France was ripe for Constable at that memorable Salon of 1824, simple, straight-seeing Constable, who painted his Suffolk parish, not the tumbling ruins of Italy, and who showed that "the sun shines, that the wind blows, that water wets, and that air and light are everywhere." But Constable's influence on the French painters, although great, must not be overstated. Change was in the air. Herald signs had not been lacking of the rebirth of French landscape painting. The French critics of the Salons had already begun to complain of the stereotyped classical ruins and brown-tree landscapes; they announced that they were weary of "malarious lakes, desolate wastes, and terrible cliffs." Joyfully they welcomed in the Salon of 1822 the brilliant water-colours of Bonington, Copley Fielding, and other Englishmen, and then came 1824 with Constable showing that the bright, fresh colours were also possible in oil, and that a fine picture could be made out of an "unpicturesque locality," a lock, a cottage, a hay-wain, a cornfield, quite as well as from a "Plague among the Philistines at Ashdod," or an "Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba." As has been already explained, Constable did not dream of the success and fame that was in store for him in Paris. "The Hay Wain" was painted in 1821; he was then forty-five, and as will be seen from the following letter written in 1822, he had not found art remunerative. "I have some nibbles at my large picture of 'The Hay Wain' in the British Gallery. I have an offer of seventy pounds without the frame to form part of an exhibition in Paris. I hardly know what to do. It might promote my fame and procure me commissions, but it is the property of my family; though I want money dreadfully; and, on this subject, I must beg a great favour of you, indeed, I can do it of no other person. The loan of twenty pounds or thirty pounds would be of the greatest use to me at this time, as painting these large pictures has much impoverished me." In 1824 the nibble became a bite. "The Hay Wain" with the two other pictures was sold "to a Frenchman" for two hundred and fifty pounds. The Frenchman's object was to make a show of them in Paris. He did so to some purpose. And it is odd to note that the name of this farseeing Frenchman has never been disclosed. Above "The Hay Wain" in the National Gallery hangs James Ward's fine picture called "View of Harlech Castle and surrounding landscape." That is the official title, but I suggest that the title should be, "The End of the Brown Tree." You will observe that the brown tree has been cut down and is being hurried away in a cart drawn by four grey horses. I do not accuse the Director of the National Gallery of joking; but I cannot think it was altogether without intention that, in the rehanging of the room, James Ward's allegory of the end of the Brown Tree should have been hung above Constable's "Hay Wain," the pioneer picture of the new movement. CHAPTER III HIS LIFE