John Constable
John Constable was an English Romantic artist who lived from 1776 to 1837. Constable was born and raised in East Bergholt, England to a relatively wealthy corn merchant. Though he was the second son, his older brother had an intellectual disability, so John was expected to take over the family business.
In his formative years, Constable took sketching trips around the surrounding countryside, and this is when he fell in love with art. He was able to convince his father to let him pursue art as a career. Though nature and landscapes were his passion, Constable did a number of portrait paintings to support his family. In England, he only ever sold 20 paintings during his lifetime. His art was much more popular in France where his paintings sold well. However, Constable never wanted to travel saying “I would rather be a poor man in England than a rich man abroad”.
When he was 40, Constable married his childhood friend, Maria Bicknell and the two enjoyed a very happy marriage. Shortly after she birthed their seventh child and after just twelve years of marriage, Maria got infected with tuberculosis and died at the young age of 41. Her sudden death was devastating to Constable, who wrote to his brother, “hourly do I feel the loss of my departed Angel—God only knows how my children will be brought up…the face of the World is totally changed to me”.
Constable’s most common subject was the landscape where he lived, which is now referred to as ‘Constable Country.’ Although he is associated with the Romantic movement, Constable’s work was based much more on the natural landscape around where he lived. His contemporaries often focused on more exotic landscapes and ancient ruins which made Constable’s art less popular during his lifetime and therefore less successful. It was Constable’s realistic landscapes in a romantic world that made him a quiet rebel. His loose brush strokes and lighter palette created a new way of doing landscapes and was the inspiration for the Barbizon school of art.
John Constable died at the age of 60 from indigestion from heart failure. He was buried with his wife, Maria, in Hampstead, England.
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