Constable

John Constable was forty-eight years of age in 1824, a memorable year in the history of landscape painting. A date to be remembered is 1824, for in that year Constable's "Hay Wain" was hung in the French Salon. That picture, which is now in the National Gallery, marked an epoch in landscape art.

Reams have been written about the influence of "The Hay Wain" upon French art, by critics who are all for Constable, by critics who are complimentary but temperate; and by critics who are lukewarm and almost resentful of the place claimed for Constable as protagonist of nineteenth century landscape art. A guerilla critical warfare has also raged around the influence of Turner. Constable and Turner! Most modern landscape painters have, at one time or another, learnt from these two great pioneers. Turner is more potent to-day, but his influence took longer to assert itself. It was not until 1870 that Monet visited London to be dazzled by the range and splendour of Turner at the National Gallery. Forty-six years had passed since "The Hay Wain" was exhibited at the Salon. In that half-century the Barbizon School, those great men of 1830, Corot, Rousseau, Millet, Daubigny, Troyon, Diaz, and the rest had come to fruition. Constable has been claimed as their parent. Thore, the French critic, who wrote under the name of G. W. Burger, affirms that Constable was the point de depart of the Barbizon School; but Albert Wolff, another eminent French critic, was not of that opinion. Thore, writing in 1863, also said that although Constable had stimulated in France a school of painting unrivalled in the modern world, he had had no influence in his own country, a far too sweeping statement.

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PLATE II.--THE HAY WAIN. National Gallery.

Painted in 1821, exhibited in the French Salon in 1824, "The Hay Wain," with two other smaller works, which had been purchased from Constable by a French connoisseur, aroused extraordinary interest in Paris, and had a potent influence on French landscape art. So impressed was Delacroix with the naturalness, the freshness, and the brightness of Constable's pictures at the 1824 Salon, that he completely repainted his "Massacre of Scio" in the four days that intervened before the opening of the exhibition.

[Illustration: PLATE II.--THE HAY WAIN.]

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The truth about Constable's influence on French art would seem to be midway between the opinions of Thore and Wolff. That Constable's exhibits at the Salon of 1824, which included two smaller landscapes besides "The Hay Wain," did arouse extraordinary interest, and did have a potent influence on French landscape art, there is no shadow of doubt. So impressed was Delacroix with the naturalness, the freshness, and the brightness of Constable's pictures at the 1824 Salon, that, after studying them, he completely repainted his "Massacre of Scio" in the four days that intervened before the opening of the exhibition; and the following year Delacroix visited London eager to see more of Constable's work. There is also the testimony of William Brockedon, who, on his return from the Salon, wrote thus to the painter of "The Hay Wain." The text of the letter is printed in C. R. Leslie's Memoirs of the Life of Constable, a mine of information in which all writers on John Constable, whom de Goncourt called "le grand, le grandissime maitre," must delve.