File:Life and letters of John Constable, R. A (1896) (14592990707).jpg

Identifier: lifelettersofjoh00lesl (find matches)
Title: Life and letters of John Constable, R. A
Year: 1896 (1890s)
Authors: Leslie, Charles Robert, 1794-1859
Subjects: Contable, John, 1776-1837 Artists
Publisher: London : Chapman and Hall
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
rGeorge Beaumont; he has been seriously ill, and quite unableuntil lately to touch a pencil. Everything which belongs to mebelongs to you, and I should not have hesitated a momentabout sending you the Brighton sketch-book, but when youwrote my Frenchman was in London, we were settling aboutwork, and he has engaged me to make twelve drawings, to beengraved here and published in Paris, all from this book. Iwork at these in the evening. This book is larger than myothers, and does not contain odds and ends, but all regularcompositions of boats or beach scenes ; there may be aboutthirty of them. If you wish to see them for a few days, tellme how I am to send them to you. My Paris affairs go onvery well. Though the Director, the Count Forbin, gave mypictures very respectable situations in the Louvre in the firstinstance, yet, on being exhibited a few weeks, they advanced inreputation, and were removed from their original situations toa post of honour, two prime places in the principal room.
Text Appearing After Image:
O •^ (1 -> _i 7 1 O - t- ■J I o :> 1824) CONSTABLES REPUTATION IN PARIS. 165 I am much indebted to the artists for their alarum in myfavour; but I must do justice to the count, who is no artist,I believe, and thought that as the colours are rough they shouldbe seen at a distance. They found the mistake, and now acknow-ledge the richness of texture and attention to the surface ofthings. They are struck with their vivacity and freshness—thingsunknown to their own pictures. The truth is, they study—andthey are very laborious students—pictures only; and, as North-cote says, They know as little of nature as a hackney-coachhorse does of a pasture. In fact, it is worse; they make painfulstudies of individual articles—leaves, rocks, stones, &c.—singly;so that they look cut out, without belonging to the whole, andthey neglect the look of nature altogether under its variouschanges. I learnt yesterday that the proprietor asks twelvethousand francs for them. They would hav

Note About Images