Page:Constable by C. J. Holmes.djvu/40

 old masters. His experiments in landscape were for a time confined to modest proportions, and he did not begin to paint on a large scale until he had assured himself of the soundness of his principles of work. The progress of his thoughts may be traced from the Dawn (1809) to the sketches of Bergholt Church (1812), and thence to the Boat-building (1815), The Cottage in a Cornfield (1817), The Haywain (1821), and The Leaping Horse (1825). By comparing these pictures one can see how Constable depended for the unity of his compositions upon a chiaroscuro sketch in cool transparent brown, into which his local colour is floated, at first sparingly, afterwards with ever-increasing vigour and boldness, till at last in The Leaping Horse we find a picture which, at first sight, looks quite modern, so entirely has the monochrome foundation been concealed by subsequent solid painting. This single series of pictures may, in fact, be regarded as an epitome of the transition from the landscape of the old masters to that of the moderns. It is also sufficient evidence that the first and greatest of modern landscape painters did not discard the elementary principles which guided his predecessors, but only adapted them to new conditions. That saying of his, "I was always determined that my pictures should have chiaroscuro if they had nothing else," was no empty boast. The most advanced modern could hardly dislike conventional fusty colour more than Constable, yet Constable did not hesitate to use a brown monochrome as a foundation for his large pictures, because he had found that without it he was unable to make a picture at all. That he learned to disguise this foundation is not the least of his contributions to the development of painting. 20