Page:Constable by C. J. Holmes.djvu/14

 figures," now in the National Gallery (No. 61)—which impressed him deeply. Sir George also owned a small collection of drawings by Girtin, which he advised Constable to study. The young man's passion for art increased with time, though he was exact in performing his duties as a miller, till Golding Constable consented to his visiting London with the view of ascertaining his prospects as a professional painter.

He was furnished with a letter of introduction to Joseph Farington, R.A., whose name is now only remembered on account of the coloured aquatints after his landscape drawings which are common objects in curiosity shops. Though Farington was not himself a great artist, having most of the mannerisms of his master Wilson and few of his excellences, he was sufficiently open-minded to be able to recognise the young man's originality, and informed him that his style of landscape would some day form a distinct feature in the art. Constable also made the acquaintance of "Antiquity" Smith, the biographer of the sculptor Nollekens, who gave him much sound advice. He corresponded freely with Smith during the next few years, chiefly on matters relating to art; and in 1797, when his prospects of painting seemed worse than uncertain, we find him writing:

"I must now take your advice and attend to my father's business, as we are likely soon to lose an old servant (our clerk), who has been with us eighteen years; and now I see plainly it will be my lot to walk through life in a path contrary to that in which my inclination would lead me."

Nevertheless, two years later, before he was twenty-three years old, he had given up business for ever, and become a student at the Royal Academy. Judging from his letters to Dunthorne, he seems at first to have devoted most of his time to copying the works of the old masters, with the intention of acquiring a skill in execution which would enable him to face nature more boldly. In 1800 he writes that he is working from nature in Helmingham Park, about ten miles north of Ipswich; and in 1801 he paid a visit to Derbyshire. In 1801 he exhibited for the first time at the Academy. He had been greatly helped in his work by the advice and encouragement of the President, Benjamin West, who now did him a still greater service by preventing him from accepting a drawing-mastership which had been offered him. A year later Constable went in an East Indiaman from London to Deal. On the voyage he executed a large number of sketches, which, owing to a hurried departure, he left on board ship. Ultimately he had the good luck to recover them, and they gave him material for several of his exhibited works. In 1805 he spent two months in the Lake District, where, if one may judge from his sketch-books, he seems to have been chiefly impressed by the lower end of Borrowdale. During the next few years he made the acquaintance of Stothard, Wilkie, and Jackson, an acquaintance that ripened into a lifelong friendship; while his technical powers were notably improved by a commission from the Earl of Dysart to copy a number of family pictures, chiefly by Sir Joshua Reynolds. A time of trial, however, was in store for the artist which prevented this improvement from having much immediate effect upon his prospects.