Quote#Nature
England, with her climate of more than vernal freshness, and in whose…
Quote byJohn Constable · 1776–1837
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Quote from Constable's Introduction of the 1833 edition of English landscape scenery, as cited in Constable's English Landscape Scenery, Andrew Wilton, British Museum Prints and Drawings Series, 1979; as quoted in: 'A brief history of weather in European landscape art', John E. Thornes, in Weather V.
English (original)
England, with her climate of more than vernal freshness, and in whose summer skies, and rich autumnal clouds, the observer of Nature may daily watch her endless varieties of effect.. ..to one brief moment caught [by the artist] from fleeting time..
— John Constable
More from John Constable
It is so ambiguous as to be scarcely intelligible in some parts (and those the principal), yet as a whole, it is novel and affecting.
When I sit down to make a sketch from nature, the first thing I try to do is to forget that I have ever seen a picture.
I have been living a hermit-life, though always with my pencil in my hand.. .How much real delight have I had with the study of landscape this summer! Either I am myself improved in the art of seeing nature, which Sir Joshua call painting, …
I paint by all the daylight we have and that is little enough, less perhaps than you have by much... imagine to yourself how a purl must look through a burnt glass.
There is room enough for a natural 'painture'. The great vice of the present day is bravura, an attempt to do something beyond the truth. In endeavouring to do something better than well, they do what in reality is good for nothing. …
But You know, Landscape is my mistress — 't is to her that I look for fame — and all that the warmth of the imagination renders dear to Man.