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Clark Art Institute, part 5
John Constable, The Wheat Field, 1816. Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA.

Clark Art Institute, part 5

On the Clark Art Institute, in Williamstown, MA, see the first post in this series. This post is available as a video at https://youtu.be/XZ98s3XAcQQ

This week: British landscape art that’s contemporary with the Neoclassicist and Romantic works we saw last week. During the 18th century, wealthy British making the Grand Tour on the Continent brought home works by artists such as Claude Lorraine (see my second post on the Clark). By the early 19th century, British landscape painting was flourishing, with Gainsborough, Constable, and Turner its most notable practitioners. Their works became well known in France beginning in the 1820s. In both subject and style, British landscape painters influence the Naturalists and Impressionists, many of whom prefer to paint pure landscapes.

Sir Edwin and Lady Manton bequeathed to the Clark some 300 British paintings, drawings, and prints – mostly landscapes. Below are a handful of the Constables and Turners. As it happens, I didn’t take any decent photos of the Manton Collection’s Gainsboroughs: see them here.

Constable

John Constable (1776-1837) revolutionized landscape painting via his fascination with precisely observing and recording transient effects such as foliage, light, and clouds. To capture those effects, he’d often do sketches outdoors before tackling a large-scale work in his studio. Here’s a selection of Constable’s sketches and paintings at the Clark. They span the years 1800 to 1829.

John Constable, Stratford Saint Mary from the Coombs, ca. 1800. Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA.
John Constable, The Wheat Field, 1816. Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA.
John Constable, Malvern Hall, 1821. Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA.
John Constable, Yarmouth Jetty, 1822-1823. Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA.
Detail of John Constable, Yarmouth Jetty, 1822-1823. Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA.
John Constable, Salisbury Cathedral from the River Nadder, ca. 1829. Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA.
John Constable, Waterloo Bridge Seen from Whitehall Stairs, ca. 1829. Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA.

Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) began his career in the 1790s by painting conventional landscapes. The title of the 1822 painting below is a hat-tip to Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, and the style is a tribute to the Rococo painter Watteau. Watteau’s style is similar to that of Boucher, one of whose paintings we saw in this post on the Clark.

Turner, What You Will!, 1822. Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA.
Detail of Turner, What You Will!, 1822. Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA.

Over the next few decades, Turner shifted to the use of brilliant colors, and then to a style in which objects seem to dissolve into shimmering mist, as in the 1840 painting below. Turner’s style was enormously influential on French Impressionists, especially Monet.

Turner, Rockets and Blue Lights (Close at Hand) to Warn Steamboats of Shoal Water, 1840. Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA.

Next week: the annual Capitalist Christmas post.

More

  • For a very brief introduction to landscape painting by Gainsborough, Constable, and Turner, see this review of a 2012 exhibition at the Royal Academy in London.
  • For more posts on museums, click this tag.
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