John Constable's landscapes are a bucolic frolic through English identity. Inarguably iconic, his is an aesthetic that fits in alongside routemaster buses, red phone boxes, jam and scones and the royal family. It’s art for people who travel to see the door from ‘Notting Hill’. This is England, idealised.
The late works here are largely of classic Constable things: ruddy cheeked peasants working a canal, gambolling lambs on quaint country lanes, and sweeping, dramatic, grey English seas. His famous ‘Dedham Vale’ is on display, with its long look down a long valley. But there's something about his treatment of nature that makes every bush, shrub and tree in it look like a cabbage. ‘The Cornfield’ is a mess of pastoral ideas, and ‘Hadleigh Castle’ feels too big and ambitious for his talents. There are enormous sketches hung next to lots of the works, and these are infinitely better; they're fuzzy, blurry, weird things.
English art historians and critics and fans have a deep love for Constable, but it’s a mother’s love. They love him because he’s theirs, not because he’s good. And if you don’t believe me, just look at the last painting in the show. ‘Cenotaph to the Memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ isn’t just shoddy, it’s incredibly ugly. It belongs in an American hunting lodge. It’s poorly painted, and poorly composed. It’s just so horrible.
But despite all the ugliness and how every bit of nature looks like cabbage, Constable still has his moments of greatness. There’s a farmhouse image that’s so thickly painted it’s almost abstract, another one that looks like the house it depicts is about to evaporate, then there’s a vision of of the opening of Waterloo Bridge that’s heaving with blurry life, and a lovely, tumultuous view of Salisbury Cathedral.
The smaller works are the real nuggets of gold: Brighton beach swaddled in pink and grey, and a whole room of intimate sketches and drawings. And then there’s a quick painting of a downpour over the sea that’s so wild and free that it makes your jaw drop.
It’s no coincidence that these are works he painted largely for himself, not to sell. Without the pressure of commercialism, he could let his ideas happen. But for every radical, beautiful painting of a downpour, there are 20 naff paintings of shepherds in a field. And that’s not a great ratio.
