Gainsborough's Family Album at the Princeton Museum of Art

Gainsborough's Family Album

Princeton University Art Museum

February 23 - June 9, 2019

Reviewed by Ed Voves

In June of 1787, the British painter Thomas Gainsborough was staggered by the death of Carl Friedrich Abel. A noted composer and master player of the viola da gamba, Abel had been one on the music-loving painter's greatest friends. In a letter to Rev. Henry Bate-Dudley, Gainsborough wrote:

We love a genius for what he leaves and we mourn him for what he takes away... For my part I shall never cease looking up to heaven - the little while I have to stay behind - in hopes of getting one more glance of the man I loved from the moment I heard him touch the string. 

Visitors to the superb exhibition, Gainsborough's Family Album, now at the Princeton University Museum of Art, will likely extend these moving words to Gainsborough himself.

Gainsborough's Family Album presents forty-four works by Gainsborough - all dealing with the subject of family: Gainsborough's family. The theme is hugely significant because Gainsborough painted his wife and daughters, siblings, niece, nephew and in-laws at exactly the moment when the concept of the modern family was taking shape. 

Earlier in history, family units were more extended and communal in nature. That of course is a broad generalization but the eighteenth century definitely saw a shift to more focused units of familial affection. Thomas Gainsborough's family, as the Princeton exhibition shows, was at the epicenter of this development, Great Britain during the reign of a noted family man, King George III. 

The facts of Gainsborough's life are essential to understanding the Princeton Museum exhibition and the greater story it tells.

Thomas Gainsborough,Self-portrait, mid-1770's, 
completed by Gainsborough Dupont, 1790

Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) was a native of Suffolk in the eastern part of England, directly across the North Sea from the Netherlands. John Constable (1776-1837) was born in that region too and both artists looked to the great Flemish and Dutch art traditions which had begun to depict family life as an important theme a century before. 

Gainsborough's family were devout Christians, but not of the established Church of England. They were "independents," outsiders who could not hold government jobs or commissions in Britain's armed forces. Excluded from positions of power, many Independents found scope for their talents in the mines, factories and iron foundries of the rising Industrial Revolution. A Baptist preacher, Thomas Newcomen, invented the first effective steam engine in 1712.

Thomas Gainsborough, 

Humphrey Gainsborough, the Artist's Brother, early 1770s

Gainsborough's brother, Humphrey, followed a similar path. Humphrey was the minister of the Independent congregation of Henley-on-Thames on Sunday. During the workweek, he was an engineer, who is credited with a number of inventions, including improvements to Newcomen's engine.

Very much an "independent" himself, Thomas Gainsborough directed his creative talents in a different direction - the field of art.

Another vital factor about Gainsborough was  his personality. A charismatic and contradictory man, Gainsborough's personality was cut from the "whole cloth" of human nature.

A portrait painter by necessity, Gainsborough devoted himself to painting "landskips" of the English countryside - which seldom sold. He cared little for reading but was a skillful amateur musician. Generous to his friends, Gainsborough was thin-skinned and combative in his relationship with the art establishment, often at odds with Sir Joshua Reynolds, the president of the Royal Academy. 

And then there was his family. Gainsborough was a loving, doting father to his two daughters, Mary and Margaret. He was dutiful to his wife, Margaret, respecting her good sense and financial management skills. Gainsborough, however succumbed to the sexual temptations of the "rakehell" 1700's. He nearly died in 1763 of a fever likely caused by a "dangerous liaison."

Gainsborough's infidelity was especially hurtful as Margaret was the illegitimate daughter of the third Duke of Beaufort. She received a hefty annuity from the Duke's estate which bankrolled Gainsborough's artistic career, especially during his early struggles. Thus, Gainsborough's unfaithfulness was truly a "blow upon a bruise."

By way of recognition of his wife's many virtues, Gainsborough painted a number of portraits of her later in life. This 1777 likeness of Margaret Gainsborough is surely one of the greatest portraits of a wife ever painted by a husband.  

Thomas Gainsborough, Margaret Gainsborough, the Artist's Wife, 1777

For all the excesses and contradiction in his life, Gainsborough was shrewd and perceptive in the way he portrayed his family. He both loved his family as individuals and grasped their strengths and weaknesses. In doing so, Gainsborough had to have reflected on his own character and character faults. Only a person with strong self-awareness could have painted the incredible portraits which we see in the special exhibition gallery at Princeton. 
  

Thomas Gainsborough, 

The Artist' with his Wife Margaret and Eldest Daughter Mary, 1748

One of the first paintings on view in Gainsborough's Family Album is a very early work, painted in 1748. It shows a dapper Gainsborough and his wife, Margret, wearing a billowing, blue silk dress. Gainsborough's family was engaged in the clothing trade and he was extremely skillful in depicting a variety of textiles. This is a very fashionable painting, a conversation piece in the style of Gainsborough's teacher, Francis Hayman.

The Artist with his Wife, Margaret and Eldest Daughter Mary is also a somber, sorrowful work. The little child died before it was finished and the expressions of her parents reflect their emotions. Gainsborough had been attempting to establish his painting business in London at this time. In order to protect his wife and future children, he made the courageous and risky move to leave London for the more healthy environment of Sudbury in Suffolk and then the spa resort of Bath.

Gainsborough and his wife were blessed with two surviving daughters. The eldest was also named Mary, born in 1750, with Margaret following a year later. Gainsborough called them "Molly" and "the Captain."

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019)
 View of the entrance to the Gainsborough's Family Album exhibit

While the girls were still very young, Gainsborough painted them chasing a butterfly, one of the great treasures of British art. This enchanting work appeared in the first presentation of Gainsborough's Family Album at the National Portrait Gallery in London. It is not on view in the Princeton show but a spectacular, over-sized copy welcomes visitors at the entrance to the exhibition gallery.

In 1760-61, Gainsborough painted a pair of double-portraits of his daughters which pose a number of questions. Gainsborough devoted exceptional skill to the faces of Mary and Margaret, yet both pictures of the adolescent girls remained unfinished. The most likely answer is that these were experimental paintings, tests of Gainsborough's ever-developing technique.

Thomas Gainsborough, Mary and Margaret Gainsborough,
 the Artist's Daughters, c. 1760–1 

The portrait of Mary reaching out to Margaret was originally painted on a single canvas, with Mary positioned slightly above Margaret. Later, the painting was cut into two separate portraits. Restorers, at some point in more recent times, reunited and touched-up the two parts, albeit in a way that was never intended. Had this been a finished painting, none of this would likely have occurred.

The unfinished nature of the double portrait of Molly and The Captain which introduces this review provides more insight into Gainsborough's technique. The cat they are playing with is barely sketched-in. Even more startling is the minimal attention given to the texture of the girls' dresses. For an artist who devoted enormous effort to getting the sheen and crinkle of silk and satin "just right," Gainsborough seems almost negligent in the way he painted his daughter's clothing. He just gives the impression in both of these portraits of everything but the faces of Mary and Margaret.

The word Impression is key to understanding Gainsborough. In many ways, he was the first "impressionist" though Velazquez could claim that honor too. It was not an accident either. Gainsborough often tied his painting brush to a long stick and painted at a considerable distance from his canvas. The effect was what you would expect in a Renoir or Van Gogh.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, speaking of Gainsborough after his death in 1788, directed the attention of his audience to how "all those odd scratches and marks… this chaos, this uncouth and shapeless appearance, by a kind of magick at a certain distance assumes form."

This "kind of magick" is less noticeable in Gainsborough's grand manor portraits - though it is certainly there. British artists - and more to the point, their aristocratic patrons - were enamored of the magnificent portraits of Charles I and his court painted by Anthony van Dyck. Every rich detail - exactly true to life. That was expected of Gainsborough and he complied, as can be seen in several formal likenesses he painted of his daughters as they matured into young ladies.

Thomas Gainsborough, Mary and Margaret Gainsborough,

the Artist's Daughters at their Drawing, C. 1763

The 1763 oil on canvas, subtitled The Artist's Daughter, at their Drawing is especially evocative of Van Dyck's influence. Looking at this marvelous work helps us understand why Gainsborough spoke of the Flemish master with his dying words, "Van Dyck was right."

Gainsborough looked at much more than surface details as we see in the portrait he painted of his sister Sarah, around 1777-79. Sarah Dupont (1715-1795) was well into her "sixties" by the time her brother painted her. The bloom had long faded from her looks, but perceptive intelligence, dignity and integrity beam from her eyes.

Thomas Gainsborough, Sarah Dupont, the Artist's Sister, c. 1777–9

All these traits in combination make for a lively and aware person - a person of inner beauty. This is the person Thomas Gainsborough saw and painted nearly two and a half centuries ago.

What he saw in his sister, Sarah, Gainsborough saw and painted in his other family members. Their portraits, on display at the Princeton University Museum of Art, speak to human values which may be glimpsed on the faces of those we know and love, if - like Thomas Gainsborough - we look hard enough to see.

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved

Original photo by Anne Lloyd, all rights reserved

Images courtesy of the Princeton University Art Museum, the Art Institue of Chicago and the Yale Center for British Art

Introductory Image: Thomas Gainsborough( British, 1727-1788) The Painter’s Daughters, Playing with a Cat, 1760-61. Oil on canvas: 75.6  x 62.9cm. (29 3/4 × 24 3/4 in.) National Gallery, London. Accession Number: NG3812

Thomas Gainsborough (English, 1727–1788), completed by Gainsborough Dupont, (British, 1754–1797) Self -portrait, mid-1770s and 1790. Oil on canvas: 76.6 × 63.5 cm (30 3/16 × 25 in.) The Samuel Courtland Trust. The Courtauld Gallery, London

Thomas Gainsborough (English, 1727–1788) Humphrey Gainsborough, the Artist's Brother, early 1770s. Oil on canvas: 59.7 × 49.5 cm (23 1/2 × 19 1/2 in.) Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

Thomas Gainsborough (English, 1727–1788) Margaret Gainsborough, the Artist’s Wife, ca. 1777. Oil on canvas: 76.6 × 63.8 cm (30 3/16 × 25  1/8 in.) The Samuel Courtauld Trust. The Courtauld Gallery, London

Thomas Gainsborough( English, 1727–1788) The Artist with his Wife Margaret and Eldest Daughter Mary, 1748? Oil on canvas: 92.1 × 70.5 cm (36 1/4 × 27 3/4 in.) The National Gallery, London. Acquired under the acceptance-in-lieu scheme at the wish of Sybil, Marchioness of Cholmondeley, in memory of her brother, Sir Philip Sassoon, 1994

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) View of the entrance to the Gainsborough's Family Album exhibition,  Princeton University Museum of Art, 2019.

Thomas Gainsborough (English, 1727–1788) Mary and Margaret Gainsborough, the Artist's Daughters, c. 1760–1. Oil on canvas: 40.6 × 58.4 cm (16 × 23 in.) Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Bequeathed by John Forster

Thomas Gainsborough (English, 1727–1788) Mary and Margaret Gainsborough, the Artist's Daughters, at their Drawing, c. 1763–4. Oil on canvas: 127.3 × 101.7 cm (50 1/8 × 40 1/16 in.) Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. Museum purchase, 1917.181

Thomas Gainsborough (English, 1727–1788) Sarah Dupont, the Artist's Sister, c. 1777–9 Oil on canvas: 77.2 × 64.5 cm (30 3/8 × 25 3/8 in.) The Art Institute of Chicago, Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection; through prior gifts of Mr. and Mrs. Denison B. Hull, Mr. and Mrs. William Kimball, and Mrs. Charles McCulloch, 1987.13

Pastures Green and Dark Satanic Mills at the Princeton University Art Museum

Pastures Green and Dark Satanic Mills: 

The British Passion for Landscape

Princeton University Art Museum 

January 23 - April 24, 2016

Reviewed by Ed Voves

The British are an inventive people. Many of modern times's great innovations are products of British ingenuity: steam engines, the postage stamp, the chocolate bar, the miniskirt ... and many, many more.

The British did not invent landscape painting.  After viewing the Pastures Green & Dark Satanic Mills exhibit, however, a visitor to the Princeton University Art Museum might well credit landscape art as another British "first."

The rise of landscape painting in the West is a complex story. The Dutch during the seventeenth century were the real pioneers of the genre. 

The British, as the subtitle of this wide-ranging exhibit rightly proclaims, do have a "passion for landscape." This emotion-driven response to the natural environment is not a matter of pure sentiment. It is actually a consequence of the "conquest" of nature. 

Tim Barringer, one of the curators of Pastures Green & Dark Satanic Mills, writes that "visions of nature are at their most intense when the viewer inhabits an urban, industrial world..."

Evelyn Mary Dunbar, Baling Hay, 1940

Humans, of course, have been shaping nature to suit our needs for thousands of years. But a staggering manipulation of forest, field and stream began in Great Britain during the 1700's. Nature was altered to an unprecedented degree - first in Britain and then worldwide.

Pastures Green & Dark Satanic Mills is an exhibit of 80 paintings and a selection of photographs which document the artistic response to the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions in Great Britain. Along with British masters of landscape painting like J.M.W. Turner and John Constable, the exhibit includes paintings by artists from other nations who lived or worked in Britain such as Claude Monet and Oskar Kokoschka. 

All of the works in this special exhibition come from one institution: the Amgueddfa Cymru–National Museum Wales. Welsh artists and art collectors have played a decisive role in the evolution of British art as this exhibit continually - and correctly - affirms.

The Welsh are the descendants of the Celtic peoples who were driven into the mountainous extremities of Britain by the onslaught of the Anglo-Saxon invaders during the early Middle Ages. Wales preserved its independence until a new set of aggressors in the thirteenth century, the Normans under Edward I, seized control. 

Wales languished as a political fiefdom of England and a cultural backwater until the mid-1700's.  A talented Welsh artist, Richard Wilson (1714-82) then sparked a century-long renaissance of British art that was to culminate in the mighty landscape paintings of J.M.W. Turner.

Richard Wilson, Dover Castle, ca. 1746–47

Initially a portrait painter, Wilson took to portraying "topography," especially landmarks like Dover Castle. In this striking early work, Wilson brilliantly included small human figures - including himself, painting en plein air - to give an indication of scale, of insignificant man in relation to mighty nature. 

Wilson's success promoted a sense of the awesome expanse and dramatic effect of nature. A few years after Wilson painted Dover Castle, Edmund Burke wrote his influential treatise on perception, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.

In 1750, Wilson went to Italy, joining the cultural pilgrimage known as the Grand Tour. There he discovered the works of the French classicist, Claude Lorraine (1604-1682). 

Wilson was greatly taken by the lengths to which Claude went to evoke light on his canvases. He was also impressed by the way that Claude created landscapes that recalled the hallowed realm of Arcadia, the idyllic abode of gods and heroes.

Claude Lorrain, Landscape with St. Philip Baptizing the Eunuch, 1678

These two states of mind, the Sublime and the Arcadian, entered into the lifeblood of British art thanks to Wilson. Many British painters followed his lead but unexpected political events also contributed to the growing cult of nature and landscape art in the British Isles.

France went to war with Britain in 1778, in support of the American Revolution. The Grand Tour hit a roadblock. Things got even worse in 1789 when the French Revolution engulfed nearly all of Europe. Travel to Italy became difficult and dangerous.

Prevented by the French wars from visiting Italy, the British "milords" sought the Sublime and Beautiful closer to home. Unable to reach Italy, the British went to Wales.

The change of scenery was not as surprising as one might think. The late eighteenth century witnessed a revival of interest in the folklore, legends and poetry of the ancient peoples of Europe, notably the Celts. These tribesmen, once deemed as barbarians, were placed on a pedestal previously reserved for Greeks and Romans.

In 1757, the English poet, Thomas Gray, published The Bard: a Pindaric Ode recalling the heart-rending purge of Welsh poets by the blood-thirsty Edward I. Tourists flocked to visit the locations mentioned in Gray's tragic verse. 

Thomas Jones, The Bard, 1774

A Welsh painter, Thomas Jones, created a visual epic to match Gray's poem, depicting the last of these bards, about to hurl himself from a cliff rather than surrender to Edward I.

British landscape painting took many forms in what is now regarded as the "golden age" of British art, roughly from 1768 to 1851. Almost all of the British artists of this amazing era followed the lead of Wilson, but their emulation took a variety of forms. There was little of the "sublime" in the works of Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) or of John Constable (1776-1837). 

Both Gainsborough and Constable were born in East Anglia, a region much influenced by Dutch art. Gainsborough, sick of pleasing lords and ladies as a society portraitist, painted landscapes to please himself. Constable so loved his boyhood home that he was unmoved by other regions of Britain with more spectacular scenery, even the fabled Lake District.

Thomas Gainsborough, Rocky Wooded Landscape with Lovers, Herdsman, and Cows, 1771-1774

Constable's technique in painting out-of-doors and his "everyday" subject matter were anything but conventional. Constable, a "quiet revolutionary" in his art, set the stage for Impressionism in France. Yet, there was an ironical undercurrent in Constable's art which would flow through British art to its disadvantage.

A devoted family man and generous friend, Constable was also a right wing reactionary. As Britain came dangerously close to revolution in 1830, Constable rejected even the slightest political reforms to prevent social dissent. 

Even though his paintings won widespread acclaim in France during his lifetime, Constable never crossed the Channel to collect the gold medal awarded him in 1824. Remaining a "Little England" man, Constable helped create an invisible barrier to a wider role for British art in the modern world.

Constable did praise his colleague, J. M.W. Turner for having a "wonderful range of mind." The Princeton exhibit certainly bears this out with a superb selection of Turner's works on view, including water colors made during visits to Wales early in his life and a brace of major works from his later "soap suds and whitewash" period.

Constable's homebody attitude, more than Turner's embrace of new ideas, came to characterize British art in the Victorian era. A change of attitude toward landscape art had earlier begun to emerge in reaction to the Industrial Revolution - as William Blake poignantly expressed:

And did the Countenance Divine,                                                                                       Shine forth upon our clouded hills?                                                                                   
And was Jerusalem builded here,  
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

The Princeton exhibit includes some early depictions of industrial sites that were neither dark nor satanic. But by the time Turner died in 1851, steam engines and engineers no longer appealed to the British imagination as heroic or sublime. In a reaction to urban squalor and  harsh working conditions, most Victorian painters banished the Industrial Revolution from their canvases.

In an amazing twist of fate, foreign artists refocused the artistic dialog in Britain back on the "real" world of the nineteenth century. Claude Monet painted the reality of London with its "pea souper" fogs  and the open sewer of the Thames. Monet, in keeping with the Impressionist credo of "the heroism of modern life," exulted in scenes that native British artists preferred to ignore.

Claude Monet, Charing Cross Bridge, 1902

"Without the fog London wouldn't be a beautiful city," Monet proclaimed. "It is the fog that gives it its magnificent breadth." 
  
There is beauty - of a type - in the flame-tinged sky above the Dowlais steelworks in Cardiff, Wales, as captured in the stunning oil painting by the American-born Lionel Walden (1861-1933). Steelworks, Cardiff, at Night, 1895–97, is a huge, brilliant work, the center piece of the Pastures Green & Dark Satanic Mills exhibit. 

Walden cast an infernal pall over what was the world's biggest, most modern steel mill when the painting was created. But one should not focus on the brilliant color effects at the expense of Walden's skillful design. The exhibit also displays a small oil sketch which Walden used to prepare this finished painting. In the preparatory work, the curve of the train tracks is less pronounced and less effective than in the final version.

Lionel Walden, Steelworks, Cardiff, at Night, 1895–97

Steelworks, Cardiff, at Night is truly a stunning work of art. It took my eyes a short time to adjust while studying it, as if I was actually focusing on a harsh light while standing in shadow. It was some minutes before I realized that there is a solitary, shadowy figure standing mid-canvas, holding a dimly glowing lantern in his hand.

Works by foreign-born painters like Monet and Walden gave some impetus to the British art establishment to move in the direction of Modernism by 1900. But what really created the decisive breakthrough was the London exhibition staged by Roger Fry in 1910, Manet and the Post-Impressionists. Fry was no great admirer of Monet and Renoir but had come to regard Cezanne as a "kind of hidden oracle of ultra-impressionism."

Cezanne exercised a major influence on British art in the twentieth century as can be seen in very different works in the exhibit such as Stanley Spencer's Snowdon from Llanfrothen, 1938, and Graham Sutherland's Road at Porthclais with Setting Sun, 1975. 

Graham Sutherland, Road at Porthclais with Setting Sun, 1975

The really notable point in Fry's estimate of Cezanne, however, is his figure of speech: a "kind of hidden oracle." 

The British passion for landscape derives from the conviction that are indeed "oracles," underlying strata of meaning, deep integral truths, to be found in these depictions of the natural world. 

Perhaps this search for meaning can be traced to the ancient Celtic bards. Even if it is a more modern sensibility, dating to the 1700's and Burke's theories of the sublime, landscape painting in Britain represents a sustained commitment to the vital, living spirit of the natural world.

Blake's vision of building "Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land" may be a long time coming. But the theme of Pastures Green & Dark Satanic Mills is not easily dismissed. This provocative exhibit, on view for one more month at the Princeton University Art Museum, reminds us that the landscape painter's credo of "truth to nature" is a lot more than a figure of speech.  

***
Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved 

Images courtesy of the Princeton University Art Museum 

Introductory Image: 
John Constable, A Cottage in a Cornfield, 1817. Oil on canvas. Size: 31.5 x 26.3 cm Amgueddfa Cymru–National Museum Wales. Accession Number: NMW A 486 Purchased with the assistance of the Art Fund, 1978. Courtesy American Federation of Arts

Evelyn Mary Dunbar, Baling Hay, 1940. Oil on canvas. Size: 45.8 x 61 cm. Amgueddfa Cymru–National Museum Wales. Accession Number: NMW A 29396 Given by the War Artists Advisory. ©National Museum Wales Collection / Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Richard Wilson, Dover Castle, ca. 1746–47. Oil on canvas. Size: 90.5 x 116.8 cm Amgueddfa Cymru–National Museum Wales. Accession Number: NMW A 66  Purchased with the support of subscribers, 1928. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.
      
Claude Lorrain, Landscape with St. Philip Baptizing the Eunuch, 1678. Oil on canvas. Size: 88.0 x 142.2 cm Amgueddfa Cymru–National Museum Wales. Accession Number: NMW A 4
Purchased with the assistance of the Art Fund, 1982. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Thomas Jones, The Bard, 1774. Oil on canvas. Size: 114.5 x 168.0 cm Amgueddfa Cymru–National Museum Wales. Accession Number: NMW A 85 Purchased, 1965. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Thomas Gainsborough, Rocky Wooded Landscape with Rustic Lovers, Herdsman, and Cows, 1771–74. Oil on canvas. Size: 147.0 x 175.0 cm Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to Amgueddfa Cymru–National Museum Wales, 2001. Accession Number: NMW A 22780 Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Claude Monet, Charing Cross Bridge, 1902. Oil on canvas. Size: 65.4 x 81.3 cm Amgueddfa Cymru–National Museum Wales. Accession Number: NMW A 2483 Bequeathed by Margaret Davies, 1963. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Lionel Walden, Steelworks, Cardiff, at Night, 1895–97. Oil on canvas. Size: 150.8 x 200.4 cm Amgueddfa Cymru–National Museum Wales.  Accession Number: NMW A 2245 Given by the artist, 1917. Courtesy American Federation of Arts.

Graham Vivian Sutherland, Road at Porthclais with Setting Sun, 1975. Oil on canvas. Size: 52.7 x 50.4 cm Amgueddfa Cymru–National Museum Wales. Accession Number: NMW A 2267 Transferred by the Graham and Kathleen Sutherland Foundation, 1989. © Estate of Graham Sutherland 

Art Eyewitness Essay: Turner, Constable and a Sojourn in Brontë Country

Turner, Constable & a Sojourn in Bronte Country

By Ed Voves   

Original Photos by Anne Lloyd
       
In 1810, J.M.W. Turner observed a thunderstorm rolling over the hills of Yorkshire. He quickly began to jot-down notes about the cloud masses, lightning flashes and sky tones of the storm.  When he had finished, Turner remarked to a companion, Hawkesworth Fawkes, about his observations.

"There," Turner said, "Hawkey, in two years you will see this again, and call it Hannibal crossing the Alps.”

Two years later, Turner did indeed exhibit a monumental painting based on his notes, Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps. The timing of the exhibition coincided with the first reports of the winter blizzard that had engulfed Napoleon's army retreating from Moscow in 1812, just as the storm strikes Hannibal's troops in Turner's painting. 

Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps is actually a very English painting. In fact, it is a very Yorkshire painting, as my wife and I discovered recently. This, in turn, is deeply significant for understanding the role of British artists like Turner and John Constable, in the rise of landscape painting during the nineteenth century.  

In October 2014, my wife, Anne, and I spent five days in Haworth, Yorkshire. This remarkable village is the site of the Brontë Parsonage Museum and the moor country which figures so prominently in the novels of three literary sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë.  

Thanks to the location of our B&B, we were able to look directly from our room onto St Michael's Church, were Rev. Patrick Brontë, father of the Brontë sisters, was the Church of England minister from 1820 to 1861. 

From our window, too, we had a front-row seat of the amazing skyscape over the West Riding countryside of Yorkshire, leading to Penistone Hill and Top Withins. This, of course, is Brontë country, par excellence, but the spectacle of nature that we observed applies equally to the visionary art of Turner and Constable, Romantic-era contemporaries of the Brontës.

Anne Lloyd, Sunset over Haworth, Yorkshire

Over the course of our visit, Anne, who is a gifted photographer, documented the ever-changing sky above Haworth. Sunsets, misty mornings, rainbows, passing rain squalls, a full moon - it was truly amazing to witness the variability of nature. We even managed to dodge heavy rain showers which took place at night.

Our extraordinary weather "karma" recalled a famous remark by Turner around the time that he painted Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps: 

In our variable climate where the seasons are recognizable in one day ... where nature seems to sport in all her dignity and dispensing incidents for the artist's study ... how happily is the landscape painter situated, how roused by every change of nature in every moment, that allows no langour even in her effects which she places before him...

Anne and Turner were in agreement. Recording the changes in English weather permits no "langour." The restless, threatening skies that Anne photographed from the narrow path to Oxenhope, often used by Charlotte Brontë, brightened a few moments later with almost summer-like sunshine.

When we wistfully concluded our stay in Haworth, we journeyed to London for a few days of museum visits. There we saw the Late Turner – Painting Set Free exhibition, which appears at the Tate Britain Museum, September 10, 2014 – January 25, 2015, and Constable: The Making of a Master, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, September 20, 2014 to January 11, 2015.

Both exhibits are magnificent, with many of the greatest paintings of the two artists on display. The exhibition at the V&A presents works by artists who influenced Constable's development like Peter Paul Rubens. Also on view are Constable’s most famous work, The Hay Wain (1824), and the full-scale preparatory painting that some art scholars now regard as a superior work of art to the finished version.

John Constable, The Hay Wain

It is fitting, in an ironical way, that the Turner and Constable exhibits should appear at the same time. It takes years to organize and mount art exhibitions. The timing of the two shows was probably - in the first stages of planning, at least - coincidental. 

Yet here they are again, Turner and Constable, teamed together as they appear in most introductory surveys of art history. Turner and Constable. Turner and Constable. You would think that the two painters functioned as a unit like Monet and Renoir, painting together at La Grenouillère - or like Gilbert and George.

The reality was very different. Turner never met a landscape painter who was anything but a rival. In 1832, at the Royal Academy exhibition, he retouched a quiet Dutch-style seascape of his, Helvoetsluys, with a red buoy to steal some of the thunder from one of Constable's "six-footers, The Opening of Waterloo Bridge, hanging next to it in the gallery.

Constable noticed the effect immediately, commenting ruefully about Turner, "He has been here and has fired a gun."

Constable was not merely a competitor to Turner, however. Constable was also the protégé of Sir George Beaumont, co-founder of the National Gallery in London and a resolute foe of Turner. Beaumont maintained that Turner treated oil painting as an extension of water colors. Totally misunderstanding Turner’s brilliant grasp of light, Beaumont disparaged Turner’s art as the work of an "Old man," who "no longer saw or felt colour properly..."

Turner, who regarded himself as “the great lion of the day,” responded to Beaumont’s remarks with paintings ever more daring, ever more radiating light.

One could go on comparing and contrasting these two British painters, but there is one unifying theme to their respective careers: the centrality of observing the natural world. This was true of Turner and Constable throughout their lives, as the two exhibitions make clear. But I think that the experiences of "early" Turner and "early" Constable, as they developed their art in their English homeland, need to be appreciated.

That would appear to go against the claims that the decisive moment in Turner's career came at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, in 1815, when he and other British artists could travel to the continent of Europe. The "light of Italy" flooded onto Turner's canvases and his painting, tinged with hues of yellow, amber and gold, changed forever.

Turner's sojourns in Italy certainly had a major impact on his color palate.  Late Turner at Tate Britain presents two companion paintings, exhibited in 1839, that clearly manifest "the light of Italy." 

J. M.W. Turner Ancient Rome; Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus 

J. M.W. Turner Modern Rome-Campo Vaccino 

Ancient Rome; Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus and Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino are displayed side-by-side in the Tate exhibit, providing insight into Turner's view of history and color theory. These were among the paintings which the cartoonist for the Almanack of the Month (June 1846) likely had in mind when he lampooned Turner confronting a canvas with a large mop for a paintbrush and a bucket of yellow paint.

Was this late-career change in color preference also reflected in the greatest of Turner's final paintings, Rain, Steam and Speed? This iconic work, painted in tones of burnished gold, ochre and misty gray, was the type of painting that Turner’s critics regarded as evidence that he had contracted “yellow fever.”

J. M.W. Turner  Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway

If so, Turner contracted the “disease” in England. An early work,  the hard-hitting Frosty Morning (1813) showing starving farm families, was painted with a gold and brown color scheme that had nothing to do with the “light of Italy.”

Ed Voves, Haworth Moor from Penistone Hill, Yorkshire

I saw the same colors while gazing at Haworth Moor from Penistone Hill – albeit in much more congenial circumstances than the hungry farm folk encountered in 1813. Frosty Morning was painted from a scene that Turner had witnessed in Yorkshire and when Claude Monet saw the painting decades later, he declared that Turner had painted it with “wide-open eyes.”

Constable painted with “wide-open eyes” too, but he focused his vision on the green fields of his boyhood home, the Stour River Valley in the county of Suffolk. Constable, unlike Turner, never traveled to the continent of Europe, even when The Hay Wain won a gold medal at the 1824 Paris Salon. 

Constable was far from being a timid, unadventurous soul. He showed how artists can create universes of their own devising. These realms might be small in geographical scale, perhaps reduced to a single tree. But they could be limitless in an emotional, psychological sense. It was an artistic revolution as profound in its way as Turner's explorations of light.

John Constable Study of the Trunk of an Elm Tree  

“But I should paint my own places best," Constable affirmed, "painting is but another word for feeling.”

One of the most productive of Constable's "own places" was Hampstead Heath, where he relocated his family in 1819 in a brave, doomed effort to preserve the life of his beloved wife, Maria. She was stricken with tuberculosis as Emily and Anne Brontë were to be in the 1840's. 

While at Hampstead, Constable did  "a good deal of skying," painting the ever-changing skies above the Heath. Constable's cloud studies, generally oil sketches on paper, painted directly from nature, are among his greatest works, valued by some scholars today even more than his grand "six-footers."

John Constable Study of Cirrus Clouds 

Turner painted in the open air too, using his facility with water colors to make rapid color sketches the way other artists might use a pencil.  But Turner and Constable, despite later claims were  not "Impressionists," as neither painted full-scale finished works out-of-doors. Nor were they seeking to make factual recordings of nature or daily life, merely for the sake of doing so.

Turner and Constable both observed and studied nature in close detail but - like true Romantics - sought to make a moral statement by their work, a gesture or "feeling" through the medium of painting. 

During our visit to Haworth, Anne and I gained an appreciation for the kind of world in which the people of the Regency and early Victorian eras lived. Viewing the ever-changing skies above the Brontë Parsonage and wandering through the densely packed graveyard of St. Michaels Church  was both an inspiring and a sobering experience. Over 40,000 people were buried in that cemetery over the course of the 1800's, victims of cholera, typhus, tuberculosis and other Industrial Age killer diseases. Death was the constant companion of life. 

Anne Lloyd,  Graveyard of St. Michaels Church, Haworth, Yorkshire 

Constable, who was haunted by the death of his wife in 1828, dressed in mourning for the rest of his life. Yet the creative impulse that impelled him to become one of Britain's greatest artists, also enabled Constable to find solace and inspiration in the beauty of nature. 

In 1836, a year before he died, Constable wrote that man's "nature is congenial with the elements of the planet itself, and he cannot but sympathize with its features, its various aspects and its phenomena in all situations. We are no doubt placed in a paradise here if we choose to make it such …"

The Romantic era, the age of Turner, Constable and the Brontës, had precious little romance to it. But the eyes and minds of these remarkable individuals were able to look beyond the filth and death around them, to see or at least to hope for a better, more beautiful world.

***
Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved

Images Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and Tate Britain, London.
Introductory image:     
                                                                                                                                        Anne Lloyd,  Afternoon Sky over Haworth, Yorkshire digital photograph, 2014

Anne Lloyd,  Sunset over Haworth, Yorkshire digital photograph, 2014

John Constable (1776-1837) The Hay Wain 1821  Oil on canvas 130.2 x 185.4 cm  The National Gallery, London Presented by Henry Vaughan, 1886  NG1207  © The National Gallery, London

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 - 1851)  Ancient Rome; Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus 1839 Oil on canvas   91 x 121.8 cm  Tate Britain, London  Turner Bequest, 1856   N0052

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 - 1851)  Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino 1839 Oil on canvas   36 1/8 x 48 1/4 in.  J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles    2011.6

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 - 1851)  Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway  1844 Oil on canvas   91 x 121.8 cm  Turner Bequest, 1856  NG538 © The National Gallery, London

Ed Voves, Haworth Moor from Penistone Hill, Yorkshire  digital photograph, 2014

John Constable (1776-1837)  Study of the trunk of an elm tree  about 1821     Oil on canvas  30.6 x 24.8 cm   The  Victoria and Albert Museum, London Given by Isabel Constable  Museum number: 786-1888                                                                                                                                                                                                  
John Constable (1776-1837) Study of Cirrus Clouds ca. 1822 Oil on paper, 11.4 x 17.8 cm The  Victoria and Albert Museum, London Given by Isabel Constable  Museum number: 784-1888

Anne Lloyd,  Graveyard of St. Michaels Church, Haworth, Yorkshire digital photograph, 2014