John Constable A portrait
Book - 2022
John Constable, the revolutionary nineteenth-century painter of the landscapes and skies of southern England, is Britain's best-loved but perhaps least understood artist. His paintings reflect visions of landscape that shocked and perplexed his contemporaries: attentive to detail, spontaneous in gesture, brave in their use of colour. What we learn from his landscapes is that Constable had sharp local knowledge of Suffolk, a clarity of expression of the skyscapes above Hampstead, an understanding of the human tides in London and Brighton, and a rare ability in his late paintings of Salisbury Cathedral to transform silent suppressed passion into paint. Yet Constable was also an active and energetic correspondent. His letters and diaries ...- there are over one thousand letters from and to him - reveal a man of passion, opinion and discord, while his character and personality is concealed behind the high shimmering colour of his paintings. They reveal too the lives and circumstances of his brothers and his sisters, his cousins and his aunts, who serve to define the social and economic landscape against which he can be most clearly seen. These multifaceted reflections draw a sharp picture of the person, as well as the painter. James Hamilton's biography reveals a complex, troubled man, and explodes previous mythologies about this timeless artist, and establishes him in his proper context as a giant of European art.
- Subjects
- Genres
- Biography
Biographies
Personal correspondence - Published
-
New York :
Pegasus Books
2022.
- Language
- English
- Main Author
- Edition
- First Pegasus Books cloth edition
- Physical Description
- xx, 471 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (chiefly color), maps ; 24 cm
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 447-449) and index.
- ISBN
- 9781639362721
- Illustrations
- Maps
- Acknowledgements
- Author's Note
- Introduction
- I. Overture
- 1. Golden Constable
- 2. Family Album
- 3. East Bergholt
- II. Operetta: 1783-1816
- 4. The Don and the Friday
- 5. The Grand Caesar
- 6. Young Baronet and Bishop-in-Waiting
- 7. This cardinal purpose
- 8. Smith and Gainsborough
- 9. A lusty young man
- 10. Devoted to art
- 11. Boldness, care and patience
- 12. Constable's Seven Articles
- 13. Portraits prevail too much
- 14. Through the walls we flew
- 15. Industrious, temperate and plainly dressed
- 16. Pray be careful of yourself
- 17. Seven years since I avowed my love for you
- 18. An artist unprovided for
- 19. Hearts so united
- 20. Entirely and forever yours
- III. Opera: 1816-1828
- 21. The real cause of your want of popularity
- 22. Our little house in Keppel Street
- 23. The humming top friendship
- 24. On Hampstead Heath
- 25. I think it promises well
- 26. Landscape: Noon
- 27. A superior sort of workpeople
- 28. I must go into Suffolk soon
- 29. The French man
- 30. I shall ... throw them all out of the window
- 31. Brighton and home
- 32. My ambition is on fire
- 33. The rubs and ragged edges of the world
- 34. The life in common things
- 35. Gentlemen can never afford to buy pictures
- 36. But still they tell me she does mend
- IV. Unfinished Symphony: 1828-1837
- 37. Rude ruins glitter
- 38. Life slips
- 39. David Lucas
- 40. Brother labourer
- 41. Yes Sir - this is Constable's country
- 42. Charles Boner
- 43. Lecturer: novel, instructive and entertaining
- 44. Papa, remember how happy you were
- 45. As regular as a clock
- 46. Time
- 47. I knew Mr Constable
- Cast of Characters
- Abbreviations to Notes
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index