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TJ123-8-2009 LK VWD0011 Tradition Humanistic 6th Edition W:220mm x H:292mm 175L 115 Stora Enso M/A Magenta (V)14 CHAPTER 27 The Romantic View of Nature14
During the following century, topographic landscapes—
detailed descriptions of popular or remote locales—served
the public as the picture postcards of their time. It was not
until the nineteenth century, however, that the landscape
became a primary vehicle for the expression of an artist’s
shifting moods and private emotions. Romantic painters
translated their native affection for the countryside into
scenes that ranged from the picturesque to the sublime.
Like Wordsworth and Shelley, these artists discovered in
nature a source of inspiration and a mirror of their own
sensibilities.Constable and Turner
English artists took the lead in the
genesis of the Romantic land-
scape. John Constable (1776–
1837) owed much to the Dutch
masters; yet his approach to
nature was uncluttered by tradition. “When I sit down to
make a sketch from nature,” he wrote, “the first thing I try
to do is to forget that I have ever seen a picture.”
Constable’s freshly perceived landscapes celebrate the
physical beauty of the rivers, trees, and cottages of his
native Suffolk countryside even as they describe the mun-
dane labors of its inhabitants (see Figure 27.1). Like
Wordsworth, who favored “incidents and situations from
common life,” Constable chose to paint ordinary sub-
jects—“water escaping from mill-dams, willows, old rotten
planks, slimy posts, and brickwork”—as he described them.
And like Wordsworth, he drew on his childhood experi-
ences as sources of inspiration. “Painting,” Constable
explained, “is with me but another word for feeling and Iassociate ‘my careless boyhood’ with all that lies on the
banks of the Stour [River]; those scenes made me a painter,
and I am grateful.”
Constable brought to his landscapes a sensitive blend
of empirical detail and painterly freedom. Fascinated by
nineteenth-century treatises on the scientific classifica-
tions of clouds, he made numerous oil studies of cloud
formations, noting on the reverse of each sketch the time
of the year, hour of the day, and direction of the wind. “The
sky,” he wrote, “is the source of light in nature, and governs
everything.” He confessed to an “over-anxiety” about his
skies and feared that he might destroy “that easy appear-
ance which nature always has in all her movements.” In
order to capture the “easy appearance” of nature and the
fugitive effects of light and atmosphere, he often stippled
parts of the landscape with white dots (compare Vermeer;
see chapter 23)—a device critics called “Constable’s snow.”
His finished landscapes thus record not so much the “look”
of nature as its fleeting moods.
In Wivenhoe Park, Essex, Constable depicts cattle graz-
ing on English lawns that typically resemble well-mani-
cured gardens (Figure 27.8). From the distant horizon, the
residence of the owners overlooks a verdant estate.
Brilliant sunshine floods through the trees and across the
fields onto a lake that is shared by swans and fishermen.
But the real subject of the painting is the sky, which, with
its windblown clouds, preserves the spontaneity of
Constable’s oil sketches.
If Constable’s landscapes describe the gentle spirit of the
English countryside, those of his English contemporary
Joseph Mallord Turner (1775–1851) invest nature with the-
atrical fervor. Trained in architectural draftsmanship,Figure 27.8 JOHN CONSTABLE, Wivenhoe Park, Essex, 1816. Oil on canvas, 22^1 ⁄ 8 in. 3 ft. 3^7 ⁄ 8 in.
While Constable often made his sketches outdoors where he was able to capture the effects of light
in the landscape setting, he finished his paintings in his studio.