Highest honours for the best by William Turner & John Constable
English landscape painting is given renewed attention with this William Turner & John Constable exhibition
Hampstead Heath with a Rainbow, 1836, Oil on canvas, John Constable, Image courtesy of Tate
William Turner & John Constable: English landscape paintings
The genre of English landscape painting receives renewed attention with a featured exhibition at Tate Britain showcasing the best works by William Turner & John Constable.
A display of over 170 signature paintings, sketchbooks and ancillary artworks highlights the personal and professional lives of two of Britain’s great landscape artists, William Turner & John Constable.
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These two iconic painters were contemporaries, and the exhibition specifically explores the intertwined lives and legacies of William Turner & John Constable.
They were the same age, born within a year of each other, and emerged as leading English artists at the same time.
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Turner (1775-1851) was born in London to a family of modest circumstances. His father was a barber and wig maker. His mother came from a family of prosperous shopkeepers.
Turner’s artistic talent emerged early, and he was recognised as a prodigy and encouraged by his family.
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He received early formal training at the Royal Academy Schools, where he began by drawing from casts of ancient sculpture. He progressed by copying works by other artists.
Self Portrait, c.1799, Oil on canvas, J.M.W. Turner, image courtesy of Tate
In his Self Portrait of 1799, the young Turner demonstrated mastery of realism, presenting himself as a confident, self-assured man of about 24.
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The oil on canvas presents Turner as a well-dressed gentleman of status. The painting demonstrates that, even at this young age, Turner was a master of subtle tonal composition and brushwork.
Turner forged a career producing renowned paintings
Turner forged a much-lauded career producing renowned paintings in oil, watercolour, and print.
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Although he could paint realistically, in many of his best-known works, Turner created elegant images that evoked an emotional response through light and atmosphere.
His approach was consistent with the advances of the Romantic movement, which advocated the importance of the imagined and the subjective in the appreciation of nature.
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This Romantic approach is evident in one of his earliest oil paintings, Fishermen at Sea. Painted in 1796, a few years before his Self Portrait, it is a dramatic narrative of man versus nature.
Fishermen at Sea, exh. 1796, Oil on canvas, J.M.W. Turner, Image courtesy of Tate
The fragile seacraft, with the fishermen, looks immensely overwhelmed by the elements. The theatrical spotlight of the glowing god-like moon gives the rough sea and night considerable poignancy.
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Fishermen at Sea was one of Turner’s first major works to gain recognition and served to form his reputation as an emerging artistic talent.
Fishermen at Sea was an early seascape of many marine-themed works by Turner
This early seascape would be one of many marine-themed works Turner would create over his lifetime.
Turner often featured man’s diminutive place within the vast expanse of nature’s grandeur. The distinctive feature of his paintings is that objects or figures are there primarily to indicate scale.
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The true subject is the land, ocean and sky. These features are given centre stage in The Passage of Mount St Gothard from the centre of Teufels Broch.
The Passage of Mount St Gothard from the centre of Teufels Broch (Devil’s Bridge), 1804, Watercolour, J.M.W. Turner, © Abbot Hall, Kendal (Lakeland Arts Trust)
This large atmospheric watercolour shows a precarious ledge offering passage through the Alps.
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The contrast of man versus nature is given poignancy with the scene of two draught animals shown traversing the dangerous path towards the feature of a tiny cross.
This composition conveyed a sense of danger and sincere reverence for the awesome natural environment of the Alps.
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Turner produced paintings with strong allegorical commentaries. In his 1817 work The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire, the setting sun on the ancient city of Carthage alludes to the rise and fall of a great empire.
The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire, exh. 1817, Oil on canvas, J.M.W. Turner, Image courtesy of Tate
Turner used the narrative of the ancient Carthaginian empire’s decline and ultimate defeat by its rival, the Roman Empire, as a comparison to Britain’s defeat of its own primary rival, the French Empire, during the Napoleonic Wars.
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This painting excels at evoking poetic and theatrical qualities using the glow of the omniscient sun, like that of the divine moon shown in Fishermen at Sea.
The evocation of the feelings of fear and the staggering power of natural elements is resolutely created in the dramatic The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons.
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It depicts a view of the fire that broke out at the Houses of Parliament on the evening of 16 October 1834.
The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16 October 1834, 1835, Oil on canvas, J.M.W. Turner, Cleveland Museum of Art. Bequest of John L. Severance
Turner himself was a witness as the event unfolded. The melodramatic outdoor setting and visible loose brushwork show qualities that lean towards Impressionism and Abstractionism.
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This painting and Turner’s later works were seen as forerunners to those of these future art movements.
The exhibition features side-by-side comparisons of Turner’s and Constable’s work.John Constable was a renowned and contemporary English landscape painter
Constable forged a parallel distinct artistic path
John Constable (1776-1837) was born the son of a wealthy merchant in Suffolk. He came from a different world, developed intense family connections and forged a parallel yet distinct artistic path from Turner’s.
Turner’s long career and life, coupled with his travels abroad, generated a varied and acclaimed body of work comprising hundreds of oil paintings and watercolours, and thousands of works on paper.
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Yet, he had few close friends and never married.
Constable, instead, was intensely grounded in the place of his birth, his friends and his family. He married and was deeply in love with his wife, with whom he had seven children.
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John Constable depicts the artist in 1799 at the age of around twenty-three. Painted by his friend and fellow student of the Royal Academy, Ramsay Richard Reinagle, the portrait shows a refined and confident young man at the start of a long and illustrious career.
John Constable by Ramsay Richard Reinagle, c.1799, Oil on canvas, © National Portrait Gallery, London
Turner’s work of veracious fires and his expeditions abroad contrasted sharply with that of Constable’s, whose work focused on depictions of local places within England.
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Constable’s artistic productions focused principally on striving for authenticity in his portrayal of nature. He is one of the foremost advocates in the subcategory of pastoral paintings.
This style principally celebrates mankind’s dominance over nature, but in a peaceful manner, often depicting people enjoying leisure activities amid blooming gardens, plentiful harvests, and plump livestock.
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Amongst Constable’s many acclaimed works, The White Horse, an oil-on-canvas landscape dated 1819, is considered one of the most important of his early works.
The White Horse, 1819, Oil on canvas, John Constable, © The Frick Collection, New York. Photo: Joseph Coscia Jr
The painting’s extraordinary size gave it an astonishing grandeur, making it remarkable. It was the first in a series of six monumental landscapes called Six-Footers, depicting scenes on the River Stour.
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Based on sketches from his native Suffolk, the composition of a tow-horse being ferried across the river shows Constable’s exuberant renderings of lush, tree-filled landscapes, backdropped by voluminous clouds.
The White Horse provided Constable with financial success and was sold for a handsome sum. It remained one of his favourite paintings, which he repurchased later, and kept for the rest of his life.
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The painting was eventually purchased by financier J.P. Morgan, brought to the U.S., and is now in the Frick Collection in New York.
The voluminous and dramatic clouds seen in The White Horse are a common feature in works by Constable.
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In Cloud Study (with birds), he shows his fascination with the emerging science of meteorology. The main focus is on stratocumulus clouds. He captures the fleeting light and shadows formed by the broken, rolling layers of clouds against a wide panoramic view.
Cloud Study (with birds), 1821, Oil on paper laid on board, John Constable, Image Courtesy Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
The birds provide scale and points of movement in an otherwise vast, still, abstract sky.
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This work is from a series of paintings created in the open air (en plein air), capturing the transient effects of changing day and sunlight, drawn directly from nature.
It is an innovative and radical approach that the Impressionist movement would later embrace.
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Three years after the death of his wife, Maria, Constable painted another masterpiece, Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows.
Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, c.1829, Oil on canvas, John Constable, Image courtesy of Tate
A monumental work in scope and size, the composition is full of grief with its dark, moody colours and grave markers.
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Yet it offers hope of life through the inclusion of the church, a symbol of resurrection and faith, and the optimistic rainbow prominently featured in the sky.
Constable uses the imagery and symbolism associated with the rainbow again in Hampstead Heath with a Rainbow.
The work was created near the end of his career, in 1836, a year before his death. The location near London was a favourite of Constable, and he painted several similar views amongst his works.
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Hampstead Heath with a Rainbow demonstrates his love and emotional connection to the English countryside, which he repeatedly memorialised in his work.
He was pleased with this painting and said it is “one of my best bits of Heath”.
William Turner & John Constable found success through very different yet equally bold approaches in the competitive world of eighteenth-century landscape art.
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Turner painted blazing sunsets and sublime scenes from his travels, while Constable often returned to depictions of a handful of beloved places, striving for familiarity and genuineness in his portrayal of nature.
Text Cammy Yiu and photos Tate Britain
