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Файл:Практикум по культуре речевого общения искусство. Часть 1. Практикум
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lightness, the mercurial touch characteristic of Gainsborough’s last years. The early work, by
comparison, looks somewhat disjointed and unbalanced. And yet the young Andrews couple is real,
and the scenery is part of a real English landscape. Gainsborough had begun its career by studying
Dutch masters, and something of Dutch plainness still reverberates in the picture. Confronted with the
unassuming solidity of the Andrews couple, the pair in the Morning Walk look as insubstantial as the
landscape behind them. Toward the end of his life Gainsborough worked in this ethereal vein even
when painting landscapes and rustic genre scenes, the so-called “fancy pictures” to which he devoted
much time and thought.
4.7. Joshua Reynolds on the Art of Thomas Gainsborough: “Whether he most excelled in
portraits, landscapes or fancy pictures, it is difficult to determine... This excellence was his own, the
result of his particular observation and taste; for this he was certainly not indebted ... to any
School; for his grace was not academical, or antique, but selected by himself from the great
school of nature…
The peculiarity of his manner or style, or we may call it – his language in which he
expressed his ideas, has been considered by many, as his greatest defect. But ... whether this
peculiarity was a defect or not, intermixed, as it was, with great beauties, of some of which it was
probably the cause, it becomes a proper subject of criticism and enquiry to a painter.
It is certain, that all those odd scratches and marks which, on a close examination, are so
observable in Gainsborough’s pictures; ... this chaos, this uncouth and shapeless appearance, by a
kind of magic, at a certain distance assumes form, and all the parts seem to drop into their proper
places; so that we can hardly refuse acknowledging the full effect of diligence, under the
appearance of chance and hasty negligence.
It must be allowed, that the hatching manner of Gainsborough did very much contribute to
the lightness of effect which is so eminent a beauty in his pictures.”
(From Discourses on Art, Discourse 14 by Joshua Reynolds,)
5. English Portrait Painting
After Holbein’s death in 1543, more foreign portraitists came to England: Gerlach Flicke
from Germany, and from the Low Countries Guillim Scrots, Hans Eworth and Antonio Moro. His
vivid and masterly depictions were not easily imitated, and his status as a foreigner prevented the
establishment of a studio, though he influenced the Fitzwilliam Master and John Bettes. Holbein’s work
dominated the period until century 1550. Very few portraits are known from before Holbein’s first
visit in 1526, and those who wanted portraits of themselves rather than of the King probably had to
go abroad. It is not, however, the sophisticated and monumental style of Habsburg court portraiture,
exemplified in the work of Moro and reflected in that of Scrots, that is seen in English portraits from the
mid–century, but a more stylized, decorative manner, and more reticent characterization. This is
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typified in the work of native painters like George Gower and William Segar, who was also,
significantly, a heraldic painter. In a group portrait of Lord Cobham and his family (1567; Longleat),
attributed to the latter, the sitters’ stiff isolation and precarious relation to the background space is
relieved by the charm of the still-life before them and the tame animals with which the children play.
Though this formalized manner of painting is in some measure due to England’s isolation from
Continental influence during the Queen’s reign, the emphasis on costume rather than facial individuality
is also seen in some contemporary European portraiture. The most splendid expression of the
Elizabethan style is found in the portraits of Elizabeth herself, the most delicate and expressive in the
portrait Miniatures of Nicholas Hillard. Family pride was also an important factor: collections of
family portraits were built up (or manufactured) to hang in long galleries beside other series like
Protestant reformers or the monarchs of England.
Portraiture in the XVII century, despite the resistance of the Painter-Stainers Company, was
largely dominated by foreign artists and in particular by Van Dyck.
Early portraits, such as those produce during the reign of James I by Marcus Gheeraerts, John
de Critz (c. 1552–1642) and the English-born Robert Peake and William Larkin, show sitters at full
length, placed formally often awkwardly in a Turkish-carpeted interior, which, like the subjects’
elaborate and richly decorative costumes emphasizes social status and wealth rather than individual
character. These rigid conventions are replaced by a greater naturalism; in the work of Daniel Mytens,
Paul van Somer (c. 1576–1622) and Cornelius Johnson, but it was the arrival of Van Dyck in 1632 that
were brought about the greatest transformation of English portraiture. Although at his death in 1641 he
leaved no apparent successor to continue his elegant style of courtly flamboyance, many elements of
Van Dyck’s portraiture were encouraged in subsequent artists’ work. The postures and sculptural and
landscape backdrops were followed through the Civil War and Commonwealth portraits of William
Dobson and Robert Walker.
The second half of the century saw the consolidation of the studio’s role in portrait
production and the development of the ‘series’ portrait. This latter genre initiated by Lely’s Beauties
and adopted with equal success by Kneller was encouraged by many livery companies in the City of
London and by Oxford colleges. Their portrait collections underline the gradual shift a way from royal
and aristocratic patrons towards City merchants and institutions. At the same time, the line
engravings of William Faithorne and the invention of the Mezzotint ensured a wider appreciation and
awareness of different artists’ work.
The XVIII century was the great age of British portraiture, though it began unpromisingly.
By 1700 British portrait painting was in a state of torpor: dominated by Kneller, Principal Painter to
the King, and his chief rival, the Swede Michael Dahl (c. 1659–1743), its conventions had been
standardized to suit the taste of the age. Kneller was largely responsible for the polite Augustan
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mask which denied the quest for individual character or likeness. Indeed, as Richardson noted in his
Theory of Painting (1715), likeness was simply not enough: the portrait painter’s aims should be ‘to
raise the Character: To divest an Unbred Person of his Rusticity, and give him something at least of
a Gentleman. To make one of a moderate Share of good Sense appear to have a Competency, a
Wise Man to be mere Wise, and a Brave Man to be more so ... is absolutely necessary to a good
Face–Painter’. The instant success of Van Loo on his arrival from Paris in 1737 resulted not only
from the prevailing French fashion but also from his ability to capture a more distinct likeness than
his native rivals. The exception is Hogarth, whose success as a portrait painter in the 1740s was
partly inspired by the French challenge. His achievement lay in a fresh, direct and solid appreciation
of the sociability of his sitters, who were often middle-class. Only Highmore could occasionally
match Hogarth’s vein of informality. Informality is also the most distinguishing characteristic of the
Conversation Piece – portraiture in a social context – which became increasingly popular from the 1720s.
In the mid-century fashionable portraiture was dominated by the prolific Hudson and by
Ramsay, who both employed the services of Van Aken for their drapery painting. Ramsay, with his
Italian training, could at his most accomplished rival the best in Europe, and until the young
Reynolds returned from Italy in 1753 his supremacy was unchallenged. Despite his technical
shortcomings, Reynolds was the most original and creative portrait painter of the century. In
attempting to elevate portraiture from the mundane level of ‘face painting’ to the more
esteemed academic genre of History, Reynolds used his breadth of learning and knowledge of
the Old masters to achieve that almost inexhaustible variety of pose that occasioned
Gainsborough’s envious outburst “Damn him, how various he is!”
Gainsborough and Reynolds, the supreme portrait painters of the later XVIII century could
hardly be more different. Unlike Reynolds (who used assistants) Gainsborough revelled in painting
sumptuous draperies and shimmering reflections on rich surface textures with a delicacy and ease of
handling rarely found in the work of his fellow countrymen. His mature style of the 1760s and 1770s
owes much to Van Dyck.
Romney, who in the late 1770s seriously challenged his elder rivals, seems to have modelled his
style on the casual nonchalance of Batoni, whose works he saw in Rome in 1773–5. After the death of
Gainsborough and Reynolds the vacuum was filled by Beechey and Hoppner until the dazzling and
vivacious talent of Lawrence eclipsed his rivals in the last years of the century.
6. John Constable
6.1. John Constable (1776–1837) was the first English landscape painter to ask no lessons
from the Dutch. He was born at East Bergholt on the Suffolk side of the river Stour. The beauty of
the surrounding scenery, its luxuriant meadows, its woods and rivers became the subject matter of
his painting. It was his desire not merely to paint “portraits of places” but to give a true and full
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impression of nature, to paint light, dews, breezes, bloom and freshness. Constable saw the lovely
greens in nature and painted them as he saw them. To accomplish his aim of rendering the living
moving quality of nature he used broken touches of colour. On a foundation of warm reddish
monochrome he would build up the fresh blues and greens of nature, the undivided spots of paint
often laid on with a palette knife in the modern manner. The sparkles of light and colour and the
deliberate roughness of texture broke with the tradition of smooth painting. Constable’s picture The
Hay Wain which was exhibited at the Louvre in 1824, had an immediate and lasting effect on
French art. His pure and brilliant colour was a revelation to French painting. Though he did not
exclude dark tones from his palette, the greater depth and liveliness of the colour scale opened a
new horizon to landscape painters when Constable discovered the effects of coloured patches
placed densely side by side on the canvas.
It was Constable’s habit to make large preparatory sketches for his pictures of special
importance. There is a great difference between the sketches and the pictures painted in the studio.
The sketches were done directly from nature and they contain a freshness and vigour often lost in the
finished paintings while the pictures worked up in the studio possess a refinement of composition not
to be found in the sketches. For example, in the sketch for The Leaping Horse, the bent willow is to
the right of the horse and its rider, as it doubtless in the scene that Constable actually beheld; but in
the picture of The Leaping Horse in the Diploma Gallery of the Royal Academy the tree is shifted
to the other side of the horse and rider more to the left, in order to improve the design and
emphasize the rhythm of the diagonal accents from the big tree on our left to the water-weeds in the
opposite lower corner. He did not paint snapshots of nature; he understood the science of picture-
making as well as any artist and while desirous above all of presenting the general truth of the scene
before him, he did not scruple to alter the position of one particular tree or other object, if thereby
he could improve the composition of the picture.
6.2. One of the foremost landscapists in history, Constable represents a full step forward
in the modern development of landscape art. He was a product of Eastern England with its
luxurious meadows, distant horizons, picturesque villages, and above all its ever changing sky with
constantly moving cloud formations. The latter were for him “the key note, the standard of scale,
and the chief organ of sentiment”. Although Constable’s outlook on nature was primarily
naturalistic, his individuality of style and interest in “sentiment” made him part of the Romantic
period in which he lived. His naturalism appears in the projection of landscapes whose elements are
in constant movement under natural conditions of light, his more Romantic side emerges through
the expression of nature’s power and his own exultation therein. Yet his approach was not nearly so
romantic as that of Turner. Constable enjoyed clouds, sunshine, trees and fields for their own sakes,
in addition to viewing them as potential vehicles for human emotions.
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The son of a prosperous mill-owner, Constable showed a taste for sketching at an early age
but did not become a serious art student until 1799; he entered the Royal Academy School in 1800.
When he first exhibited there two years later, he wrote to a friend that there was nothing in the exhibition worth looking up to and that there was “room enough for a natural painter”. From this point
onward Constable developed his own style of painting but fame was slow to arrive.
In 1824, when he was fifty, in company with some of his countrymen he showed a number
of landscapes at the Paris Salon, Among these was the since famous Hay Wain, for which the
painter was awarded the gold medal. In his own country, however, there were few people who
appreciated what he had to offer and very little market for landscapes. In his early days he had to
supplement a meager income by doing portraits, while spending as much time as possible painting
landscapes. He was made an associate of the Royal Academy in 1819 and elected to full
membership in 1829, but he felt that this honour had come too late in life to have much meaning.
Perhaps, the most interesting about Constable’s technique was that he made quick sketches setting
down his first spontaneous and emotional; reactions to natural beauties; these visual impressions,
even more than his j finished works are regarded as his real contribution. To accomplish his aim of
rendering the living, moving quality of nature he used broken touches of colour. On a foundation of
warm reddish monochrome he would build up the fresh blues and greens of nature, the undivided
spots of paint often laid on with a palette knife in the modern manner. The sparkles of light and
colour and the deliberate roughness of texture broke with the tradition of smooth painting. Besides
the intrinsic merit of Constable’s work, it is also historically important for the effect it had on both
the Romantic and the Impressionist groups. The spontaneity of such painters as Delacroix may be
traced in part to Constable; and the impressionist search for momentary effects through broken
colours, complementary colour relationships and white highlights owes as much to this British painter.
(From The Encyclopaedia of Painting by B.S. Myers, M.W. Brown,
G.R. Collins, B. Farwell, J.G. Mahler, M.Salinger)
6.3. John Constable. Artistic development. At this time his performance did not reveal any
marked promise; his execution was laboured and his drawing from life weakly academic, But he
already had a clear mental image of the type of pictures he wanted to paint and worked doggedly to
overcome his technical defects. Seven or eight years after he had started his formal training, he
discovered how to embody his Idea of the English countryside in a manner both more realistic and
more spirited than his predecessors, There were some modest successes to record in this period of
self-training. He exhibited at the Royal Academy shows annually from 1802, with one single
exception in 1804, He went on two of the sketching expeditions that it was then the practice for
landscape painters to undertake, going to the Peak District, Derbyshire, in 1801 and the Lake
District in 1806, He painted portraits of the Suffolk and Essex farmers and their wives and in 1805
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attempted an altarpiece of Christ Blessing the Children, in the manner of the American expatriate
painter Benjamin West, When he took stock of his progress after his return from the Lake District,
however, he realized that he had been attempting too wide a range of subject and style, thus
dissipating his energies. He then determined to concentrate on the scenes that had delighted him as
a boy: the village lanes, the fields and meadows running down to the Stour, the slow progress of
barges drawn by tow horses, the bustier of vessels passing the locks at Flatford or Dedham.
In the years 1809 to 1816 he established his mastery and evolved his individual manner; but
these were years of personal stress. He was obliged to live much of each year in London, where his
professional associates were to be found and where he could participate in exhibitions, Constable
was uneasy at these enforced absences from the countryside, in which he felt most at home, and
tried to pay yearly visits to Suffolk. The assiduity with which he studied the landscape on these
visits is shown by two pocket sketchbooks, one of 1813 and one of 1814, which are still intact.
These contain between them more than 200 small sketches made in a limited area around his home
village and reflect most aspects of the summer life of the fields and the river.
Deeper than the strain of exile from these scenes was the unhappy progress of his courtship
of Maria Bicknell, with whom he had fallen in love in 1809 but whose grandfather, the elderly and
tyrannical rector of East Bergholt, opposed her marriage to an impecunious artist. Nevertheless,
Constable stuck to his purpose with a tenacity equal to that which he displayed in his art and, in her
unagressive way, Maria was just as determined. A further anxiety for Constable came from the
failing health of his parents; his mother died in 1815 and his father the following year. He was
genuinely devoted to them and spent prolonged periods at home during their illnesses. His father’s
death in 1816 provided a sufficient measure of economic Independence for him to marry Maria
Bicknel and to settle into the domestic life that was a prerequisite for his calm development and the
full maturing of his art.
Once he had married, on Oct. 2, 1816, and had established himself and his wife in a London
home, Constable set to work to show what he could achieve in his art. He was 40 years old and had
painted a handful of accomplished pictures, which were original but on a small scale. These
included Dedham Vale: Morning (1811; Sir Richard Proby Collection, Eaton Hall,
Huntingdonshire); Boatbuilding near Flatford Mill (1815; Victoria and Albert Museum, London);
The Stour Valley and Dedham Village (1815; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).These paintings were
still products of the years of preparation, however. Most significant was the large number of small
oil sketches and drawings that were to form the basis of his future and more ambitious painting.
These sketches, of which he made a considerable number after 1808, were painted in the open air in
front of the subject, They are most frequently in oils on paper about 12 inches wide, and they record
the form of the landscape, the colours had predominated, and also the more evanescent qualities of
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atmosphere and the reflection of light on particular details. The sketches are now recognized to be
among Constable’s most individual achievements and to have been unique at the time they were
painted. To the artist, however, they were earns to an end, His main ambition was to embody his
concept of the Suffolk countryside in a series of early days.
Constable’s birthplace was, and remains, a small village, standing on a ridge a short distance
from the River Stour, which separates Suffolk from Essex, The Stour valley in this region is rich in
wheat pastureland, and fine trees and was known in the late XVIII century for its efficient
agriculture and its natural beauty. The men of Suffolk felt a jealous patriotism for their own county,
and Constable remained at heart a Suffolk man, although he constantly crossed the bridge over the
River Stour at Flatford Into Essex,
The artist’s father, Golding Constable, was a wealthy man who owned mills at Flatford and
Dedham, on the Suffolk and Essex banks of the Stour, respectively, His business consisted of
grinding wheat raised in the local fields and shipping it around the coast of East Anglia o the
London market. The Stour had been made into s canal, navigable beyond these mills, and the grain
was transported on its waters in broad, flat-bottomed barges, The fact that Constable was born into
the midst of the practical realities of country life has a direct bearing on his career and is reflected
throughout his painting, He showed Intellectual promise as a child and was brought up for the
church; when this idea was abandoned, he was trained to enter his father’s business. By this time he
had already conceived an enthusiasm for painting. This interest was fostered by his friendship with
an amateur painter, John Dunthorne, a local plumber and glazier, and was further encouraged by the
landscape painter Sir George Beaumont, a patron of the arts. Constable’s determination to make
painting his profession was sealed by his acceptance as a probationer in the Royal Academy
Schools in 1799, when he was 23.
6.4. John Constable. Mature works. This work was succeeded by a series of six paintings
that are now among his best known and most highly regarded works. In order of exhibition they are
The White Horse; Stratford Mill; The Hay Wain; View on the Stour near Dedham; The Lock; The
Leaping Horse. These six canvases portray scenes on the River Stour that were easily within the
compass of Constable’s childhood walks; between the most easterly, The Hay Wain, and the most
westerly, Stratford Mill, there is hardly more than two miles stance in a direct line. To this unity of
place is joined a unity of subject matter. With the exception of The Hay Wain all show barges being
manoeuvred along the canals. The appearance in these works of the fruits of Constable’s deep,
unprecedented study of the formation of clouds, the colour of meadows and trees, and the effect of
light glistening on leaves and water enables them to communicate the concrete actuality of these
everyday life country scenes, as well as the feeling they evoked in him.
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This series of Stour scenes was interrupted in 1823, when Constable’s chief exhibit was a
view of Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Grounds, which was intended to be a record of an
architectural monument, transmuted into the artist’s own idiom by framing the spire between
overarching trees, by emphasizing the play of light and shade on the Gothic stonework, and by
setting the whole under a sky in which rain is impending. This romantic treatment did not please the
Bishop but was admired by the Bishop’s nephew and Constable’s old friend, Archdeacon John
Fisher, who had already shown his faith in the artist by buying The White Horse at the exhibition of 1819.
A revealing correspondence between Constable and Bishop Fisher – who commissioned the
painting of the Salisbury Cathedral – has been preserved, In it the painter gives his most intimate
thoughts on his art without concealment or false modesty, There was much he could be satisfied
with at this time, He was aware that he had achieved in his art a great deal of what he had set out to
do. In addition, his work had deeply impressed the painters of the French Romantic School.
Theodore Gericault had admired The Hay Wain on its first exhibition in 1821; and when this work
(along with the View on the Stour near Dedham) was shown at the Paris Salon in 1824, it not only
created a sensation but inspired Eugene Delacroix to repaint parts of his Massacre at Chios. In
England recognition was slower in coming. Although Constable had been made an Associate of the
Royal Academy in 1819, full membership was delayed for 10 years.
Meanwhile the presence, from 1819, of Hampstead scenes and, from 1824, of Brighton
scenes among his repertoire of subjects indicates a deepening shadow over his domestic happiness.
Mrs. Constable had long been delicate, and Constable took houses in these places in search of purer
air. Her death from consumption in 1828, at the age of 41, was a loss from which he never fully
recovered, though he bestirred himself into activity for the sake of his seven children, in whom he
delighted. His financial situation had been eased by a large legacy from his father-in-law, but from
this time an increased restlessness is to be found in his paintings. Hadleigh Castle and Salisbury
Cathedral from the Meadows show his growing recourse to broken accents of colour, somber tones,
and stormy skies, It was in 1829 also that he began his preparations for the publication of English
Landscape Scenery, a selection of mezzotints executed by David Lucas from Constable’s paintings
and sketches in which the same dramatic qualities of light and shade are translated into a black-andwhite medium. The admiration of his friend, the American-born artist C.R. Leslie, prompted the
writing of the Memoirs of the Life of John Constable. R.A. This biography was first published in
1843 and still remains an indispensable source of information on Constable, larger canvases
monumental enough to make an impression in the annual summer exhibitions of the Royal
Academy. The first attempt was the Flatford Mill on the River Stour which he exhibited in 1817. It
shows a reach of the river running up to the mill, in which Gelding Constable had lived until within
two years of Constable’s birth, bordered by a meadow that has just been scythed.
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6.5. The Hay Wain. 1821. The National Gallery, London. From 1809 onwards almost
every painting he made is recognizably “a Constable”. Constable had already shown, in some pieces
he painted in 1802, that he was more relaxed in the scenery of his homeland, and therefore more
capable to experiment with this material. So it comes as no surprise to find that his new expansion
of knowledge first manifest itself in small sketches of the fields within walking distance of his home
at East Berthold. The sketches are marked by the confidence and fluidity of their treatment. From
1809 he painted an increasing number of these open–air sketches of small size.
The intensive work of preparation which Constable had undertaken was now sufficient to
yield results; he now wanted to set to work on paintings which clamoured to be noticed. To this end
he intended to paint on a relatively large scale. The size he chose for the affirmation of his power
was in the main “a six-foot canvas”.
To construct these important works he adopted a fairly rigorous routine. He started his
preparations in the autumn for the exhibition which would open in the following May. Frequently
these preparations included making a full-scale sketch (as in the case of The Hay Wain); in any case
they involved full recourse to the vocabulary of the small-size oil sketches.
The insight for which his long series of brilliant sketches was only a prelude, re-embodied,
most deliberately, in a series of six large scenes of the River Stour; these he exhibited between 1819
and 1825. The subjects were all places within a three-mile radius, in a short walking distance from
East Berthold, and all include an event from the canal life as well as a particularization of the
weather which gives each scene its predominant tone. The Hay Wain, which has become through its
position in the National Gallery and the countless reproductions the most popular embodiment of
Constable’s art, occupies a central place as the third in order of production of this series of six large
Stour scenes. In this picture he turned to the most familiar sketching-ground of all the part in front
of Flatford Mill, his father’s first home, where his elder sister and brother were born. To these
associations were attached in Constable’s memory the story of Willy Lot’s house, the cottagefarmhouse which is prominent in the picture. The farmer, Willy Lot, was alive in Constable’s own
time, and in the eighty years of his life spent only four days away from his home. This classic
example of Suffolk obstinacy was precisely the behaviour to appeal to Constable’s sense of
continuity and tradition, and added an associative value to the house.
The scene is closed in at the left by the buildings and spreading out over the meadows on the
right. The title Constable gave the painting for the exhibitions was simply: Landscape; Noon; it is
interesting that though he specifies neither the place nor the season he is precise about the time of
the day, which accounts for the vertical light illuminating the structure of the trees. The growth and
colour of the trees, and the hay in the wain, show that the picture represents an early summer day;
there are high, fair-weather clouds, and the scanty drift of smoke from the farmhouse chimney
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indicates only a light breeze. The animation of the scene, no less than its title, is provided by the
cart crossing the ford.
Constable had already made a number of oil sketches and drawings from the viewpoint he
has chosen here and possibly for this reason the full oil sketch in the Victoria and Albert Museum,
London, is less worked out in detail than any other example of these large studies. Here, beyond the
mere masses of the composition, he is mainly concerned to work out the’ balance of tones, the
overall light and shade of the picture. It is so clearly experimental that it is impossible even to
conceive of its being exhibited in the generation in which it was painted.
Constable did not make many changes in the composition when he repeated it for the
finished work. At the same time he brought all forms into clearer focus and made them more
definite, especially the cottage, to which he added a chimney, and the meadows, trees and ridge in
the middle. The Hay Wain more than any other of Constable’s paintings has come to represent his
art in its maturity, and its pre-eminent appeal began soon after its completion. When it was seen at
the Royal Academy exhibition in 1821 it was greatly admired by Gericault and by some French
critics. Partly as a result of Gericault’s enthusiasm it was borrowed for the Paris Salon of 1824 and
led to the influential intervention by Constable in the progress of French landscape painting. From
this work Delacroix learned a lesson in the management of dramatic contrast, and it was bought
from the Salon for a French collection. Its history as part of the landscape of almost every English
mind begins with its purchase for the National Gallery in 1886.
(From Constable the Natural Painter by Graham Reynolds)
6.6. Stonehenge. 1335. The Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Probably the best
known and surely the most powerful artistic rendering of England’s foremost pre-Roman
monument, Stonehenge, is Constable’s water-colour of 1835. This markedly dramatic portrayal of
the prehistoric ruin shows the painter in an overtly romantic vein – evident above all in the
overpowering, cataclysmic sky, the most singular aspect of his interpretation. Here Constable
strives for utmost expressive intensity rather than maximum meteorological truth. No other
representation features so awesomely turbulent a setting albeit once graced by the delicate,
ephemeral presence of a double rainbow. And only Constable’s version does ample justice to that
sense of “the Sublime” which his and the preceding generation found in Stonehenge.
Constable’s richly worked water-colour is based on an on-the-spot pencil study made 15
years earlier. The chief differences are first the introduction of an overpowering skyscape, which
infuses an entirely new mood, and second the extension of space on all sides. This broadened scope
better conveys a sense of the lonely expansiveness of the seemingly endless Salisbury plain
surrounding Stonehenge. This extraordinary sky possesses a degree of dynamism unprecedented in
the artist’s oeuvre. The presence of the rainbows, implying a departing storm, does not really lessen
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