CONSTABLE.*
THIS is a new edition of a book which deserves to be more famous than it is ; for with the exception of Gilchrist's Blake there is no Life of a painter to touch it in the English lan- guage. The original edition was published in 1843, six years after the artist's death. This was a folio, and included a number of the mezzotint plates by David Lucas, after Con- stable's pictures. A second edition followed in 1845, smaller in size, and without the plates. This volume, like the first, has long been out of print, so that to the present generation an excellent book has not been readily accessible. The volume before us restores the illustrations and adds to their number. It is edited by Mr. Robert C. Leslie, a son of Con- stable's friend, the author of the book. He adds a few notes and an introduction. The only part of this to which we need refer is a warning to the public against the numerous forgeries of Con- stable's work which have appeared in the market, particularly of his dashing sketches. For an ignorant eye these are readily enough parodied. The author of the introduction might have been even plainer-spoken with advantage, knowing as he does from his childhood the oeuvre of the master.
For once in a way, in Leslie's biography, the method was justified of "allowing the subject of the biography to tell his own story." We are accustomed to have this method offered as the plea of the lazy or incompetent biographer in case after case where either there is no story to tell, or the writer of the letters makes no attempt to tell it. To take recent instances, what excuse was there for the publication of reams of triviality in the letters of Matthew Arnold and Dante Rossetti, except the superstition that a biographer fulfils his function by shovelling out the correspondence of an artist ? It so happens that there are artists to whom correspondence • Life and Letters of John Constable, B.A. By O. R. Leslie, It A. With 3 Por. traits and Illustration., together with some Notes by Robert C. Leslie. Load a: Cbapman and HAIL
is, except very occasionally, a bore, and we must look for the living part of them elsewhere.
With Constable it is very different. Not only had he the literary gift, not always vouchsafed to a painter (a single phrase like " More overbearing meekness I never met with in any one man" would prove it), but he also had from the first the clearest ideas of what he was about in his painting. his task of giving a fresh dose of Nature to the exhausted landscape formula of his contemporaries, and what is more, he had the habit of confiding those ideas as his work went on, to one correspondent after another. Danthorne, the village glazier, who was his first teacher and friend, begins the list ; it continues through those letters to Miss Bicknell in which the defence or apology of his art alternates with the urging of his suit on that prim and dutiful lady ; then there is Fisher, Bishop of Salisbury, his friend and patron, the recipient of some of the warmest and most intimate expressions of hie intentions as a painter; and there are others, like Leslie himself, to whom Constable wrote in friendly freedom.
Leslie's part in arranging all this correspondence was done with admirable discrimination. His daty was not altogether easy, for apart from the task of cutting out what was trivial, or of no concern to the public, he had to spare the suscepti- bilities of many contemporaries who came in for vigorous handling in the letters. A friend and fellow Academician could do no less than subdue as far as possible these evidences of hostility. Under the semi-transparency of initials a certain amount remains, and an almost ludicrous effect is produced by passages like this : " One ambition I will hold fast. I am determined not to deserve the praise of S—, H—, C- D—, W—, R—, &c., &c., &c." It could hardly be expected of the present editor that he should reverse his father's judgment as to what should be given, and what withheld, but perhaps at this time of day there would be no harm in learning Constable's views on some of the eminent bubbles among his contemporaries whom time has already pricked.
An advantage to readers of this Life lies in the fact that so much of Constable's work has now found a house in our national collections, whether at Trafalgar Square or the Kensington Museum. With the book in hand it is possible to follow his struggles over this picture and that, to watch the painter swayed between the poles of the masters he admired and his own discoveries in Nature, to compare directly the work of the modern, with his passion for "light and dew and rustling leaves," with the more ancient exemplars of landscape-painting, with Ruysdael and Claude. We would suggest to the publishers of the book that for the ordinary art-student who has not two guineas to spare, it would be a good thing to bring out a cheap edition of the tent without the illustrations, since the pictures are many of them so accessible. Many of the plates, however, are excellent reproductions of those mezzotints whose character renders so closely that of Constable's painting. The extraordinary "Stoke Neyland Church," a design for a picture never painted, is itself a desirable possession ; another valuable plate is the reproduction of the sketch of Constable done by MacRae in the life school of the Academy. We give a warm welcome to this new edition of a volume of letters not unworthy of a place near those of Lamb, Keats, and Fitzgerald.
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