(Neoclassicism & Romanticism) ROMANTICISM [continued (46)] [Extracts from source text with ms notes][12th May 1991]

[Redbook10:59][19910512:1718ei](Neoclassicism & Romanticism) ROMANTICISM [continued (46)] [Extracts from source text with ms notes][12th May 1991]

19910512.1718

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‘[John Constable (1776-1837[ce])] never saw the art of landscape as a mere matter of recording appearance. Not only was he fully aware of the impossibility of imitating nature precisely, but he also remained convinced of the emotionally beneficial effects of his art. The calm lyricism of “The Hay Wain” reflected his fond memories of the countryside of his Suffolk childhood rather than the strife-ridden mural world of the 1820s, in the grips [sic] of an economic recession. In later life, when his Wordsworthian delight in the Natural had darkened under the strain of such losses as the death of his wife (1829[ce]), he sought catharsis for his sadness in such stormy handling as that of the sketch for Hadleigh Castle (1829[ce]; Tate Gallery, London). 

“How for some wise purpose is every bit of sunshine clouded over in me. Can it be wondered at that I paint continual storms ‘Tempest o'er tempest rolled’? Still the darkness is majestic and I have not to accuse myself of ever having prostituted the moral feeling of Art… My canvas soothes me into a forgetfulness of the scene of turmoil and folly and worse."

(Leslie, C.R. "Life of Constable", 1843[ce])’

*

* – ibid [(Encyclopaedia of Visual Art):] 762-763

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