fn1 The altarpiece was in St Michael’s, Manningtree, until it closed in 1965; then it went to All Saints, Feering, where Reverend Driffield had been resident curate; it is now in St-Mary-the-Virgin, Dedham.
11. Trying the Sea (1824)
THE PROBLEM CHILD, Constable’s older brother Golding, wasn’t so mentally or physically handicapped as some thought. In early February 1824 he wrote Constable a literate thank-you letter for putting in a good word for him with Lady Louisa Manners, now nearly eighty and Countess of Dysart since the death of her brother; the Earl had been a good patron to Constable as the painter of family portraits. The Dysart woods at Helmingham and Bentley, close by in Suffolk, were meant to be looked after by a steward named Wenn, who was looking after his own interests and overcharging Lady Dysart for fencing. Constable recommended Golding to Lady Dysart to replace Wenn as warden of her woods. Golding enjoyed hunting and shooting, and might prevent the misuse of her land. Wenn – ‘a lying low fellow’, according to Constable – complained to the Countess about this interference, but Constable went in April to take a personal look at the woods and back up Golding with his own report on matters (and also to take to the Whalleys and his brothers and sisters his Easter-time gift of hot-cross buns). Abram meanwhile urged Golding to place a notice in the Ipswich paper, before the shooting season started, warning people not to trespass or shoot game in the Dysart woods. Lady Dysart occasionally invited Constable to her houses in Pall Mall and Richmond; gifts of venison from her frequently arrived for the Constables; and Constable sent on to her Golding’s letters.
Although John Fisher continued to advise Constable it was a bad time for his health to be in London, painting, Constable spent his usual winter-into-spring session of hard work in front of his easel in Charlotte Street. The Academy exhibition waited for no artist. For a while his subject was Waterloo Bridge. He had been making sketches for it since 1817, when the Prince Regent opened the bridge, and had done several oil studies. However, he had had trouble fixing on the point of view, particularly in determining how high the horizon should be. Two of the oil sketches were impressionistic; two of the paintings (one now in the RA, one in Cincinatti) were more finished, the larger being – as Bishop Fisher noted – Canaletto-like in its polished detail. One Waterloo Bridge picture took John Fisher’s fancy; in April 1820 he asked Constable not to let it go without informing him – if he was ‘strong enough in purse’, he might buy it. Constable completed this or another of the same subject on 17 January 1824, a painting he called ‘a small balloon to let off as a forerunner of the large one’. He took up the subject again several times in the following years, in November 1825 telling Fisher that he was ‘hard and fast on my Waterloo which shall be done for the next exhibition’. And a week later: ‘My Waterloo like a blister begins to stick closer and closer – & to disturb my nights …’ Yet some things with him had to mature like old compost; it was not until 1832 that the ‘great Bridge’, now called Whitehall Stairs, reached the Royal Academy.1
Somerset House terrace and St Paul’s, from the north end of Waterloo Bridge
In 1824 what surfaced instead – as though from a beyond-the-grave prompting by Joseph Farington – was a Stour subject that seems to have been roughed out a year earlier: The Lock. It was a ‘large upright’, about fifty-six inches by forty-eight. It showed the downstream end of Flatford Lock with Dedham church in the distance – the tiny tower framed by the lock gate, a leafy tree branch and the brawny arms of a bargee working with a crowbar on the winch. (An Academy Life-class study of a muscle-straining nude man he had made sixteen years or so before apparently furnished material for the bargee’s action, as did his own Stour-side memories of inland navigation.) To modern taste, the full-sized sketch – fleshed out in oils roughly brushed and palette-knifed – is happily less finished than the upright canvas which went to Somerset House by mid-April. The Lock was his sole entry that year. He had thrown himself fully into it; he wrote to John Fisher, ‘It is going to its audit with all its deficiencies in hand … I have done my best.’2
For a change his best struck gold. Constable’s colleagues liked it even though some were annoyed by his execution. He wrote to Fisher, ‘Perhaps the sacrifices I make for lightness and brightness is too much, but these things are the essence of landscape … I do hope that my exertions may at last turn towards popularity; ’tis you that have too long held my head above water. Although I have a good deal of the devil in me, I think I should have been broken hearted before this time but for you.’ The Lock was sold on the first day, the private view of the RA show. It was bought for 150 guineas, frame included, by James Morrison, a well-to-do businessman. John Jackson, the portrait painter, told Constable that Lord Fitzwilliam would have bought it if Morrison hadn’t got to it first. The press generally approved, the Literary Gazette declaring, ‘The character of his details, like those of Wilson, appear as if struck out with a single touch,’ and noting that this was something which ‘comes only by great practice and much previous thought and calculation’. To top this, Constable reached agreement with John Arrowsmith, the Frenchman who had been after his Hay Wain for two years. The dealer now wanted that picture as part of a package of several paintings for which he offered more money and the promise of immense enhancement of Constable’s reputation. Fisher, who had also wanted The Hay Wain but couldn’t manage it because of the prevailing agricultural depression, liked the idea of it being sold to France: ‘The stupid English public, which has no judgement of its own, will begin to think that there is something in you if the French make your works national property. You have long laid under a mistake. Men do not purchase pictures because they admire them, but because others covet them.’ Constable agreed to let Arrowsmith have The Bridge and a smaller painting, Yarmouth Jetty, along with The Hay Wain for £250.3
‘The Frenchman’, as Constable referred to the Parisian dealer, was approved by Paul Colnaghi, the printseller, but Constable told Fisher he wasn’t going to let the paintings out of his hands till paid. However, Arrowsmith sent the money promptly and Constable, with Morrison’s payment, suddenly found himself more than £400 to the good. Arrowsmith – despite his English-sounding name – was only just conversant in that tongue but had good connections; his brother-in-law, the photographer Louis Daguerre, had exhibited a diorama in Regent’s Park in 1823.4 As well as dealing in paintings, Arrowsmith had a restaurant in Paris (one room was later called the Salon Constable). This may have helped him gauge the mood of the day, hearing over the table d’hôte what Delacroix, Géricault and Nodier had to say about Constable. Arrowsmith was soon back in London and brought a colleague, Charles Schroth. In late May seven more small pictures were commissioned from 35 Charlotte Street, three for Schroth, four for Arrowsmith. To crown the artist’s feeling that not just France lay open for him, the director of the Antwerp academy called on Constable after seeing The Lock at the Royal Academy and assured him his pictures would ‘make an impression on the continent’.
Although Constable at that moment showed no signs of going much further than Hampstead, the Continent was getting closer, and he was aware of it. He mentioned to Fisher in a round-up of London news at the end of May, ‘The other day (what is it that this great town does not afford) two people flew over our heads in a balloon – and were knocked on their heads in a park near Croydon.’ In fact, the balloonist Thomas Harris was killed but his aerial companion Miss Stocks survived. Another recent death had been that of Byron, ‘martyr’ to Hellenic freedom, on 10 April. Constable, in the unforgiving mood of a frequent reader of John Bull, the right-wing weekly, thought the world well rid of the poet and adventurer, ‘but the deadly slime of his touch still remains’.
Someone who managed to cope well with Constable’s ups and downs was Johnny Dunthorne. In May, now aged twenty-six, he came to work as Constable’s assistant in Charlotte Street. He brought with him a breath of Suffolk air and the latest East Bergholt news. Constable’s sister Mary was looking for a new lightweight carriage, per
haps a landaulet, and Johnny was roped in to the search Constable was asked to make in London. The Constable brothers all agreed Johnny was the right person for Charlotte Street. Abram wrote, ‘He is certainly the most extraordinary young man within my knowledge, so clever, so active, & so innocent, ’tis marvellous.’ In a letter to Golding of 3 December 1824, Constable said Johnny ‘is very useful to me and is getting me forward in my things [–] he is handy and obliging – that he will do any thing [–] he will copy any of my pictures beautifully or go [on] the most trifling errand’.5 Constable took him to see the 1824 Academy exhibition. Johnny had helped with The Hay Wain by providing sketches of a farm wagon and now he served as apprentice, preparing Constable’s paints and palette, ‘squaring up’, tracing, putting in outlines, underpainting and copying. He helped lay in some of the versions of Salisbury Cathedral and eventually assisted Constable by working on some of his ‘dead horses’, thereby diminishing the number of forlorn canvases stacked up in his studio. He sometimes took Constable’s place at his easel, working on paintings of either the Stour or the Thames.6 While there, he befriended the pigeons of a Charlotte Street neighbour that perched on the easel.7
Johnny was working too at becoming an artist. For Mary he painted a picture of the Constables’ former home, East Bergholt House; he was painting landscapes of East Bergholt scenery, for instance A Country Lane, which looks very much like the lane to Flatford, with the view across Dedham Vale. In the ensuing few years, encouraged by Constable, he sent some of his paintings to the Academy and the British Institution – pleasant enough pictures judging by two in Colchester Museum’s collection, though his skies are unexceptional and the light in them seems artificial. Mary and Abram went on worrying about him, anxious about his regular attendance at church but pleased that his painting was ‘wonderfully improved’. With the passing of Dr Rhudde and Maria’s absence from East Bergholt we hear no more of Dunthorne Senior’s ‘perverse and evil ways’. (In the village, the handyman-artist was as he grew older in fact respected for his integrity.) After the breakdown of the friendship between the older Dunthorne and young Constable, it was fortunate that the artist – now approaching forty-eight – was able to befriend young Dunthorne. Having ‘my friend’ Johnny around cheered up Constable as Maria’s illness left him feeling stranded by fate. Maria wrote to him from Brighton in mid-June 1824, ‘How lucky you have Mr Dunthorne.’ Johnny was good at keeping at bay such unwanted visitors as Peter Coxe and the Reverend Judkin. Constable took him along to church services at Fitzroy Chapel and passed on to Johnny some of the chores Sir George Beaumont asked him to perform, cleaning and repairing pictures. Other distinguished clients followed, including Lord Westmorland, Lord Cadogan and the Marquess of Aylesbury. Constable might have taken credit as the begetter of Johnny Dunthorne’s restorer’s workshop in Grafton Street, off Fitzroy Square.
In Paris, in his absence, Constable had a splendid reception by way of the paintings Arrowsmith had brought there.8 In the Journal de Paris Stendhal welcomed these ‘paysages magnifiques’. Fisher sent him a paragraph from a Salisbury journal mentioning the success of two pictures exhibited in the Louvre by ‘Mr Constable the eminent artist’. Arrowsmith reported directly that Constable’s pictures were causing a sensation among French artists; the Paris correspondent of The Times had even mentioned their arrival.9 One French critic, calling the paintings ‘a miracle’, was worried that they might seduce his compatriots from their proper allegiance. ‘What is to become of the great Poussin?’ was Constable’s paraphrase of this warning. But he was obviously pleased by ‘the great sensation they seem to have made’. He was also flattered by a letter from France addressed to him: ‘Monsieur John Constable, Peintre paysagiste, 35 Charlotte St, Fitzroy Square, à Londres.’ He said nevertheless that he had ‘not the least thought of going among them’.
He had enough to do where he was. He had written to John Fisher in early May about Maria’s health: ‘We are told we must try the sea.’ He sent his ailing wife and his children to Brighton at once, accompanied by Mrs Roberts and Ellen, their chief maid. Sea-bathing had become fashionable, here and in other new resorts such as Sidmouth and Margate. The Prince Regent had frequented Brighton and as King had commissioned John Nash to remodel the Royal Pavilion. A good coach service got Londoners seeking salubrious air down in a morning or Brighton-based stockbrokers up to town, and this meant Constable could easily go back and forth to his studio. The family went to the west end of the expanding town, to a rented house in a relatively new enclave called Mrs Sobers’ Gardens, in Western Place. Mrs Sobers lived next door, the beach was a short way to the south with the rote of the sea on the shingle easily heard and seagulls crying overhead, and open fields lay immediately to the west in the direction of Shoreham and Worthing.10
Because of Brighton, Constable was leading a split existence, down there for weekends and holidays, and up in Charlotte Street the rest of the time. Johnny helped pack Arrowsmith’s pictures for shipment to Paris but was less successful – for once – in fending off the Reverend Judkin. Judkin called on 27 May bringing some of his pictures which Constable found ‘very bad & cold. I should be glad that he never came again.’ A few weeks later Constable encountered Judkin’s painting Stolen Moments in a gallery; it was ‘too bad & vulgar to look at’. Judkin then made the mistake of calling in Charlotte Street and asking Constable how he liked Stolen Moments. Constable couldn’t help saying it wasn’t a subject a clergyman should paint and, as a picture, was ‘very far indeed from what it ought to be’. In 1825 Judkin aroused Constable again to say, ‘I am sick of “Amateurs” – they are the greatest enemies the living art has.’ Judkin was oblivious or turned the other cheek, and the following year penned a ‘Miltonic sonnet’ which set Constable on a pedestal alongside Wordsworth. Another hopeful in Charlotte Street was Mr Appleton, a tub-maker, who came to ask Constable to sell him ‘a damaged picture … cheap’ to hang in a room he was renting out.11
The double life left both husband and wife in need of news from one another. At Maria’s urging, Constable kept a journal.12 He started it on 19 May and sent it down about once a week, often courtesy of someone he knew who was heading for the seaside. He seems to have written up his diary on the night of the day concerned or the morning after, mentioning the sending-off of Arrowsmith’s paintings, the cleaning and oiling of Tinney’s picture, the arrival of mail from East Bergholt, and visits from Henry Sass, Thomas Stothard and W.R. Bigg as well as the usual loungers. He told Maria about his health – he had taken some doses of calomel in warm water for a bout of illness until Manning, the apothecary, advised against it – and told her what he had to eat. The undermaid Sarah had been left in London to look after 35 Charlotte Street and its busy occupants, Constable and Johnny Dunthorne. When Sarah was ill, on 2 June, Constable recorded: ‘Mutton broth for dinner.’ But she had clearly recovered the next day when he enjoyed a ‘very nice’ beefsteak pudding. Tinney had generously if reluctantly given up Stratford Mill again, and it was on display in the Charlotte Street studio where Constable tinkered with it despite Tinney’s request that he leave well alone. After reading the journal Maria wrote back, telling ‘My dear John’ not to send any more butter; it wouldn’t keep and in any case the Brighton butter was beautiful. A bit later she wished he hadn’t wasted carriage charges on a box of things he sent down – not only some medical powders from Mr Drew but nine pounds of loaf sugar. She had taken several rides, had walked to the chalybeate wells, both those in Shoreham and that uphill nearby, and, what would surely please him, was studying skies all day. The noise the children were making made her forget what she meant to say next. She tried to keep the family accounts in order and was upset when she was two sovereigns out. She was reading a book on education so as to improve the children and added, ‘I am perfectly satisfied with my four without wishing for any more.’ Was this a hint to John?
He missed Maria. On 25 May he wrote, ‘As good a night as could be expected without my Fish.’ He ended another en
try as if she were there: ‘Goodnight my darling Fish.’ He thought he needed sea air as much as she, complaining on 28 May, ‘My cheeks are always disagreeable hot, and pains in my stomach and shoulders & eyes & throat.’ And, two days later, ‘a sort of heartburn after breakfast’. Indigestion or hypochondria; angina and/or high blood pressure? On the night of 6–7 June he dreamed of his dear Fish: ‘I was in a bad way.’ 35 Charlotte Street might have interested Gilbert White: a goldfinch had flown in and seemed to want to stay with the pet goldfinch of Sarah, the maid. Constable borrowed a cage for it. Then Sarah’s ‘new favourite cat’ nearly got Sarah’s pet bird. There were always several cats in the house that managed to coexist with a mouse, also an habitué; it was getting very fat, Johnny Dunthorne said, but then Constable would put rinds of cheese out for it. Generally at least one pair of pigeons was on hand and quarrelling over eggs. Two sparrows came into the house and let themselves be caught, then released by Constable. Birds liked him. A robin got washed in a dish of water set out for the pigeons to drink from in the back drawing room. Unfortunately Sarah was proving a problem, claiming to have pains in her head – was she drinking? – she was nearing forty. Ellen was sent to take her place and was kept busy catching up with the ironing.
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