Álbum Letras-artes Nº 107 (English Edition)
Translation by Hortense Djomeda
At the end of the seventeenth century, the academies of Paris and Rome set in a context the transformation of Vasari´s disegno/colore pairing into a dispute between poussinistes and rubenistes. A century and some decades later, the young Constable adopted both, although always with the preeminence of Claude Lorrain. In doing this, the British painter had signed the clauses of classical landscape painting, precisely that balance of Lorrain between the compositional and phenomenological aspects wich prevailed in his artwork more or less until the middle of the twenties of the 19th century. Later on, and as if by the action of a new marvelous catharsis cooked over a low heat, the author of The Hay Wain would use stain painting technique in his compositions, leaving out the tradictional base of grey-brown colors and unafraid to violate with his palette knife the clarity of the great landscape masters. Between Constable the copyist of Claude and Ruysdael and the tormented plein air painter of his last days, there was a pursuit of essentiality and a venture sustained over time by the process of subjectivation as the resulting product of grasping landscape, all this without relinquishing the sound rational formulation of the observation principles typical of Constable´s system. Hereafter, we shall study in depth the key aspects of such a magnificent process as the one placed at the viewer´s disposal at the Museum vor Schone Kunsten in Ghent, lent by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
In order to place this into context, we should not forget the beginnings of Constable as a topographical draughtsman or the influence of books like The Natural History of Selborne by Gilbert White or Researches about Atmospheric Phaenomena by Thomas Foster and particularly the Essay on the Modification of Clouds by Luke Howard had on his way of observing Nature. That´s why in 1836 and during one of his last conferences, he affirmed that painting was a science and landscape paintings were experiences and beyond the poetic ambitions, there is a legitimate search that is scientific and mechanic. Then he brought up the crux of the matter: the new uses of the pictorial and drawing materials wich dominated his artistic maturity precisely aimed for that mutability. It is a question of moving a step forward in the mere observation to reach understanding; that precept unavoidably refers us to Humboldt, to romantic scientism and the practice of reason as a way to approximation to the only and transcendental Truth.
Issues like those we have just considered are the ones that forge the less-known Constable and the one who has greatly influenced Delacroix, Gericault and the French Impressionists. He reached the height of his fame during his last holidays in Salisbury in 1829, with paintings like Noues à Salisbury (1829-1930) or his preparatory sketch. Here is an open air work assisted by a pencil sketch on paper that shows a reticule and linear design and falls precisely within a context where the esquisse was starting to gain independence. The drawing illustrated the aforementioned modus operandi of the scientific painter in his will to grasp what escapes and nevertheless is attained from the disegno; to achieve a landscape able to speak of the time it was painted as well as the weather conditions of that moment. It is the affable attempt to seize the instant in order to reach magically and ironically his landscape; the emotional projection of the creator as an object over the object represented.
Despite melancholy was almost constant in the work of the English painter, the death of his wife Maria Bicknell from tuberculosis in 1828 could be felt in his consecutive production. Then he started a phase of pure sketches which were fiercely denounced by the critics. They were landscapes with very little outlining, very far from Lorrain´s canons, particularly landscapes in which the repose of previous periods gave way to a sort of material uncertainly. Works like A Windmill near Brighton (between 1828 and 1829) or The Stour Valley Dedham Church in the distance (between 1831 and 1836) show it very clearly and, although they are formally very different, they are indebted to a typical emotional representation which study oil painting would not have allowed expressing. In this spontaneous and deliberately innocent way of looking, there is no trace of what Poussin described as his temperamental love for "well-ordered things". Then Constable endeavors to paint what he sees without making it rhetorical until he reaches the landscape itself.
This will explain better why his production of the last decade was so prodigal with convulsive skies; let´s remember that for Constable, these were the main "organ of sentiment". Not only as catalyst for action of the physical light on each and every one of the parts of Nature, but also as an inscrutable custodian of the artist´s own emotional light he was able to bring to life on canvas and papers. The omnia mutantur which artworks like Study for the Cirrus Clouds (between 1821 and 1822) investigate -this latter referring to the still valid classification of the clouds by Howard- converge with the also and always mutable inner feelings of the seeker of landscape moments. Thus, the lack of a later definite reprocessing makes each of those artistic items fragments equivalent to a visually consummate Whole; fragments of eternity that demonstrate -if not a spiritual fulfillment that can be shared by the onlooker- the redeeming influence the direct experience of Nature may have on his afflicted dwellers.
The letter Constable wrote to the Achdeacon Fisher -the artist´s close friend- in 1823 about the sky and feelings also allude to Sir Joshua Reynolds speaking of Titian, Rosa and Claude and how the skies sympathize with the subjects. A painting like Coast Scene at Dawn (1674) by the painter from Lorraine shows quite clearly what the nineteenth-century landscapist took from the master like this one by Carraci and the Bolognese. It means what Constable named "the Chiaroscuro of Nature" can be conceived of as an object for pictorial knowledge in development from the dawn of Western landscape painting: an essential object perpetually unfinished and only achievable based on an experiential and experimental approach. All this line of thought leads us to what Gombrich presented as the more or less general priority of suggestion over representation strictly speaking: an important key when reflecting on the preparatory sketches of the British artist. As he made it clear in Art and Illusion (1960), the Viennese historian defended Constable´s study paintings against sketches because they have grater expression and are supposedly consistent with greater communicative capacity.
In any case, it is curious how easy it proves to provide a context for The Hay Wain (1812) in contrast with the timelessness that enshrouds Constable´s painting like Stoke-By-Hayland, Suffolk (around 1829). This is due to the fact that the first one -although reflecting an early interest for the close relations between light and matter- has not yet become a pure experience while the direct look captured on the esquisses reaches the universal from the particular and metaphysical from the familiarity with the physical. In short, Constable knew that seeking after mutability required leaving an orderly nature -like Poussin´s- in the study and going outdoors with the will to establish a dialogue with the landscapes. Many of the minutes from the latter have been made available to the visitor in Ghent enabling a whole series of experiences to generate others and so on; isn´t this the raison d´être of art?
