He spent a majority of his time at East Bergholt with his neighbor, John Dunthorne, a successful plumber and glazier but also an amateur landscapist. (1) Constable's interactions with Dunthorne stirred in him a desire to paint professionally, but his father would not permit it. He wanted Constable to become a member of the clergy, but after meeting fierce opposition from his son, he forced his son to work for a year at his water mill business.
Constable's mother, however, recognized the intensity her son displayed in his art, so she arranged for Sir George Beaumont to pay Constable visits at Dedham every so often. Beaumont was a talented and recognized landscapist, and he first introduced Constable to the influences of Claude and Girtin. (2)
Once Constable's father recognized that his son was quite serious about pursuing art as a career and was convinced of his talent, he allowed his son to travel to London to study art in 1795. There, Constable became friends with John Thomas Smith, an engraver and an antiquarian, who taught Constable the basics of etching and shared with him secrets of the art world. (3)
Constable took what he had learned so far and completed several oil paintings. They were not very good, and Constable knew it. He consented to return home to Suffolk and tend to his father's water mills. In a letter he wrote to Smith in 1797, he laments about his situation: "I must now take your advice and attend to my father's business...and now I see plainly that it will be my lot to walk through life in a path contrary to that in which my inclination would lead me" (4).
By this point, Constable was twenty-four. That year, he met Maria Bicknell,
the woman he would eventually marry. Maria was the grandaughter of Dr.
Rhudde, a clergyman in Bergholt, and daughter of Charles Bicknell, who
worked for the Admiralty. Her family opposed to any sort of relationship
between the two lovers, but the two continued to correspond via letters
after he left Suffolk.
Around the turn of the century, Constable received disheartening letters
similar to this one from the Academy Committee: "Don't be discouraged,
young man, we shall hear of you again; you must have loved nature very
much before you could have painted this."
(5) But, two years later, he succeeded in submitting work that earned
him his first Academy exhibit. After this accomplishment, Constable
resolved to stop copying the works of others and concentrate on his own
work. He wrote to Dunthorne that year:
1797 to 1811: London Years
Little information can be uncovered about what transpired for the next two
years of Constable's life, but he must have still practiced his art, since
he was admitted into the Royal
Academy of Arts in the year 1799. While in the Academy, Constable
paid his rent by painting copies of artworks by renowned painters such Wilson, Caracci, Ruysdael, and Claude . He
labored over his work intensively, making detailed, realistic sketches
from nature. Radically different in his approach from his contemporaries,
Constable detests the fact that his fellow artists showed little respect
and humility for nature. He claimed they showed little discretion when
selecting and combining forms and colors in their paintings.
"For the last two years, I have been running after pictures, and
seeking truth at second hand...I am come to a determination to make no
idle visits this summer, nor to give up my time to commonplace people. I
shall return to Bergholt, where I shall endeavor to get a pure and
unaffected manner of representing the scenes that may employ me. There is
little or nothing in the Exhibition worth looking up to. There is room
enough for a natural painter." (5)
From this point on, Constable tried painting different things, like ships, windmills, landscapes. He also experimented with water-colours, oils, and Indian ink.
His landscapes, althought honored and displayed by the academy, were not
so revered in the homes of the British public in the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries. To pay his bills during this time, Constable
resorted to painting portraits, something he gradually began to loathe.
Constable agreed and returned home, following all of his father's sage
bits of wisdom, except for one -- he continued to keep in close contact
with Maria via letters. Her grandfather was outraged, so much
they threatened to disown Maria if she kept up her correspondence.
The love they shared, although forceably halted, still flourished, and was
one of the only things that helped the two see through the death of
Constable's mother and then Maria's mother in the spring of 1815. Tragedy
struck again soon after when Constable's father became ill and died the
following spring. (6) Constable was
devastated. He adamantly refused to lose Maria, too, and wrote her,
saying:
Maria emphatically accepted, and on October 2, 1816 at St. Martin's in the
Field, the hands of John Constable and Maria Bicknell were joined in holy
matrimony. (8)
By 1817, John and Maria had two children (named John and Maria,
Maria, respectively). Success and happiness ensued for him and his family
as Constable was elected Associate of the Royal Academy
in 1819 (9) and became one of the most
famous landscapists in British history.
1811 to 1819: Married Years
At this point, Constable had saved a little money and felt confident that
he could survive as a professional artist. However, dark clouds loomed
over him as his health began to fail. In December of 1811, his father
wrote him, offering some parental advice: stay out of debt, forget
Maria for a little while, get healthy again. He encouraged his son to
come home to Suffolk again, where he could relax, paint, and regain his
health.
"Our business is more than ever with ourselves. I am entirely
free from debt, and, I trust, could I be made happy, to receive a good
deal more than I do now by my profession. After this, my dearest Maria, I
have nothing more to say; and from this time, I shall cease to listen to
any arguments the other way, from any quarter. I wish your father to know
what I have written if you think with me."
(7)
*All information on this page adapted from Henderson's Constable
Back to the Gallery
Home |
Project Showcase |
Eighteenth-Century England