Constable: Weymouth Bay: Difficulty with Landscapes :: essays papers

Constable: Weymouth Bay: Difficulty with Landscapes John Constable was born into a wealthy family in the English countryside. It was originally suspected that he would take over his father’s buisness because his older brother was mentally handicapped. However as his interest in painting grew his mother realized that this was a course he was choosing and he was good enough to pursue. Ironically when Constable turned to landscapes, his mother worried about his finances and urged him to turn to portraiture. In his lifetime Constable rarely sold any paintings despite being inducted into the Royal Academy of Art. Constable has talent, yes, absolutely. I could never capture his landscapes and ‘Weymouth Bay’ is a gorgeous recreation of what Constable saw. It is not an idealized version it is exactly as he saw it. This is where my problem with landscapes begins. I cannot find myself excited by them. It has taken me weeks of procrastination about how to write this paper. ‘Weymouth Bay’ was painted by Constable during his honeymoon in 1816. The scene is Dorset. There is another version of this painting in the Louvre. I think that the painting is easy on the eye. It would have been simpler to write about a Turner because his work in my opinion contains pieces of originality that Constable fails to achieve. His work is straight forward, an almost perfect recreation of exactly what Constable saw. Experts believe that the view in ‘Weymouth Bay’ is from an angle towards the west; west of Redcliff Point. It is a barren picture, the land is empty, cold. If landscape instills feeling of environment, Constable achieves that. When the painting was exhibited at the British Institution in 1819 the New Monthly Magazine wrote that the painting was, â€Å"a clear, well-colored picture.† To this description, yay. I do not aspire to be a critic of art and even now as I type this paper, I find myself increasingly nervous to the hail of criticism I’m opening myself up to. However, as I wandered through the halls of the National Gallery the urge to challenge myself and write about something that caught my eye because of the simplicity of it not because it was thought provoking was too much. Simple is not a bad thing. However if all art was simple it would in my opinion cease to be relevant. But would Constable be a relevant painter today?