Joseph Mallord William Turner (English,
1775–1851) and John Constable (English, 1776–1837) rose to prominence as
landscape artists in early nineteenth-century Britain. Their inspired
subjects, their distinctive compositions, and their innovative brushwork
combined to elevate a genre traditionally considered less important
than history painting and portraiture.
Turner and Constable: The Inhabited Landscape,
on view at the Clark Art Institute December 15, 2018–March 10, 2019,
explores the significance of human figures and the built environment in
the landscape, as well as the personal significance of specific places
to each artist.
The exhibition features more than fifty paintings, drawings and
watercolors, prints, and books, a beautiful selection of which are on
loan from the Yale Center for British Art and the Chapin Library at
Williams College. The works in the show are primarily drawn from the
Clark’s Manton Collection of British Art, created by Sir Edwin Manton
and given to the Clark by the Manton Art Foundation in 2007. This
transformative gift included more than 250 oil paintings, sketches,
works on paper, and prints, making the Clark a center for the study of
nineteenth-century British Art.
“One of the real joys of visiting the Clark is the opportunity to
consider magnificent landscapes in our galleries while surrounded by the
natural beauty of our own campus,” said Olivier Meslay, the Hardymon
Director of the Clark. “The Manton collection is so special to us
because it is a rich resource that continues to inspire our curators to
consider these works through a myriad of lenses. With this exhibition we
will look at landscapes in a different context—and we’re particularly
excited because this concept provides a perfect opportunity to present
several works that have never been shown at the Clark, while many others
are rarely on view due to their delicate nature.”
Alexis Goodin, the Clark’s Curatorial Research Associate, organized the
exhibition. “It’s easy to overlook the people depicted in the landscapes
of Turner and Constable,” said Goodin. “Often these artists’ figures
are small, quickly painted, and sometimes not anatomically
correct—qualities that might make them seem less relevant to a
breathtaking landscape view. When one begins identifying the people
within landscapes and their actions, however, these figures can reveal
social and political concerns of the time as well as the artists’
interests and connections to the places depicted. We hope this
exhibition opens up a new understanding of these works for our visitors
and deepens their appreciation for two of the most revered landscape
painters of the nineteenth century.”
The exhibition considers a variety of elements presented in landscapes
by both Turner and Constable and creates a framework for appreciating
the ways in which these figures lend added meaning to the works. They
include:
The Observed Landscape
Turner and Constable created a wide range of landscapes and seascapes
throughout their careers. They often depicted familiar places that shed
light on the personal histories of the artists. Figures incorporated
into these landscapes were important to the picture’s narrative and not
merely a measure of scale.
Constable, having spent his honeymoon in the seaside village of Osmington, recorded this place of personal importance.
Osmington Bay
(1816) reveals nature’s grandeur on an intimate scale. The
figures—including a fisherman mending a net, a shepherd, and a mother
with her child—show the beach as a place of both work and leisure.
In
the painting
Osmington Village (1816–17, Yale Center for
British Art), smoke billows from the chimney of the vicarage while
people make their way by cart or foot along the village lane, conveying
both domestic comfort and productivity within the landscape.
Laborers in the Landscape
Laborers—ploughmen, shepherds, laundresses, fishermen, sailors—populate
many of Constable’s and Turner’s landscapes and seascapes. The workers’
presence animates the natural world and underscores the potential
abundance of the land or sea. Contemporary accounts reveal difficult
working conditions and the extreme poverty of agricultural workers,
conditions often not apparent in the artists’ portrayals. The laborers’
presence invites the observer to consider how the environment shaped
them, and how they influenced their surroundings. The ways in which
Turner and Constable rendered laborers within their landscapes may also
shed light on how they viewed the workers.
The Wheat Field (1816) presents a view across a valley in
Constable’s native Suffolk. Harvesters cut down the golden wheat with
scythes, reapers bundle the stalks, and gleaners collect leftover grains
while a boy and his dog guard lunch. The idealized scene belies the
heat of the sun and the long hours of monotonous and sometimes painful
work. Constable’s inclusion of different classes working together
suggests that commercial success and charity were not mutually
exclusive. This sympathetic treatment of the poor came at a time when
the landless classes were increasingly denied access to places that they
had traditionally used to grow food or graze animals.
Laborers fill the foreground in Turner’s
Saumur from the Île d'Offart, with the Pont Cessart and the Château in the Distance
(c. 1830). In this scene of the town of Saumur, located on the Loire
River in west central France, washerwomen spread out laundry to dry on
the steps while men load cargo onto barges. The workers bring the
picturesque view to life, showing the town as a center of commercial
prosperity.
The Literary Landscape
Turner often turned to literary texts for source material, situating
characters in settings that enhanced their stories or populating
imaginary landscapes with familiar narratives. He was commissioned to
design illustrations for literary publications, supplying finished
watercolors that printmakers would turn into engravings used in bound
volumes.
Turner spent the summer of 1831 in Scotland, sketching landscapes
described in Sir Walter Scott’s poems and novels for a proposed
illustrated edition of the author’s works. The project never came to
fruition, but Turner worked up his drawings for a related publication.
Wolf's Hope, Eyemouth (c. 1835) is one of six finished watercolors translated into illustrations for Rev. George Wright’s
Landscape-Historical Illustrations of Scotland and the Waverly Novels (1836).
Wolf’s Hope, Eyemouth illustrates one of the settings in Sir Walter Scott’s novel
The Bride of Lammermoor
(1819), showing the harbor town where the novel’s tragic hero, Edgar
Ravenswood, resided in a dilapidated castle called Wolf’s Crag.
The Built Landscape
The buildings within Constable’s and Turner’s works not only identify
the geography and place their landscapes within time, but also reveal
each artist’s personal connections to place. Constable found inspiration
in the English countryside, often highlighting the small villages,
cottages, churches, cathedrals, and other built structures that he
encountered.
Salisbury Cathedral and its environs held special meaning for Constable,
as his good friends and patrons the Bishop of Salisbury John Fisher and
his nephew, John Fisher, later Archdeacon of Berkshire, resided there.
Inspired by the majestic gothic cathedral, he painted this important
seat of the Anglican faith from many viewpoints, often emphasizing the
spire towering over the plain. For Constable, a member of the Church of
England, the church was not just architecture or a relic of the past,
but a symbol of enduring faith. Indeed, as a seat of Anglican worship,
Salisbury represented steadfastness and tradition in a time of
increasing challenges to its authority, including the rise of
Evangelicalism and the revival of Anglo-Catholicism brought on by the
Oxford movement in the mid-1830s. The exhibition presents four works in
various media depicting the cathedral—three from the Manton Collection
of British Art and a fourth collected by Sterling and Francine Clark in
1945
.
Turner grew up in London, and the city provided him with his earliest subjects.
His watercolor
The Tower of London (c. 1794) served as the basis for an engraving published in
The Pocket Magazine
on January 1, 1795. Viewed from across the Thames, the White Tower,
built in 1078 and famously used as a prison until 1952, rises
majestically above a city awash with light. Large mast ships on either
side of the small composition frame the view of this historic fortress.
The still water of the Thames reflects the boats and buildings, giving
the scene a timeless calm. The absence of figures and narrative allows
the focus to remain on the built environment.
Turner and Constable: The Inhabited Landscape is presented in
the Clark’s special exhibition galleries in the Clark Center. The Clark
will present a companion installation of sixteen landscape drawings by
Thomas Gainsborough in the Manton Gallery for British Art, located in
the Manton Research Center, from December 1, 2018–March 17, 2019.
Fourteen of the Gainsborough drawings on view in this installation are
from the Manton collection. Though recognized as one of the most
fashionable portrait painters in the eighteenth century, Gainsborough
made hundreds of drawings of the English landscape. Abundant with
foliage, cottages, and pastoral figures, the works evoke the gentle
woodland and heath of the artist’s native Suffolk and the mountainous
Lake District of Cumbria. Gainsborough’s landscape drawings in this
presentation reveal the artist’s fascination with mixed-media technique:
graphite, chalks, ink washes, watercolor, and oil paints intermingle on
toned papers.
ABOUT THE MANTON COLLECTION
The Manton Collection of British Art is considered one of the greatest
collections of British art assembled in the last fifty years. Highlights
of the collection include John Constable’s contemplative views of the
English countryside and strikingly naturalistic oil studies; Joseph
Mallord William Turner’s turbulent, quasi-abstract seascapes; Thomas
Gainsborough’s rigorous chalk drawings; and Thomas Rowlandson’s humorous
watercolors caricaturing British life. The collection includes more
than 300 works and also features great suites of watercolors, drawings,
and prints by such artists as Thomas Girtin, Richard Parkes Bonington,
Samuel Palmer, John Martin, and William Blake.
The collection was created by business leader and arts patron Sir Edwin
A. G. Manton (1909–2005) and his wife Florence, Lady Manton (1911–2003),
who began collecting in the 1940s. Born in Essex County, just twenty
miles from “Constable Country” in the east of England, Sir Edwin arrived
in New York in 1933 to help develop the American International Group.
Although he spent the remainder of his life in the United States, his
love of British art was testimony to his continued devotion to his
native country.
Sir Edwin was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1994 for his generous
contributions to the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain) in London.
Throughout his life, his appetite for art collecting never diminished.
“I am a compulsive buyer,” he once observed. “It's better than spending
your money on bottles of Scotch.” This collection, a gift from the
Manton Foundation in 2007, constitutes the most significant addition of
art to the Clark since it was founded in 1955 and perfectly complements
the Clark’s holdings of nineteenth-century French and American art.
ABOUT THE CLARK
The Clark Art Institute, located in the Berkshires of western
Massachusetts, is one of a small number of institutions globally that is
both an art museum and a center for research, critical discussion, and
higher education in the visual arts. Opened in 1955, the Clark houses
exceptional European and American paintings and sculpture, extensive
collections of master prints and drawings, English silver, and early
photography. Acting as convener through its Research and Academic
Program, the Clark gathers an international community of scholars to
participate in a lively program of conferences, colloquia, and workshops
on topics of vital importance to the visual arts. The Clark library,
consisting of more than 270,000 volumes, is one of the nation’s premier
art history libraries. The Clark also houses and co-sponsors the
Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art.
Image credits
1.
Joseph Mallord William Turner (English, 1775–1851), Saumur from the Île
d'Offart, with the Pont Cessart and the Château
in the Distance, c. 1830. Watercolor and gouache with pen and black and brown
ink over traces of graphite on
blue wove paper, 5 x 7 9/16 in. Clark Art Institute. Gift of the Manton Art
Foundation in memory of Sir Edwin and Lady
Manton, 2007.8.112
2.
Joseph Mallord William Turner (English, 1775–1851), The Tower of London, c.
1794. Watercolor over graphite on cream
wove paper, 4 7/8 x 6 3/4 in. Clark Art Institute. Gift of the Manton Art
Foundation in memory of Sir Edwin and Lady
Manton, 2007.8.102
3.
John Constable (English, 1776–1837), Osmington Village, 1816-17. Oil on canvas,
10 1/8 °— 12 in. Yale Center for British
Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B2001.2.156
4.
John Constable (English, 1776–1837), Yarmouth Jetty, c. 1822–23. Oil on canvas,
12 3/4 x 20 1/8 in. Clark Art
Institute.
Gift of the Manton Art Foundation in memory of Sir Edwin and Lady Manton,
2007.8.36
5.
John Constable (English, 1776–1837), The Wheat Field, 1816. Oil on canvas, 21
1/2 x 30 3/4 in. Clark Art
Institute.
Gift of the Manton Art Foundation in memory of Sir Edwin and Lady Manton,
2007.8.27
6.
John Constable (English, 1776–1837), The Houses of Parliament on Fire, 1834.
Pen and ink with watercolor on
cream
wove paper, 3 1/4 x 4 3/16 in. Clark Art Institute. Gift of the Manton Art
Foundation in memory of Sir Edwin
and
Lady Manton, 2007.8.52
7.
Joseph Mallord William Turner (English, 1775–1851), Rockets and Blue Lights
(Close at Hand) to Warn
Steamboats
of Shoal Water, 1840. Oil on canvas, 36 1/4 x 48 1/8 in. Clark Art Institute,
1955.37
8.
Joseph Mallord William Turner (English, 1775–1851), Brunnen, from the Lake of
Lucerne, 1845. Watercolor and
gouache
on paper, 11 7/16 x 18 3/4 in. Clark Art Institute, 1955.1865
9.
Joseph Mallord William Turner (English, 1775–1851), Wolf's Hope, Eyemouth, c.
1835. Watercolor and gouache
over
graphite, with scraping, on cream wove paper, 4 1/8 x 6 1/2 in. Clark Art
Institute. Gift of the Manton Art
Foundation
in memory of Sir Edwin and Lady Manton, 2007.8.115
10.
John Constable (English, 1776–1837), Salisbury Cathedral from the River Avon,
July 23, 1829. Graphite on
cream
wove paper, 9 1/8 x 13 1/4 in. Clark Art Institute. Gift of the Manton Art
Foundation in memory of Sir Edwin
and
Lady Manton, 2007.8.47
11.
John Constable (English, 1776–1837), Willy Lott's House, c.1812–13. Oil on
canvas, 13 3/4 x 17 1/8 in. Clark ArtInstitute.
Gift of the Manton Art Foundation in memory of Sir Edwin and Lady Manton,
2007.8.24
Jheronimus Bosch, De Aanbidding der Koningen, ca. 1475. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
