exactly like nature than any picture it had seen by an Englishman. Fisher bought it for 100 guineas for his solicitor friend John Pern Tinney, who offered Constable another 100 guineas for a companion piece; the artist did not take up the offer.
Exposición · London
“The Hay Wain” at the Royal Academy
The picture, shown as “Landscape: Noon”, found no buyer, but it was seen by the painter Théodore Géricault and the writer Charles Nodier. According to Delacroix, Géricault went back to France quite stunned and invited Constable to Paris, while Nodier urged French artists to look to nature rather than to trips to Rome.
Obra
“Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows”
Carrera · London
Appointed Visitor of the Royal Academy
In 1831 Constable was appointed a Visitor at the Royal Academy, where he was popular with the students. He then began giving public lectures on the history of landscape painting, which drew distinguished audiences.
Evento · London
A last lecture to the Academy’s students
In 1835 Constable gave his last lecture to the students of the Royal Academy, praising Raphael and calling the Academy the “cradle of British art”; it was cheered most heartily.
Evento · London
A year without exhibiting
In 1804 Constable showed no pictures at all, telling his friend Joseph Farington that nothing was to be gained by setting his work against paintings extravagant in colour and in bad taste. His small canvases were easily lost on walls hung from ceiling to floor.
Marriage · 2 de octubre de 1816 · St Martin-in-the-Fields
Maria Bicknell
Obra
“Flatford Mill”: the first big canvas
Constable began his most ambitious picture yet, Flatford Mill, the largest rural scene he had painted and the largest he would ever complete largely outdoors. It found no buyer at the Royal Academy in 1817 but drew much praise and encouraged him to go to even larger canvases.
Obra
Sells “The White Horse”: the breakthrough
Constable sold his first important canvas: his friend John Fisher bought The White Horse for 100 guineas, giving him a financial freedom he had never known. Its success helped him become an associate of the Royal Academy and launched the series of monumental Stour landscapes known as the “six-footers”.
Family
Son born: Charles Golding Constable
Evento · 23 October 1821
To Fisher: “I have done a good deal of skying”
Constable wrote to Fisher that he had done a good deal of skying and was determined to conquer all the difficulties that remained. He made cloud studies, noting the weather, direction of light and time of day on the back, and held the sky to be the key note of a landscape, drawing on the meteorologist Luke Howard’s classification of clouds.
Family · 1822/1823
Daughter born: Isabel Constable
Obra
“Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds”
Residencia · 1824–1828
The family in Brighton for Maria’s health
When Maria began to show symptoms of tuberculosis, Constable took lodgings for the family in Brighton in the hope that sea air would restore her health, dividing his time between Brighton and Charlotte Street in London. He was unsure at first that Brighton suited painting, and complained to Fisher that the beach was only Piccadilly by the sea.
Evento · Paris
Delacroix repaints the background of “The Massacre at Chios”
After seeing Constable’s pictures at Arrowsmith’s gallery, Delacroix repainted the background of his Massacre at Chios, saying the paintings had done him a great deal of good. In his journal he noted that Constable’s meadow greens are a combination of many different shades.
Obra
“The Lock”: sold on the first day
The Lock was not finished in time for the 1823 exhibition and was shown in 1824, when it sold for 150 guineas on the first day, the only Constable ever to do so. It is the only upright landscape of the Stour series and the only six-footer he painted in more than one version.
Evento
A quarrel with Arrowsmith: the French market is lost
In 1825 Constable quarrelled with Arrowsmith and lost his French outlet, perhaps partly from worry over his wife’s health, the uncongenial life at Brighton and the pressure of outstanding commissions. In a few years he had sold more than twenty pictures in France, more than he sold at home.
Publicación · after 1828
Mezzotints for “English Landscape” with David Lucas
Maria’s father, who died shortly before her, left her £20,000, and Constable spent it disastrously on mezzotints after his landscapes for a planned publication. With the engraver David Lucas he made forty prints, one going through thirteen proof stages, but too few subscribers came forward and the venture lost money.
Family · 2 de enero de 1828
Obra
“Hadleigh Castle”: turmoil in paint
After Maria’s death his art moved from the serenity of its earlier phase to a more broken and accented style. The turmoil and distress of his mind show clearly in the late six-foot paintings Hadleigh Castle (1829) and Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (1831), among his most expressive.
Carrera · February 1829 · London
Elected to the Royal Academy at fifty-two
In February 1829, three months after his wife’s death, Constable was elected a member of the Royal Academy, at the age of 52.
Evento · London
Lectures at the Royal Institution: three theses
In a series of lectures at the Royal Institution in 1836 Constable proposed three theses: landscape painting is scientific as well as poetic; imagination alone never can produce art that bears comparison with reality; and no great painter was ever self-taught.
Salud · 31 March 1837 · London
Death in the night, probably of heart failure
Constable died on the night of 31 March 1837, apparently of heart failure (another account names dyspepsia), and was buried beside Maria.
Fallecimiento · 31 de marzo de 1837
Charlotte Street
Sepultura
St John-at-Hampstead
