Curator's Perspective: 'A Conservative Revolutionary: John Const

Presented by Dr. Mark Evans, senior curator of paintings at the Victoria and Albert Museum

This lecture contrasts John Constable's ideas on the history of landscape painting, as revealed by lectures he gave in 1833 and 1836, with critics' shocked responses to his apparent lack of finish and disregard for formal decorum. It surveys Constable's posthumous international celebrity as a precursor of the Impressionists, or even a prophet of photography (the daguerreotype was invented 2 years after his death). Ironically, reverence for the old masters seems to have furnished the mainspring of Constable's own revolutionary break with the conventions of past art.

John Constable (1776-1837) is generally recognized, along with J.M.W. Turner, as England's greatest landscape painter. In 1888, Constable's last surviving daughter gave the Victoria and Albert Museum in London his remaining studio contents, making it the principal collection of the artist's work.

This lecture was presented in conjunction with the exhibition Constable: Oil Sketches from the Victoria and Albert Museum, on view at the Frist Center from June 22 through September 30, 2012

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