John Constable was an English landscape painter in the early 19th century who found inspiration in the landscapes and skies of rural England. He believed painting was a scientific pursuit and carefully studied nature. While he aimed to capture realistic scenes, his work also included symbolic and romantic elements like rainbows. Some aspects of his grand landscape paintings featuring religious buildings and skies with dramatic clouds have led scholars to debate whether he should also be considered a romantic painter. Constable felt a deep connection to the countryside around his hometown and sought to express his feelings about nature through his artwork.

1. John Constable

2. Constable, naturalist or romantic ?
I. Loving English landscapes
II. Being an artist and a scientist
III. Was Constable a romantic?
John Constable , Ramsey Richard Reinagle

3. I. Loving English landscapes
“I should paint my own places best. Painting is but another word
for feeling. I associate my “careless boyhood” to all that lies on
the banks of the Stour. They made me a painter (& I am
grateful)”
Constable writing to John Fisher, 1821
Hampstead Heath, with the House Called ‘The Salt Box’ c.1819–20, Tate

4. Hampstead heath, 1820-1836, Tate

5. I. Loving English landscapes
The cornfield,
1826, National
Gallery
- England,
Constable’s
kingdom

6. I. Loving English landscapes

7. The Hay Wain, 1821, National Gallery London

8. The Hay Wain (full-size sketch), c. 182, V&A Museum0

9. Landscape sketch, 1821

10. I. Loving English landscapes
- Inspiration from the Old Masters
The Three Trees, Rembrandt, 1643, Victoria and Albert Museum,

11. Château de Steen, Rubens, 1636

12. I. Loving English landscapes
C) Apart from reality ?
Wivenhoe Park, Essex, 1816, National Gallery of Art, Washington

13. II. Being an artist and a scientist
• Art as a form of experimental science
'Painting should be understood...as a pursuit, legitimate, scientific
and mechanical'.
John Constable

14. A cottage in a cornfield
1815. Pencil - Victoria
and Albert Museum

15. The Cottage in a
Cornfield 1817 – Oil -
National Museum of
Wales

16. II. Being an artist and a scientist
• “Constable skies”
Sky as “the chief organ of sentiment in a
landscape painting”

17. Clouds 5 September 1822 - National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

18. Study of clouds 5 September 1822 – Victoria and Albert Museum, London

19. II. Being an artist and a scientist
• Constable skies VS Turner skies

20. Wivenhoe Park, 1816 - Constable – National Gallery of Art, Washington

21. Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps, Turner 1812 – Tate Gallery,
London

22. “I do not consider myself at work
without I am before a six-foot
canvas”
– Constable to John Fisher, 1821

23. 'Dedham Lock and Mill' John Constable, 1820, V&A Museum
Compositional lines on 'Dedham Lock and Mill' by John Constable

24. III) Was Constable a romantic?
• Symbolism and sublime
Rainbows and double rainbows

25. Landscape with a double rainbow 1812– Victoria and Albert Museum, London

26. Hampstead heath with a rainbow 1836 – Tate Gallery, London

27. Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows 1831 – National Museum Cardiff, Cardiff

28. III. Was Constable a romantic?
• God, Nature and civilization

29. Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s grounds 1823 – Victoria and Albert Museum,
London

30. Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s grounds 1824 – The Frick Collection, New York

31. Rainstorm over the sea 1824-28 – Royal Academy of Arts, London

32. III. Was Constable a romantic?
'Painting is with me but another word for feeling‘
John Constable

33. Hadleigh castle,1829
James Thomson's poem
The Seasons (1726 –
1730):
The desert joys
Wildly, through all his
melancholy bounds
Rude ruins glitter; and
the briny deep,
Seen from some pointed
promontory's top
Far to the blue horizon's
utmost verge,
Restless, reflects a
floating gleam.

34. Cenotaph to
the Memory of
Sir Joshua
Reynolds,
1833-36,
National
Gallery

35. References
• Website of the V&A museum - Constable: The Making of a
Master – About the Exhibition (V&A museum) 2014-2015
• Website of the Frick Collection
• http://art.yodelout.com
• http://www.nga.gov/
• http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-
sublime/anne-lyles-sublime-nature-john-constables-salisbury-
cathedral-from-the-meadows-r1129550
• http://www.nga.gov.au/Exhibition/CONSTABLE/Default.cfm?m
ystartrow=37&realstartrow=37
• John E. Thornes John Constable’s skies: A Fusion of Art and
Science
• Constable's England, By Graham Reynolds
• John Constable: A Kingdom of his Own, By Anthony Bailey