John Constable
John Constable
John Constable, RAwas an English Romantic painter. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for his landscape paintings of Dedham Vale, the area surrounding his home—now known as "Constable Country"—which he invested with an intensity of affection. "I should paint my own places best", he wrote to his friend John Fisher in 1821, "painting is but another word for feeling"...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionArtist
Date of Birth11 June 1776
beauty beautiful ugly-things
I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may - light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.
horse lying grateful
Still I should paint my own places best; painting is with me but another word for feeling, and I associate "my careless boyhood" with all that lies on the banks of the Stour; those scenes made me a painter, and I am grateful; that is, I had often thought of pictures of them before ever I touched a pencil, and your picture ['The White Horse'] is one of the strongest instance I can recollect of it.
paint airy steam
Turner has outdone himself; he seems to paint with tinted steam, so evanescent and so airy.
slime world lord
The world is rid of Lord Byron, but the deadly slime of his touch still remains.
hands together gains
It is much to my advantage that several of my pictures should be seen together, as it displays to advantage their varieties of conception and also of execution, and what they gain by the mellowing hand of time which should never be forced or anticipated. Thus my pictures when first coming forth have a comparative harshness which at the time acts to my disadvantage.
ugly-things saws ugly
I never saw an ugly thing in my life.
trying firsts forget
When I sit down to make a sketch from nature, the first thing I try to do is to forget that I have ever seen a picture.
feelings emotion painting
Painting is with me but another word for feeling.
glasses daylight littles
I paint by all the daylight we have and that is little enough, less perhaps than you have by much... imagine to yourself how a purl must look through a burnt glass.
sheep escaping long
But the sound of water escaping from mill-dams, &c., willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork, I love such things. Shakespeare could make everything poetical; he tells us of poor Tom's haunts among "sheep cotes and mills." As long as I do paint, I shall never cease to paint such places. They have always been my delight.