"There is nothing ugly; I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, — light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful."
John Constable was an English landscape painter in the Romantic tradition. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for revolutionising the genre of landscape painting with his pictures of Dedham Vale, the area on the borderland of Suffolk and north Essex surrounding his home – now known as "Constable Country" – which he invested with an intensity of affection. "I should paint my own places best",
"It is much to my advantage that several of my pictures should be seen together, as it displays to advantage their varieties of conception and also of execution, and what they gain by the mellowing hand of time which should never be forced or anticipated. Thus my pictures when first coming forth have a comparative harshness which at the time acts to my disadvantage."
John Constable"He was acquainted with Archdeacon Fisher, and painted for him Salisbury Cathedral, and several views in that neighbourhood. I have stood on the exact spot from which he took the cathedral, which is very like, though not sufficiently confined for his style of painting. Old Sarum, too, is among his most interesting productions."
John Constable"Where is my great-coat? I am going to see Mr. Constables pictures. [because of the feeling of frost he got from Constables paintings]"
John Constable"Constable himself knew the value of such studies, for he rarely parted with them. He used to say of his studies and pictures that he had no objection to part with the corn, but not with the field that grew it."
John Constable"I knew Constables paintings long before I knew Constable, and formed a very wrong estimate of his character. His paintings give one the idea of a positive, conceited person, whereas anyone more diffident of his own powers could not be. Once, not long before his death, when I was with him on Heston steeple, he scratched on the leads those well-known lines of John Milton where he describes Fame as the last infirmity of noble minds, and introduces the Fury with her abhorred shears. Constable could not have described his own character better."
John Constable"The world is wide; no two days are alike, nor even two hours; neither were there ever two leaves of a tree alike since the creation of the world."
John Constable