John Constable was the first English landscape painter to take no lessons from the Dutch. He is rather indebted to the landscapes of Rubens; but his real model was Gainsborough; whose landscapes; with great trees planted in well-balanced masses on land sloping upwards towards the frame; have a rhythm often found in Rubens. Constablersquo;s originality does not lie in his choice of subjects; which frequently repeated themes beloved by Gainsborough. Nevertheless; Constable seems to belong to a new century; he ushered in a new era. The difference in his approach results both from technique and feeling. Excepting the French; Constable was the first landscape painter to consider as a primary and essential task the sketch made direct from nature at a single sitting; an idea which contains in essence the destinies of modern landscape; and perhaps of most modern painting. It is this momentary impression of all things which will be the soul of the future work. Working at leisure upon the large canvas; an artistrsquo;s aim is to enrich and complete the sketch while retaining its pristine freshness. These are the two processes to which Constable devoted himself; while discovering the exuberant abundance of life in the simplest of country places. He had the palette of a creative colourist and a technique of vivid hatchings heralding that of the French impressionists. He audaciously and frankly introduced green into painting; the green of lush meadows; the green of summer foliage; all the greens which; until then; painters had refused to see except through bluish; yellow; or more often brown spectacles. Of the great landscape painters who occupied so important a place in nineteenth-century art; Corot was probably the only one to escape the influence of Constable. All the others are more or less direct descendants of the master of East Bergholt.
2015-09-15 2015-09-15File Name: B016XN16S2
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