voi CesBaths of diocletian, ‘without which it can never be rendered impressive ...’, before
acknowledging that, according to pliny and other ancient writers, ‘chiaroscuro as well
as colour was thoroughly understood and practised by the great historical painters.’
alas, ‘all was, however, lost in the general wreck of europe; and it is hardly to be
expected that in the early time of the middle ages anything of so refined a character
should reappear.’ Constable’s diagnosis of a lack of respect for nature as the cause of
this malaise constitutes the fifth theme, and the sixth his remedy, adherence to the
phenomena of landscape, e.g. ‘when historical painting was attempted on a larger scale,
and the passion, the Crucifixion, and the entombment of our saviour afforded its most
important subjects, landscape, and even some of its phenomena, became indispensible’
(leslie 1951: 290–3). all of these themes can be seen as subsumed in Constable’s
claim made in the second lecture, that landscape painting, ‘is scientific as well as poetic;
that imagination alone never did, and never can, produce works that are to stand by
a comparison with realities; and to show, by tracing the connecting links in the history
of landscape painting, that no great painter was ever self- taught’ (leslie 1951: 303).^7
at the time of his lectures, landscape painting was already appreciated as a separate
branch of art in Britain, and had been viewed as such from the first half of the eighteenth
century. The problem for Constable and his contemporaries was that landscape painting
still had a lowly status in the hierarchy of painting types, only standing above still life.
hence, Constable’s real challenge was to show that it was equal to the highest branch of
painting, namely historical painting, in its capacity for elevated poetic expression. This
explains why, in his first lecture given at hampstead, he wants to show that when the
landscape component of historical painting was at its peak it was a powerful auxiliary
that greatly enriched the dignity of history. This he achieves, in a series of examples
that illustrate the contribution that appropriate treatment of landscape makes to the
poetic quality of the history paintings under consideration. For example, in talking of
Raphael’s (1483–1520) treatment of landscape elements, he observes how,
in his early pictures, generally holy families ... it [landscape] is most beautiful
and appropriately introduced; the single leaves of plants, flowers and that
religious emblem the trefoil, in his foregrounds are very elegantly detailed; and
the soothing solitudes of his middle distances find a corresponding serenity in
the features of the benign and lovely subjects of these works’.
(leslie 1951: 292)however, for landscape painting to be seen as equal to history painting it was
necessary for him to show that it is independently capable of expressing poetically ideas
as grand as those embodied in history: in Constable’s case, these ideas were to be found
in the wonder of nature.
however, poetic excellence in landscape painting is not simply a matter of
imagination, nor of mimicking the great masters of the past; instead it relies on truth to
nature, and this idea of the union of poetical and scientific interpretation is woven into
all of the lectures from the outset, being present in all that he praises and absent in all
that he admonishes. Because he uses the term scientific infrequently and because he
talks about truth to nature and observation frequently, it is tempting to think that he is
merely advocating that painters should closely observe what they see. of course, he is