Hadleigh Castle, by John Constable (1829)

A little more John Constable (1776-1837) today as we wash the taste of Francis Bacon out of our mouths.

Constable was born on the River Stour in Suffolk; his parents were Golding and Ann (Watts) Constable.  Golding was a wealthy corn merchant, and owner of a small ship, The Telegraph.  John was the second son, but his older brother was mentally disabled and John was expected to pursue the family business.  John dutifully worked in the business once leaving school, but a series of sketching trips in Suffolk and Essex made it clear that John was more artist than businessman.

Constable would paint the English countryside for the rest of his life.  Early on he met George Beaumont, a collector who showed young John a series of pictures that opened up his eyes to the possibilities of art; and Thomas Smith, a professional artist who encouraged John to paint (but suggested he remain in the family business).

In 1799, John persuaded his father to let him pursue a career in art, and the elder Constable provided a small allowance.  John entered the Royal Academy Schools and attended life classes and studied and copied the old masters.  He would exhibit paintings at the Royal Academy by 1803.  He was also a devotee of religious sermons and poems. 

John had a childhood friendship with Maria Bicknell, which later blossomed into a deep and abiding love.  The marriage was opposed by Maria’s family, who saw John as a social inferior; John’s parents approved, but would not support the couple until John was more financially secure in his art.  They were married in 1816.

John was not a very financially successful artist; and he struggled to raise the seven children they had.  In 1828, Maria became ill with tuberculosis and died; she was only 41.  Constable never fully recovered from the blow, and wrote hourly do I feel the loss of my departed Angel—God only knows how my children will be brought up.  He did manage, however, and Constable cared for his children for the rest of his life.

In 1814, John visited the ruins of Hadleigh Castle while touring Essex with his friend, Reverend W.W. Driffield.  He wrote to Maria: there is a ruin of a castle which from its situation is really a fine place – it commands a view of the Kent hills, the nore and north foreland & looking many miles to the sea.  He made drawings in his sketchbook and based the painting (and preliminary sketches) upon this first impression.

This was a particularly difficult time for John.  It looked as if his plans to marry Maria would come to naught, and that the position of their mutual families would keep them apart.  He wrote that the melancholy grandeur of the sea shore reflected his mood, and he put aside the drawings for some time.

John returned to his previous sketches following Maria’s death.  This scene of loneliness and desolation, of ruin and remorse, must have been deeply aligned with his own mourning and sense of loss.  This picture, some six feet in length, was a work that helped lift the painter out of his depression.

It’s been said that if Turner was a painter of the sun, then Constable was a painter of the sky.  It is almost as if he painted his entire autobiography in the sky.  In this picture, a solitary shepherd or wayfarer (along with his dog), comes upon the majestic and romantic castle ruins.  One of the towers has a deep tear in its very center, as if rent by a heavenly finger.  Holding a staff, the figure is a pilgrim, or a searcher; not unlike the shepherds who found their way to Bethlehem.  (It is possible that he is one of the attendant cattle herders, but his isolation from the cattle and holding of the staff makes the probability of his being a spiritual pilgrim too compelling.)

A herder and cattle are visible in the distance; they, at one with nature, take the landscape for granted.  And the sky above, melancholy with clouds, is broken by shafts of heavenly light.  The sea, equally eternal, is brilliantly illuminated by the shafts of light.

The palpable sense of mystery, of eternity, of the sublime is overwhelming.  No ordinary landscape, Constable’s picture of Hadliegh Castle is a man’s soul laid bare.

Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, by John Constable (1831)

After looking at the disgusting and depressing picture by Francis Bacon (1909-1992) Tuesday, I thought we’d cleanse our palette with a little more uplifting art news.  This landscape picture by John Constable (1776-1837), Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, painted in 1831, is now starting a UK tour, and is currently on show at the National Museum in Cardiff.  For anyone traveling through the UK in the next several months, it is essential viewing.

The picture, considered by many to be Constable’s masterpiece, shows Salisbury Cathedral under a heavy cloud broken by an arched rainbow, as seen from across the River Nadder.  Scholars have interpreted the picture as the artist’s attempt to come to grips with the recent death of his wife.

Constable himself thought highly of the picture, writing that it was better than anything I have yet done.  The picture was first exhibited at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition in 1831 and later in a regional exhibition in Birmingham.  Constable wanted it to be viewed by as many people as possible, and this traveling show continues his wish well into the 21^st Century.  The picture will stay in Cardiff until September before moving on.

Constable grew up in Suffolk and he painted so many landscapes there that the area in now known as Constable Country.  Constable’s happy marriage ended when his wife Maria died from tuberculosis in 1828.  This devastated the artist, and he wore black for the rest of his life.  He wrote to his brother Golding, the face of the World is totally changed to me.

In contemporary art world parlance, Constable is stodgy, boring and hopelessly twee.  We here at the Jade Sphinx feel differently.  On the contrary, his work is bracing, detailed, powerful and visionary.  Let’s take a closer look at this picture.

Following the death of Maria Constable, John joined Archdeacon Fisher in Salisbury, where the prelate encouraged him to create a picture for the Royal Academy.  Constable made sketches there for what would ultimately become this picture.

Though Constable made a study of rainbows, the rainbow here is not an “accurate” depiction.  Rather, it seems to be more symbolic of God’s covenant with man promising the sublime after a life of difficultly.  Constable was also inspired by poet James Thomson (1700-1748), whose poem The Seasons provided succor to the grieving artist.  In fact, Constable selected lines from the poem to appear alongside the painting’s title in the Royal Academy catalog. 

As from the face of heaven the scatter’d clouds

Tumultous rove, th’interminable sky

Sublimer swells, and o’er the world expands

A purer azure. Through the lightened air

A higher lustre and a clearer calm

Diffusive tremble; while, as if in sign

Of danger past, a glittering robe of joy,

Set off abundant by the yellow ray,

Invests the fields, and nature smiles reviv’d.

The arc of the rainbow ends at the home of Archdeacon Fisher, who has provided Constable so much support in his grief.  The rainbow is no mere dab of color to help the composition; rather, it is an affirmation of Constable’s faith in the face of crippling despair.  It is also no accident that the top of the cathedral spire stands out in the one bright spot of the overcast sky. 

Two other things to notice – both the cart driver talks to his companion, oblivious to the sky, but the dog in the foreground gaze openly at the rainbow, while the horses seem to bend their heads in reverence.  Man often misses the divine cues provided by the natural world, but some things are wiser than man.

Expensive Garbage: Portrait of George Dyer Talking, by Francis Bacon (1966)

So, today we look at another example of the lunacy of the current art market.  On Valentine’s Day this year, the above painting, Portrait of George Dyer Talking, by “artist” Francis Bacon (1909-1992) sold at Christie’s, London, for £42,194,500.  The seller was reported to be a Mexican financier, David Martinez Guzman, who bought the picture from a private collector five years ago for $12 million. 

Two thoughts, before going a bit into the history of this truly revolting picture.  First, I think we have to create a whole new terminology when talking about the “value” of art.  One yardstick of value is the price these things fetch – rubbish sold by hucksters, sharks and con men to blinkered, unthinking, rich and over-entitled dunderheads.  If we want to say that the Portrait of George Dryer Talking is “valuable” because it fetched such a high price, fine.  However, by any aesthetic yardstick, the picture is a ridiculous and mendacious piece of calculated chicanery, without anything to recommend it to anyone with even the slightest sense of beauty or taste.  In short, perhaps we need a new word for “value” to apply towards art that uplifts, instructs, is beautiful, comments on the human condition, and brings the viewer closer to a sense of the sublime, and leave “value” for expensive garbage of the type created by Bacon and peddled by corrupt auctioneers.

Second, the prices fetched for works by people such as Bacon and Damien Hirst (born 1965) and Tracey Emin (born 1963) indicate only one thing: that more and more members of the 1% have too much money and too little taste.  The prices realized for these pictures have nothing whatsoever to do with intrinsic merit, and everything to do with a rapacious art market that turns art into a commodity, and plays into the insecurities of collectors by convincing them that junk is art.  Sad times, indeed.

Above is the picture, along with a photo of the original model, George Dyer.  The story goes something like this:  in 1963 Dyer, a petty criminal and sneak thief, broke into a home in South Kensington.  The place was filled with canvas and paint and half-finished male nudes.  A man – painter Bacon – comes into the room and says, “you’ve got two choices.  I can call the police, or you can come to bed with me.”  Dyer chooses the latter – in the long run, he would have been safer in prison.

Bacon, an abusive drunk, became Dyer’s lover.  Dyer became Bacon’s muse.  Bacon spends years abusing Dyer horribly.  The two stayed together until Dyer committed suicide on October 24, 1971, two days before Bacon’s career-making retrospective at the Grand Palais.  By that time, Dyer himself had become an alcoholic, and suffered long-term depression.  He killed himself with alcohol and barbiturates in a room at the Paris Hotel where he reconciled with Bacon following a breakup.  He was only 36. 

Let’s take a look at this picture – Dyer sits in a bare, purple room with a blood-red carpet lit by a single light bulb.  One eye seems to be missing, almost as if it were gouged out of the skull.  The mouth is covered by gauze or bandaging; at any rate, as an avenue for speech, sound or nourishment, it has been rendered void. 

Dyer’s arms are fused before him, much as if he were in a straightjacket, his hands rendered invisible.  One leg knees upward, as if seeking release, but both legs fuse into an indeterminate swatch of color.  His legs have been rendered as useless as his eye and his hands and his mouth.  Papers of some kind litter the floor, but Dyer looks away from them, in fact, he seems to be trying to get away from them.

What images come to mind?  Prisons?  Abu Ghraib?  Mad houses?  Thoughts of torture, torment and humiliation?  Whatever comes through in this picture, Bacon’s smothering, suffocating influence on Dyer is perfectly clear, as well as Dyer’s anguish.

That such an ugly, decadent and anti-human picture can be considered a modern “masterpiece” is a telling and shameful indictment of us as a culture and as human beings.  That someone would invest £42,194,500 in it – even if the buyer himself thought it was rubbish – is an unpardonable offense to man and nature; much like investing in Nazis in 1933 because they look like a good bet.