THE PROPERTY OF AN AMERICAN FAMILY. JOHN CONSTABLE (British, 1776-1837). Suffolk Landscape with Cattle, Trees and a Wind...

Description

THE PROPERTY OF AN AMERICAN FAMILY

JOHN CONSTABLE (British, 1776-1837)
Suffolk Landscape with Cattle, Trees and a Windswept Sky, circa 1811-1812
Oil on canvas
8 x 9-3/4 inches (20.3 x 24.8 cm)

PROVENANCE:
Purchased in England by the current owner's grandfather, a Canadian-born attorney, in the early 20th century;
By descent to the current owner.

Constable expert, Charles Rhyne, has examined this oil sketch in the original and notes that it is entirely by the hand of John Constable. He dates the painting to 1811-1812.

By this period, the artist began to use much more vigorous and expressive brushwork than he had in his earlier plein-air sketches. These were works Constable had no intention of submitting for exhibition at the Royal Academy, because they were private--basic and immediate emotional responses in paint to the natural world around him. If they served a purpose, it was the practical function of instructing his eye and providing a record of direct observation he could potential draw upon later for a landscape painted in the studio.

As John Gage perceptively noted, Constable's oil sketches from this phase "show a remarkable range of handling as he adapted his color and touch to the particularities of the scene before him, treating each motif in its own way." Indeed, Constable succeeds in creating handling, as he does in this richly-featured landscape, in a way that amounts to no handling at all. In fact, Constable once told C. R. Leslie that "I see no handling in nature," meaning that Nature has no fixed appearance that would in turn require a particular stylistic response. In sketches such as this one, produced long before the Impressionists, Constable sought to capture the fleeting moods and effects in Nature as rapidly as possible before the moment had passed.


More information about JOHN CONSTABLE. See also: Constable, John, John Constable, John Constable, R. A. Artist.

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