Page:Constable by C. J. Holmes.djvu/34

 about 2 feet by 2 feet 6 inches. It is less successful, as a whole, than the smaller studies, and indicates that as yet Constable was unable to blend the bright realism of his sketches with the harmony of tone and colour that are needed to make a picture. Possibly this experiment may have shown him his weakness: at anyrate, during the next few years he went back to the study of the old masters with renewed earnestness. Even his method of sketching from nature was altered for a time. The little painting of Sunset, which dates from the early part of this reaction from naturalism, is laid in with solid pigment, more forcibly handled than in the Cumberland studies, and then toned into deeper harmony by a strong transparent glaze.

Much of his time during the two following years was spent in copying family portraits for Lord Dysart. Among these pictures at Hyde Park Corner were several works by Reynolds. The extraordinary influence that this communion with the older master had upon Constable may be judged from his altar-piece painted in 1809 for Nayland Church, where it may still be seen. The Brantham altar-piece, painted five years before, was ill drawn, crude in colour, and feebly painted. The Nayland picture, Christ Blessing the Elements, is freely and broadly treated in a scheme of deep liquid colour, toned with a rich warm glaze, which from the size and nature of the cracks must have contained a large proportion of asphaltum. The general appearance of the work, in fact, is far more like Lawrence than Constable. The figure is well posed, and the brushwork is clever, though rather loose in the head and hands. Judging from a rough scrawl in one of Constable's sketch-books, the size of the picture seems to have been reduced and its shape altered, when it was restored and set under glass in the reredos some twenty years ago.

To the same period we may assign the beautiful picture. At East Bergholt, Suffolk—Dawn, in the possession of Mr. G. A. Phillips. One might think it only an experiment in the manner of Gainsborough, were it not that the harmonies in warm brown and sober green which the older master handled so perfectly, are replaced by a cooler scheme of colour like that of a dusky aquamarine. The brushwork is swift and free, and no attempt is made to give a literal portrait of the Suffolk hillside with its trim hedges and scattered elms. All that we are shown is a vision of morning when the air is still dim with the mist that drifts up 14