Turner vs Constable

Today I would like to share with you my admiration for Joseph Mallord William Turner and John Constable. It is not a competition as the title might induce to think, but a juxtaposition of the two wonderful artists.

They were nearly exact contemporaries and yet led completely different lives. Turner was born in 1775 in Covent Garden son of a barber and a wig maker, and after his sister's and his mentally ill mother's deaths he attended school in Margate, Kent, in the area of the Thames estuary. That was when he first saw the sea, an important subject in his future work. Constable, on the other hand, was born in 1776 in East Bergholt, Suffolk, son of a wealthy corn and coal merchant and farmer. He was in fact the heir of the family business, which post was eventually taken by his younger brother. He loved the countryside, which later became a pervasive theme in his art. Unlike Turner, who despite having two children always refused to get married, Constable had a family with seven children. His wife sadly died from tuberculosis in 1828 though, leaving the artist devastated.

Concerning their careers, they both managed to enter the Royal Academy Schools, but Turner was more successful, becoming an associated member in 1799 and a full member in 1802. Constable was not awarded full membership until 1829 (and even then with a miserable majority of only one vote). While Turner was working on the spacious gallery in his house in Harley Street by the age of twenty-seven and continued to exhibit every year in the Royal Academy for most of his life, Constable sold only twenty paintings in his lifetime, and was never recognised in his homeland while he was alive. His country did not accept him, but France did. His 1821 master work The Haywain was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1824, and his works actually influenced the great Delacroix and the "Barbizon School", who followed his lead in working outdoors. Turner has been considered as the precursor of Impressionism, but the French Impressionists were actually inspired by Constable when it came to capture the moods of light.

As to their styles, they were completely different. There was however one clear thing that united them, and that was their fixation with light.

Turner loved violent scenes and cataclysms. He was also very fond of shipwrecks and fires of course, and when the 1834 burning of Parliament took place, he rushed to witness first-hand, which resulted in a series of watercolour sketches. He liked to emphasize the vulnerability of humanity amidst the natural world, its grandeur being the evidence of the power of God. Light was precisely emanation of God's spirit to the artist, idea reflected in all his later works. One thing which he was then fond of doing was sending unfinished canvases to the Academy exhibitions and then turning up to complete them in what became legendary performances. I really admire his ability to express motion and different atmospheres but I prefer his early works. Being personally drawn to the technique, I can't help but marvel at his watercolours. They are simply perfect, and I actually prefer them to his oil paintings.

None of the restlessness from Turner's work can be perceived in Constable's. He was in love with the countryside but rejected the formal depiction of nature present in the work of artists like Gainsborough. Instead he focussed on light and atmosphere. "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". He worked in the open air performing full-size sketches in oil, but finished his works in his studio. Constable's recordings of atmosphere conditions are sublime, and his cloudy skies have no equal. His love for the English countryside is so conspicuous, and that is one of the reasons why I like Constable. His depictions of Salisbury Cathedral are lovely. His will to paint in his personal style despite the disapproval of his contemporaries was admirable. Finally, as with Turner, I am very attracted to his watercolours. Their different techniques can be appreciated in the images.

I hope that, if you had never really been interested in either Turner or Constable, next time you have the chance to see one of their works you will look at it through different eyes, and hopefully admire its value. You are welcome to make any comment you wish, and to try to guess the title of the works.