CONSTABLE – Chocolate Box Painter or Country Rebel?
“I should paint my own places best.”
John Constable transformed the way we see the English landscape.
While most landscape painters of his day travelled extensively to find ‘picturesque’ or ‘sublime’ scenery, Constable never left England. He instead embarked on a journey to create unique, deeply personal images of the countryside round his boyhood home of East Bergholt. His name is so closely associated with his native Suffolk that the area is often referred to as “Constable country.”
For many, Constable conjures up images of chocolate boxes and biscuit tins. This talk will demolish this association and give Constable the respect he deserves – as a true revolutionary.
J. M. W. TURNER: The Painter of Light
It is difficult now to imagine that Turner’s landscapes were savaged by critics at the 1836 summer exhibition at the Royal Academy.
Was he a Master or a madman?
Turner’s intense chromatic freedom and atmospheric uncertainties were difficult to digest. “Indistinctness is my forte” he explained to a bewildered public.
If his paintings drew strong reactions it was because they were ground breaking, emotional, experimental. They had a powerful impact on artists for years to come, influencing the Impressionists among others.
Ruskin presented him as a Romantic hero, master of the moods of nature, and today many consider him to be Britain’s best painter. You can make your own mind up when we look at his best-known works, with a focus on his later paintings.