File:Life and letters of John Constable, R. A (1896) (14756502596).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

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the last hour, the light of a cheerful day through the clean windows falling full upon it. It is, no doubt, the best of your works—true to nature, seen and arranged with a professors taste and judgment. The execution shows in every part a hand of experience: masterly without rudeness, and complete without littleness. The colouring is sweet, fresh, and healthy; bright not gaudy, but deep and clear. Take it for all in all, since the days of Gainsborough and Wilson, no landscape has been painted with so much truth and originality, so much art, so little artifice. * Yours very truly, S. W. Reynolds. Reynolds was interrupted in the execution of his plate by ill-ness, and did not live to complete it; but the same subject, froma second picture, has since been mo.st admirably engraved, on alarger scale, by Mr. Lucas, and forms the companion to his printof The Corn Field. Constable exhibited three pictures this year at the Academy,of which the one mentioned by him as the Canal Scene was the
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o I I I- i82S.) THE LEAPING HORSE. 175 largest. The chief object in its foreground is a horse, mountedby a boy, leaping one of the barriers which cross the towing-paths along the Stour (for it is that river, and not a canal), toprevent the cattle from quitting their bounds. As these bars arewithout gates, the horses, which are of a much finer race, andkept in better condition than the wretched animals that tow thebarges near London, are all taught to leap; their harness, orna-mented over the collar with crimson fringe, adds to their pic-turesque appearance, and Constable, by availing himself of theseadvantages, and relieving the horse, which is of a dark colour,upon a bright sky, made him a very imposing object. So care-fully did he study this subject, that he made, in the first place, twolarge sketches, each on a six-foot canvas. One was, I believe,intended to be the picture, but was afterwards turned into asketch—not an unusual occurrence with him. His other worksat the Academy we

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