Constable. ParisReview by: William VaughanThe Burlington Magazine, Vol. 145, No. 1198 (Jan., 2003), pp. 49-51Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3100592 .

Accessed: 06/12/2014 01:23

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend accessto The Burlington Magazine.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 6 Dec 2014 01:23:29 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

EXHIBITION REVIEWS

43. Solva, by Cedric Morris. 1934. 60.4 by 73 cm. (Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery).

44. Lion hunt, by Arthur Lett Haines. 1929. Mixed media on paper, 46.4 by 62.2 cm. (Private collection; exh. Norwich Castle Muse- um and Art Gallery).

and will also notice the imaginative erotic exploration of Haines, in a genre which has no doubt limited until now the amount of

public access to his work. The two men and the School to which they devoted so much of their lives - one might even say in the case of Haines, to which he sacrificed his career - are perhaps most valuably considered as

ingredients of the social history of British art. Here were all the elements of that ten- dency among artists of that period to flirt with the values of the amateur and the

vertigo of fashionable society, themselves frequently from moneyed backgrounds, yet seeking escape from materially and ideolog- ically testing times through resort to the fab- rication of a rural bohemia. Ronald Blythe

surely captures the essence of it: 'rough and ready and fine mannered. Also faintly dangerous.'3

ROBERT RADFORD

'Catalogue: Cedric Morris and Lett Haines. Edited by Ben Tufnell, with contributions from Nicholas Thornton and Helen Waters. 112 pp. incl. 64 col. pls. + 16 b. & w. ills. (Norfolk Museum and Archaeology Service and National Museums and Galleries of Wales, 2002), C?11.95. ISBN 0-903101-69-6. A miscellany of recol- lections from students of the EASPD from thirty contrib- utors is also available: Benton End Remembered. Edited by Gwynneth Reynolds and Diana Grace. 160 pp. incl. 77 col. pls. + 5 b. & w. ills. (Unicorn Press, London, 2002), ?25. ISBN 0-906290-69-4. 2TUFNE.L, op. cit. at note 1 above, p.94. 3lbid., p.12.

Paris Constable

Since his own lifetime, Constable has been a legend in British art for having won the respect of the French - and a gold medal - with the exhibition of works, including the Haywain, at the Paris Salon of 1824. Painting is not normally reckoned to be one of Britain's most notable exports, and this unusual success has perhaps been given more attention than it deserves. Yet it does indicate a significant moment in the history of art, one that encouraged a critical shift in

priorities in France, helping to set artists on a path that was eventually to lead to the triumph of Impressionism some fifty years later.

Constable's historic achievement pro- vides the leitmotif for the grand retro-

spective of the artist's work at the Grand Palais, Paris (to 13thJanuary), one of the city's principal exhibition spaces. It is sup- ported by battalions of French and British

dignitaries, under the auspices of no less

august figures than the President of France and HM the Queen. 178 years is a long time to wait for the follow-up retrospective to seal an initial success. Nevertheless, we are firm-

ly reminded of that happy earlier occasion in all the publicity for the exhibition. Even the catalogue - a handsome book full of first-rate material - has the gold medal awarded in 1824 to 'Mr. Constable, peintre de

paysage' proudly reproduced on its back cover.' The preface, signed by the Director General of the British Council, the Director of the Musees nationaux and the President of the Louvre, further states the show's intention to 'confirmer la place de Constable parmi les grands maitres de la peinture europienne'. That is a place most British observers prob- ably feel he has enjoyed for a considerable time. Yet old habits die hard. Paris may no

longer be the centre of the artistic universe it once was, but there is still no greater trib- ute an artist can receive, dead or alive, than a major retrospective in one of her hallowed exhibition halls.

As though to mark the special nature of the occasion, the retrospective has an added dimension. The selection for the show has been made by the grand master of contem-

porary British art, Lucian Freud, the one figure now living who might himself claim to be continuing the tradition of the great European masters. As he makes clear in the interview between himself and William Feaver that fronts the catalogue, Freud did not originally warm to Constable when he first encountered the artist's work in the form of the celebrated Haywain in the Na- tional Gallery. He was converted, however, when he saw the Study of the trunk of an elm in the Victoria and Albert Museum (cat. no.118; Fig.45). The sheer detail and tactile force of this work made him see how seri- ously the artist investigated the experience of seeing nature. From then on the land- scape painter became one of his mentors. This point is stressed at the beginning of the exhibition where the inspirational tree study is hung next to Freud's nude of a young girl standing and looking downward with a characteristic expression of Freudian gloom (Fig.47). She holds her arms behind her

49

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 6 Dec 2014 01:23:29 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

EXHIBITION REVIEWS

45. Study of the trunk of an elm, byJohn Constable. c.1821. Oil on paper, 30.6 by 24.8 cm. (Victoria and Albert Museum, London; exh. Grand Palais, Paris).

back, leaving her torso fully exposed to the artist's scrutiny. Two trunks together is the pun that almost inevitably springs to mind. The pairing is not altogether happy, partly because of the considerable difference in scale between the two. Yet it does help one to grasp the sheer materiality of Constable's art, and the undeniable erotic undertow that can be found in his passionate pursuit of nature. As John Gage reminds us in his perceptive introductory essay to the cata- logue section of the publication, Constable once referred to nature as his 'mistress'.

Freud's r81e in selecting the works for this show is both intriguing and in some ways a little disconcerting. It almost suggests a lack of nerve on the part of the organisers. Do they really need to secure Constable's position by having him 'introduced' by a famous contemporary artist? The idea may have been taken originally from the exciting series of exhibitions 'The Artist's Eye' initi- ated many years ago by Alistair Smith at the National Gallery. However, it is one thing to have an artist make a selection of works to emphasise the particular nature of that artist's interest, but it is quite a different matter to have an artist make such a selec- tion and then have it passed over to a team of scholars to reshape it as a retrospective. This can lead to confusion. Ultimately the exhibition does not quite bring out the points about Constable that Freud himself apparently wished to make (according to the interview with William Feaver); nor does it follow clearly enough the thematic and chronological arrangement that John Gage mapped out in the catalogue, for which both he and Anne Lyles provided such fine informative entries. Nor, it might be added, does it address the issue of Con- stable's relevance for French art, the subject of two admirable essays by Linda Whiteley and Olivier Meslay in the catalogue. White- ley presents new information that stresses the critical r81e of two dealers, John Arrow- smith and Claude Schroth, in achieving the successful showing of Constable's work in Paris in the 1820s. This is an important

reminder of how intimately the history of the avant-garde in the nineteenth century was related to the entrepreneurial activities of dealers. Where would the Impression- ists have been without Durand-Ruel, or Cezanne and Gauguin without Vollard? In Constable's case the two dealers failed. They could not keep the vogue for his pic- tures going and both went out of business in 1826. Their activities did result, however, in a small group of Constables remaining in France. As Meslay shows, some of these were accessible to subsequent generations of French artists. They exerted a subtle influence up to the emergence of Impres- sionism, after which they more or less sank from view. It seems a shame that these two impressive essays - which one hopes will have a wide circulation among those inter- ested in the history of dealing, collecting and international artistic exchange in the period - did not encourage the organisers to mount a section illustrating French artistic respons- es to Constable's work. Presumably it was felt that such a historical exercise would detract from the consideration of Constable as a timeless master.

The actual layout of the show is some- what bewildering. It seems to have been carried out either by a committee or a confused individual. While it starts with the first section ('L'enfance insouciante') and ends with the last ('Perpituels orages') as detailed in the catalogue, categories get mixed up in between. Section IV ('Hampstead') occurs well before Section III ('Grandes machines'),

47. Portrait ofa standing nude woman, by Lucian Freud. 1999-2000. 109.2 by 77.5 cm. (Private collection; exh. Grand Palais, Paris).

and does in any case contain many works created leagues away from the north Lon- don village after which it is named. Similar- ly section VII ('Paysage anglais') has jumped ahead of VI ('Constable a Salisbury'). It is true that it is often difficult to get a good fit between a show as conceived and the phys-

46. Mrs Tuder, byJohn Con- stable. c. 1818. 74.8 by 62.2 cm. (Canon Hall Museum, Barnsley; exh. Grand Palais, Paris).

50

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 6 Dec 2014 01:23:29 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

EXHIBITION REVIEWS

48. Reaper passing a cottage, East Bergholt, byJohn Constable. ?1817. Pencil, 11.5 by 18.6 cm. (Victoria and Albert Museum, London; exh. Grand Palais, Paris).

ical space in which it ends up, but there should have been more consultation be- tween the parties concerned at the planning stage. The prevailing grey tone of the walls is unsympathetic to Constable's colouring. As one commentator observed in the visi- tor's book, it made the show look 'un peu lourde' .

Yet the exhibition is not without its tri- umphs. One of its highlights is undoubtedly the artist's half-length portraits. While he usually goes astray with full figures and groups, the half-length enabled Constable to home in on a person - as he might on the trunk of a tree. Best of all are his portraits of women of a certain age, my favourite of

which is Mrs Tuder (no.67; Fig.46), a benign if somewhat resigned-looking individual. Constable records her ageing face with sympathy, adding a splendid efflorescence of curls, ruffs and bows. Such works fully vindicate the stress on portraiture in Freud's selection. The show is also successful in bringing out the quality of Constable's drawings. His masterly powers of observa- tion are shown particularly well in pencil studies such as the Reaper passing a cottage (no.56; Fig.48). These monochromes reveal his wonderfully subtle control of tone, which gives conviction to those atmospher- ic effects that he termed the 'chiaroscuro of nature'.

49. Boat-building, byJohn Constable. c. 1814-15. 50.8 by 61.6 cm. (Victoria and Albert Museum, London; exh. Grand Palais, Paris).

Apart from such revelations the show is also to be admired for the sheer number of masterpieces that it has brought together: the Haywain (no.70), the Leaping horse (no.95), the Watermeadows at Salisbury (no. 171), Boat- building (no.58; Fig.49) - so many of the old favourites are there. One only hopes that these works - so well known in Britain - have found new friends in France. Taken as a whole the exhibition, despite its difficul- ties, is a triumphant affirmation of Consta- ble's powers. If there was any doubt before about whether he had a place among the great masters of the European tradition, there should be none now.

WILLIAM VAUGHAN Birkbeck College, University ofLondon

'Catalogue: Constable. Le choix de Lucian Freud. By William Feaver, John Gage, Anne Lyles, Olivier Mes- lay and Linda Whiteley. 279 pp. incl. 217 col. pls. + 14 b. & w. ills. (Reunion des musees nationaux, Paris, 2002), E45. ISBN 2-7118-4453-6.

Boston Charles Sheeler's photography

It is time for a fresh look at Charles Sheeler as a photographer, but the exhibi- tion The Photography of Charles Sheeler:American Modernist at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (to 2nd February),' does not quite answer this need, even though it presents an extraordinary wealth of great photo- graphs. The exhibition is, in fact, little dif- ferent from the photography component of the huge Sheeler retrospective of 1987, which is perhaps not surprising since both were drawn almost entirely from the same source, the Lane collection, which acquired Sheeler's photographic estate after his death in 1965, and is on long-term loan to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. While the new exhibition has fascinating additions from Sheeler's early career as a professional photographer of works of art, and includes additional prints in each of the six impor- tant series Sheeler made between 1916 and 1929, the selection ends in 1939. This cut- off date prohibits the inclusion of the hand- ful of beautiful images from the 1950s that were in the previous show, much less any- thing unseen from that period or from the virtually unexplored body of his commer- cial work. Although the intriguing symbiotic relationship between Sheeler's photogra- phy and painting is discussed in an excellent catalogue essay by the show's co-curator, Karen E. Haas, it is only touched on in the exhibition itself.2 Nevertheless, this is a rich and marvellous exhibition, valuable not least for making us want to see more.

Born in Philadelphia in 1883, Sheeler studied painting there with William Merritt Chase, and was exhibiting by 1908. His life and his art were changed by a visit to Europe in 1909, when he saw works by Matisse, Picasso and Cezanne. After his return to Philadelphia he began painting in a Cezanne-esque, quasi-cubist manner, and exhibited in the Armory show in 1913. He became a friend of Duchamp (fervently admiring his Nude descending a staircase), and

51

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 6 Dec 2014 01:23:29 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions