McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 3, February 1896Various
History
McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 3, February 1896
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals
In 1829, however, the world moving, Constable was elected to
membership in the Royal Academy. The most notable triumph of his
life, though, befell seven years earlier, in 1822, when he sent three
pictures to be exhibited in the Salon in Paris. The Hay-Wain, and
Hampstead Heath, both at present in the National Gallery, London, were
of the three, and excited the greatest enthusiasm among the group of
young painters who, with Delacroix at their head, were warring against
the academic rule imposed by David. Constable's work thenceforward was
the dominant influence in France, and from it can be directly traced
the great group of landscape painters which we to-day miscall the
"Barbizon" school.
It is pleasant to recall that official honor--the first which he
received--came to Constable by the award of the great gold medal of
the Salon at this time. For a number of years after this he sent his
work to the successive Salons. Pecuniary success, such as fell to the
lot of Turner, was never his; the first painter who looked at nature
in the open air "through his temperament," as Zola aptly expresses it,
was perforce contented to live a modest life at Hampstead, happy in
his work, grateful to nature who disclosed so many of her secrets to
him.
[Illustration: THE "FIGHTING TEMERAIRE" TUGGED TO HER LAST BERTH. FROM
A PAINTING BY J.M.W. TURNER.
The "Fighting Téméraire" was a line-of-battle ship of ninety-eight
guns which Lord Nelson captured from the French at the battle of the
Nile, August 1, 1798. In the battle of Trafalgar, October 21, 1805,
she fought next to the "Victory"--the ship from which Nelson commanded
the battle, and aboard which, in the course of it, he was killed. She
was sold out of the service in 1838, and towed to Rotherhithe to be
broken up. Turner's painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy
of 1839. His picture touched the popular heart, and though no
reproduction in black and white can approach the splendor of color in
the original, the engraving renders faithfully the sentiment of the
picture.]
"I love," he said, "every stile and stump and lane in the village; as
long as I am able to hold a brush, I shall never cease to paint them."
He ceased to "hold a brush" on the 30th of March, 1837.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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