An Artist at Home The 'Letters of John Constable, R.A.,
to C. R. Leslie, R.A. (Constable. 15s.) The Letters of John Constable, RA., to C. R. Leslie, R.A., written between 1826 and 1837, show us the great landscape painter as a very homely man with none of the affectations we are apt to associate with the artistic temperament. During most of the time he is a widower, and the health and happiness of his children are quite frankly his first anxiety and chief delight. On this side his character would seem to be little short of perfect. Where his work was concerned, however, we must admit him somewhat sharp-tongued and jealous, not a charitable critic of other men's pictures, and sometimes a little wanting in the sort of social assurance which a proper dignity should lend to talent. " It is a hard thing to refuse the great," he writes, " they are always angered," their " reasoning powers " being " blinded by their rank." On another occasion we find him unable to write a letter to a patron because he does not know how to word it—and wall not risk a mistake.
It is not easy to realize nowadays how much Constable felt himself an innovator and how bitter the knowledge of his own originality of conception and style often made him toward the artistic conventions of the day.
Much ruffled on one occasion by the comments of a critic, " I told him that I had perhaps other notions of art than picture admirers in general." In the same letter which describes the incident, he reflects : " What a sad thing it is that this lovely art is so wrested to its own destruction Used only to blind our eyes, and to prevent us from seeing the sun shine, the fields bloom, the trees blossom, and from hearing the foliage rustle ; while only black, rubbed out, and dirty canvases take the place of God's own works." A bit of heart- felt praise however soon sets his mind at rest. " Lady Morley was here yesterday. On seeing the ' House,' she exclaimed, ' How fresh, how dewy, how exhilarating ! ' I told her half of this, if I could think I deserved it, was worth all the talk and cant about pictures in the world."
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