The National Gallery of Art
October 1 – December 31, 2006

At the risk of philistinism, let me say that John Constable has always been one of my “main men.” How could you not like somebody who once wrote about “slimy things” making a painter of him? Nor was the man being sensational. What he meant is that, as things decompose, losing their original shape and smell (while taking on shapes and smells that most definitely attract your attention), they are more arresting to a painter’s eye. Thus, a “slimy thing” is something that’s been under water for a time, but has recently emerged into the light of day as a piece of wharfage, for example; its skin of algae has transformed it into a sort of memento mori, which reminds us that we’re all caught up in a web of life that both nurtures and sinks us to the bottom.

Everybody follow that?

Constable was misunderstood in his day because, for one, he painted both spirit and substance, but not all of their particulars. This was a new thing in about 1820, when a lot of people wanted an inventory – a precise and wearisome recapitulation of natural phenomena - and not a landscape painting, which is now understood to be unified by light and atmosphere. (Constable tried to tell people about this sort of thing, but they never listened. And meanwhile kept complaining.) His contemporaries kept telling him to put in more; Constable, who knew better, was going for a more intense reality than they were willing to deal with. For old John, nature had both a spiritual and visual essence – something he and another contemporary, Joseph Mallard William Turner, were trying to get at in spite of all the nay-sayers around them.

Born the year our country started to break away from England, Constable died in 1837; a reassessment period got underway shortly afterwards, which has changed his “profile” for the better. He is now considered not only a great pioneer in the field of perception, but perhaps the most important precursor to Impressionism, which everybody loves to death, can’t get enough of, and will queue up before major exhibits of the stuff nineteen to the dozen.

It is strange to think of the controversy that raged around his work during his lifetime, yet it hasn’t actually let up today. It pits the fussy literalist against the impulsive romantic; crabbed effort vis-a-vis open-air spontaneity; cold rationality versus freewheeling emotion.

You can see Constable at his very best in “The Six Foot Paintings” now on exhibit at the East Wing of the National Gallery till December 31st. The curators came up with the long-overdue notion that Constable’s most famous finished paintings ought to be seen spang up against his six-foot sketches. And they’ve done one helluva job. They were also careful in showing us some of the “keystone” paintings that led up to Constable’s leap to his larger format.

Aside from their technical bravura, the sketches show us a Constable who waded right up to his subject – in this case, his father’s mill; the River Stour that flowed alongside of it and was useful for trade; the hard-working people (and animals) manning the barges; and the glorious, sun-struck Suffolk countryside that was called “Constable’s country” even while the man himself was still alive. Constable’s most famous painting, “The Hay Wain”, preens as a finished product, with all of its proverbial ducks in a row. In the sketch, you see Constable really putting his heart into realizing a spatial unity and it’s one of the most thrilling experiences I’ve ever had. Equally captivating is the fabulous “Leaping Horse”, whose flashing highlights and stand of murky tree-forms show us, insofar as one painting can, what landscape painting will become in the next fifty years. The finished product is, for me, a disappointment – though it’s a more-than-competent “version” of the sketch. It is too bad Constable had to play to his market. Today, his sketches alone would be admired, not only for their racing audacity, but for their spiritual exactitude as well. If a man ever had perfect spiritual pitch, it was John Constable.

Sprinkled throughout the exhibit are small drawings and sketches, which further illuminate Constable’s process. There isn’t a dull one among them.

So: if you ever see an exhibit of Impressionist paintings, you’ll know who started Monet and Pissarro off on the long road they followed. Constable was the original Impressionist – though I think he loved his little village of East Bergholt more than any Impressionist would love the small piece of earth he would convert into a vibrating unity of his own.

Again, the show runs through December 31st. If there’s any art exhibit you absolutely must see in the City of Washington, this is the one – particularly if you have ever considered any landscape painter among the “main men” in your life.