English painting

Years of happiness

Gregory Martin

The Paintings of J. M. W. Turner Martin Butlin and Evelyn Jon (Revised edition, Yale University Press 2 vols, £125) The Later Paintings and Drawings of John Constable Graham Reynolds (Yale University Press, 2 vols, £140) The Discovery of Constable Ian Fleming-Williams and Leslie Parris (Hamish Hamilton £25) That anyone could find a rendering of

1 trees 'shocking' seems incredible now, and it is likely that Constable himself was not bothered by the Reverend Hume's sharp criticism of Flatford Mill, then in the possession of his friend Archdeacon Fisher's lawyer in Salisbury. More bother- some may have been the dislike felt by the Archdeacon's father — the Bishop of Salisbury — of the rain cloud included by Constable in the Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds. That resulted in the execution of a replica, but Constable was probably glad to regain possession not long after of the original.

His desire to hold on to his major productions was a characteristic he shared, but to a greater degree, with the greatest English landscape painter of the century — Turner — whose career straddled his own. Whatever the vagaries of taste, Turner had been easily the more popular during his lifetime. Thus a greater proportion of Constable's output remained in his hands at his death than did Turner's. Yet Tur- ner's bequest to the National Gallery was huge — some 350 oils. A small number of them found in the Gallery at the beginning of the last War are still awaiting conserva- tion treatment to make them available to the public.

Unlike Turner's gift, which passed not long after his death into the hands of officials, the contents of Constable's two houses went to his young family. After a none-too-successful auction — which was to double the number of works by the artist owned by collectors — his children divided up some 600 paintings and many more drawings, which they and their descen- dants were gradually to give away or sell. The fate of these two legacies was thus very different. But only with the opening of the Clore Gallery at the Tate will Turner's intention be largely honoured over a century after his death. That a big holding of Constable's works is also avail- able to the British public is largely due to the generosity of his last surviving daugh- ter, Isabel. The story of what happened to Const- able's work and reputation after his sudden and unexpected death in the small hours of 31 March 1837 is lovingly told by Ian Fleming-Williams and Leslie Parris. They recount and document the anxieties and quarrels among his children as they tried to cope with their father's legacy — conscious perhaps of his own view (correct as it turned out) that it would be of value to them at some stage — and, more impor- tant, the early interest in painting of his sons Alfred and Lionel.

Lionel is thought to have given up painting after the drowning accident he witnessed in 1853, which killed his brother. Nevertheless, his paintings — hung together with his father's in the house he shared with Isabel in Hamilton Terrace — became confused with them when his nephews and nieces continued the disper- sal of the inheritance at the end of the last century. Only in recent years — thanks to Fleming-Williams and Parris — has this confusion been revealed and some admired John Constables been returned to Lionel.

The problem of imitations was early recognised by Constable's first biographer and was to become a concern of his son, John Golding Constable, who considered it his duty to expose them, in only one case falling flat on his face. It has remained a continuing concern; and in the second half of their book, Fleming-Williams and Parris provide some detailed accounts of artists whose work has been confused with, or been passed off as, that of the great man. Harder to identify is the work of forgers, although documented are the activities of one — George Constable (no relation) — and some unscrupulous dealers — Archbutt, Orrock and Cahn.

For the amateur, studying the often small reproductions, it is not always easy to follow their detailed stylistic analyses, although the crunch of disagreement be- tween connoisseurs comes through loud and clear. About a drawing which John Hayes 'believed to be a work individual to Constable which would never be confused 'This smacks of the soft Left, Comrade Editor.' with anything Frost produced', they state that 'in our view (it) is clearly by Frost'. But at least one of their dis-attributions has already been challenged. 'Unconvinc- ing' is Graham Reynolds's answer to their view that a plant study in the Victoria and Albert Museum is not the work of Con-

stable. Indeed, Reynolds in his exhaustive and fascinating catalogue of the later paint- ings and drawings (from circa 1817) brings back into the fold several other works recently doubted.

Whatever the disagreements among ex- perts, Reynolds's mammoth catalogue is sure to be the basis for any future study of

the artist. And with the expected publica- tion of the catalogue of Constable's early

works, his oeuvre will be available for appreciation and understanding as never before. As a work of scholarship it is on a

par with that of Martin Butlin's and Evelyn Joll's much praised Catalogue of the Paint- ings off. M. W. Turner of 1977, the revised edition of which has now been published.

Both catalogues are accompanied by volumes of plates in which all available items are reproduced; the plates with liberal numbers in colour, and arranged in approximate chronological order, are of high quality. The visual record thus pro- vided of Turner's paintings brings home the amazing versatility, grandeur and in- ventiveness of this secretive genius; and yet his drawings and watercolours — a whole other field of study — are not included. Turner, granted a long life, worked with vigour and energy until his last years; in consequence, Butlin's and Joll's catalogue consists of over 500 entries.

Over 1000 entries are required bY Reynolds to cover the artistic production of Constable's last 20 years. The catalogue of plates reveals not only his AcademY pieces and preparations for them, but also his wanderings round Hampstead, along the beaches of the south coast, particularlY at Brighton, his stays at Salisbury and later at Arundel, as well as occasional glimpses of his growing family.

The catalogue begins with Constable, recently married and settled in London,

embarking on his first 'six footer' for exhibition. This was to be the first of the great series of landscapes of 'Constable country' round East Bergholt, where he had spent 'hours of Joy and years uf Happiness'. But he was, too, to make Salisbury and Hampstead his own. For the

Suffolk landscapes, he was to rely on the store of drawings made before his mar-

riage; this volume sees Constable building from them and broadening his range in and around London and the south of England. And when, as Reynolds describes, Con- stable came to express his grief over his wife's death, he chose to depict Hadleigb Castle, which he had visited and sketched only once and then long ago during a bad

moment in his protracted courtship. Such was Constable's mastery of his visual re- cords. Reynolds here brings a new mast to the working records and products of his maturity.