Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/44

 London he changes his lodgings from Cecil Street (1799) to 50 Rathbone Place (1802). It was not till this year that he exhibited at the Royal Academy, and the work that he sent was a landscape. West was president of the Royal Academy at this time, and gave Constable kind encouragement. Constable used to say that the best lesson he ever had was from West, who told him to remember 'that light and shadow never stand still.' Another good piece of advice given him by the president, who himself occasionally tried landscape, was 'Your darks should look like darks of silver, and not of lead or slate.' After this he devoted himself to the study of nature and landscape art, and spent the summer months in the country, 'living nearly always in the fields and seeing nobody but field labourers.' After this, with the exception of two altar-pieces, painted for churches in Suffolk at Brantham (1804), 'Christ blessing Little Children 'and Nayland (1809), 'Christ blessing the Bread and Wine,' and an occasional portrait, there is no record of his again leaving that path of art which appears to have been marked out for him by nature herself.

The result of the exhibition appears to have fixed his principles in art and the rules of his conduct for life. 'In the last two years,' he writes, 'I have been running after pictures and seeking truth at second-hand. I have not endeavoured to represent nature with the same elevation of mind with which I set out, but have rather tried to make my performances look like the work of other men. I am come to a determination to make no idle visits this summer nor to give up any time to commonplace people. I shall return to Bergholt, where I shall endeavour to get a pure and unaffected manner of representing the scenes that may employ me. There is little or nothing in the exhibition worth looking up to. There is room enough for a natural painter. The great vice of the present day is bravura, an attempt to do something beyond the truth. Fashion always had and always will have its day, but truth in all things only will last, and can only have just claims on posterity. I have reaped considerable benefit from exhibiting; it shows me where I am, and, in fact, tells me what nothing else could.' This year he was offered, through Dr. John Fisher, rector of Langham, Suffolk, a situation as drawing-master at a school, but he, by the advice and with the assistance of West, refused it without hurting the feelings of his patron. This Fisher was soon afterwards made bishop, first of Exeter and then of Salisbury. He was introduced to Constable by the Hurlocks, and was always a good friend to the artist till his death. He must not, however, be confounded with the Rev. John Fisher, his nephew, Constable's more intimate friend and enthusiastic admirer, who afterwards became the bishop's chaplain and archdeacon of Berkshire. A year later (1803) Constable attained complete confidence in his powers, and writes: 'I feel more than ever a decided conviction that I shall some time or other make some good pictures—pictures that shall be valuable to posterity if I do not reap the benefit of them. He was unfortunately almost alone in this conviction. He was endeavouring to do what had never been done before, to paint English landscape without 'fal-de-lal or fiddle-de-dee,' as he expressed it. He was altogether too original and too English to succeed. Wilson's art had been based upon Claude, and Gainsborough's on the Dutch school, and connoisseurs who had not bought their landscapes when they were alive were beginning to pay good prices for them now. But Constable followed nobody, not even in method—he painted effects which had never been painted before in a style unassociated with the name of any great painter. Moreover, his subjects were humble, no lakes or castles, mountains or temples, and it was scarcely yet recognised that the daily beauties of ordinary English scenery were worthy subjects for a great artist, and worthy possessions for men of taste. So Constable had to content himself with his own opinions and feelings, and to go on steadily in a path which he knew was the right and only one for him. His enthusiasm and patience were equal to the great occasion, and they were not altogether without sympathy. His friend, the Rev. John Fisher (sixteen years his junior) believed in him, and bought as many of his pictures as he could afford, and his maternal uncle, David Pyke Watts, was kind and liberal to him. He could also soon reckon as his friends several eminent artists, among whom, besides those already mentioned, were Jackson and Wilkie (to whom he sat for the head of the physician in 'The Sick Lady,' and again later in life for another physician in Wilkie's picture of Columbus) and Stothard, with whom he used to take long walks. Nevertheless he did not sell a single picture to a stranger till 1814. When he was thirty-eight years old, what little money he earned came from portraits and copies of pictures. Several of the latter wore copies of portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds, painted for the Earl of Dysart. He did not strive to make a show. His pictures at the Academy were not large or striking in subject, and were generally described in the catalogue by such simple titles as 'Landscape' or 'Study from Nature.' The only work he ever exhibited with a subject