Page:Constable by C. J. Holmes.djvu/32

 but little indication of genius, or even of exceptional talent. The visit to Derbyshire and his enthusiasm for Girtin had given him, at the age of twenty-five, a certain readiness in the use of water-colours, and some acquaintance with the simpler principles of landscape composition. During the next five years assiduous study and imitation of the old masters, more especially of Ruysdael, taught him much about the technique of oil-painting as applied to simple subjects and conventional effects. Thus at the beginning of his thirtieth year, though Constable could not be called an original artist, he had a very fair acquaintance with the tradition and practice of his art, and therefore a sound base for any experiments he wished to make in the future.

In fits of reaction from these technical labours Constable returned time after time to the study of the Dedham Valley. Indeed, in the constant alternation between art and nature his training bears some outward resemblance to that of Millet. Nevertheless, a great gulf really separates the two men. Constable's painting, in youth as in later life, is primarily inspired by a sincere affection for the actual objects and places he depicts. He regards them rather as things to be loved in themselves than as pictorial material to be disposed this way or that as an artist's taste or knowledge might suggest. Hence his tendency, in holding the balance between nature and art, is to an all-round compromise, and not to that abstraction and emphasis of particular facts which characterizes the best painting of Millet. Millet, thus, in spite of all his "local colour," is the property of the whole world. Constable remains the unique master of English rustic scenery. 12