Page:Constable by C. J. Holmes.djvu/16

 affectionate nature and sound common sense. He was the first really to appreciate Constable's art, and to show his appreciation in a practical form; while it would be hard to overpraise his tact and tenderness in times of trouble.

During the last two years of his courtship Constable met with trouble enough, apart from the anxieties arising from the uncertainty of success in his profession. He lost his mother in the spring of 1815, and his father about a year later. The death of his mother was an especially heavy blow to his affectionate nature. She had not only done all she could to bring his courtship to a successful issue, but had continued to encourage his artistic efforts, when his professional prospects seemed most desperate. In 1811, after the British Institution had bought a picture of Benjamin West's for £3000, she writes to her son: "In truth, my dear John, though in all human probability my head will be laid low long ere it comes to pass, yet, with my present light, I can perceive no reason why you should not, one day, with diligence and attention, be the performer of a picture worth £3000." Eighty years after her death this fond wish was more than realised when Constable's Stratford Mill fetched nearly £9000 at the Huth sale.

The young married couple lived for the next few years at a small house, No. 1 Keppel Street, Russell Square, where their two eldest children, John and Maria, were born. In 1819 Constable's anxieties were lessened by the receipt of his share (£4000) of his father's property, while Mrs. Constable inherited a similar amount from her grandfather Dr. Rhudde. How much his professional reputation had increased may be judged from the fact that he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy towards the end of the year. His art was never more perfect than at this period, but his pictures did not sell readily; and though Archdeacon Fisher bought The White Horse and Stratford Mill, Constable was still unable to regard his landscape work as a certain source of income—even three years later we find him writing to his friend for the loan of twenty or thirty pounds. In 1822, however, he moved into a larger house, 35 Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, which had belonged to Joseph Farington, R.A., whom he had consulted twenty-seven years earlier as to his chance of success as a painter. The move had become almost a necessity, as his family had been increased by the birth of a son and a daughter (Charles and Isabel), and the artist needed more room for his painting. In the autumn of 1823 he spent more than a month with Sir George Beaumont at Coleorton Hall—the longest time he ever spent apart from his wife and children. A year later, after long negotiations, two of his large pictures, one of them being The Haywain, now in the National Gallery, were exhibited in the Louvre. Here their merit and originality were soon recognised; they were removed to places of honour, they raised a storm of discussion in the papers, and finally, when Charles x. visited the Exhibition, they gained the artist a gold medal. In the following year he won a similar distinction at Lille with his White Horse; and in November his third son Alfred was born. Alfred Constable, who inherited something of his father's artistic taste, was drowned by the upsetting of a boat at Goring, when he had just completed his twenty-seventh year. In 1827 Constable moved to Well Walk,