Martin Gayford

His final paintings are like Jackson Pollocks: RA’s Late Constable reviewed

The British have always got Constable wrong. They’ve admired him as an exponent of English cosiness and failed to appreciate his painterly brilliance

A flickering vortex, reminiscent of Jackson Pollock: ‘A Farmhouse Near the Water’s Edge (“On the Stour”)’ c.1834–6, by John Constable. Credit: Photo © The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC 
issue 27 November 2021

On 13 July 1815, John Constable wrote to his fiancée, Maria Bicknell, about this and that. Interspersed with a discussion of the fine weather and the lack of village gossip, he added a disclaimer on the subject posterity would most like to hear about: his art. ‘You know that I do not like to talk of what I am about in painting (I am such a conjuror).’

Perhaps by that he meant he did not like to give away how he did his tricks. As Late Constable, the magnificent exhibition currently at the Royal Academy, makes clear, he was a true magician with paintbrush and palette. Before your eye he performs astonishing transformations. Take, for example, the little oil sketch ‘Rainstorm over the Sea’, c.1824–8.

It’s a picture of a sudden squall. A dark, mulberry-coloured cloud has appeared above the waves off Brighton beach (which are themselves a steely blue). Out to sea, the deluge is already falling in great slooshing curtains.

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