John Constable, Rainstorm over the Sea, 1824-8

London, Royal Academy of Arts, 03/1390

Image here: via Wikimedia Commons at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Constable_-_Seascape_Study_with_Rain_Cloud.jpg

Long before anyone had heard of Impressionism, two English painters had already spent their lives trying to capture the sublime and the particular in their landscapes.

Rejecting the grand traditions, they painted the joy of nature as actually experienced: the exhilaration of a stormy sky or a blasted heath; the intimate familiarity of a favourite tree or an old mill.

And yet the two men - and indeed their art - were very different. Turner, who was considered a prodigy in his teens, was ever the showman. Popular and successful in his own time (though much more so after Ruskin later championed him), he lived long enough to see his paintings sell in the United States, by which time a rich mythology had grown up around him.

For Constable, it was all rather different. Patronage and recognition came haltingly and grudgingly, and material success not at all. In 1824, his paintings took the Paris Salon by storm. Friends urged him to move there. But how could he? The truth in his art was rooted in the landscape he knew and loved - knew more intimately, perhaps, than any painter before or since. He simply couldn’t move.

Let’s explore the work of these two very different geniuses together. Along the way we’ll also discover something of their lives and legacies.

RJW F2438 Online (via Zoom)

A 5-hour short course, delivered via 2 x 2½-hour sessions on consecutive Saturdays (Saturday 7 & Saturday 14 December, 10.30-1.00).

£40 (individual registration); £72 (for two people sharing one screen).