What do you think?
Rate this book
Constable: A Portrait
ONE OF THE TIMES AND SUNDAY TIMES' BEST BOOKS FOR 2022
'Eye-opening and full of surprises . . . A treasure' Sunday Times
'A biography as rich with colourful characters as any novel' Telegraph
John Constable, the revolutionary nineteenth-century painter of the landscapes and skies of southern England, is Britain's best-loved but perhaps least understood artist.
His paintings reflect visions of landscape that shocked and perplexed his contemporaries: attentive to detail, spontaneous in gesture, brave in their use of colour. What we learn from his landscapes is that Constable had sharp local knowledge of Suffolk, a clarity of expression of the skyscapes above Hampstead, an understanding of the human tides in London and Brighton, and a rare ability in his late paintings of Salisbury Cathedral to transform silent suppressed passion into paint.
Yet Constable was also an active and energetic correspondent. His letters and diaries - there are over one thousand letters from and to him - reveal a man of passion, opinion and discord, while his character and personality is concealed behind the high shimmering colour of his paintings. They reveal too the lives and circumstances of his brothers and his sisters, his cousins and his aunts, who serve to define the social and economic landscape against which he can be most clearly seen. These multifaceted reflections draw a sharp picture of the person, as well as the painter.
James Hamilton's biography reveals a complex, troubled man, and explodes previous mythologies about this timeless artist, and establishes him in his proper context as a giant of European art.
'Eye-opening and full of surprises . . . A treasure' Sunday Times
'A biography as rich with colourful characters as any novel' Telegraph
John Constable, the revolutionary nineteenth-century painter of the landscapes and skies of southern England, is Britain's best-loved but perhaps least understood artist.
His paintings reflect visions of landscape that shocked and perplexed his contemporaries: attentive to detail, spontaneous in gesture, brave in their use of colour. What we learn from his landscapes is that Constable had sharp local knowledge of Suffolk, a clarity of expression of the skyscapes above Hampstead, an understanding of the human tides in London and Brighton, and a rare ability in his late paintings of Salisbury Cathedral to transform silent suppressed passion into paint.
Yet Constable was also an active and energetic correspondent. His letters and diaries - there are over one thousand letters from and to him - reveal a man of passion, opinion and discord, while his character and personality is concealed behind the high shimmering colour of his paintings. They reveal too the lives and circumstances of his brothers and his sisters, his cousins and his aunts, who serve to define the social and economic landscape against which he can be most clearly seen. These multifaceted reflections draw a sharp picture of the person, as well as the painter.
James Hamilton's biography reveals a complex, troubled man, and explodes previous mythologies about this timeless artist, and establishes him in his proper context as a giant of European art.
496 pages, Paperback
First published September 6, 2022
7 people are currently reading
70 people want to read
About the author
James Hamilton
631 books17 followersJames Hamilton is a curator, writer and lecturer, who entered the University of Manchester to read Mechanical Engineering, and emerged with a degree in History of Art.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 20, 2023
"What a moment of cultural revolution: Michael Faraday who showed how natural forces might be harnessed and set to work for human benefit, and William Wordsworth who showed how words could be empowered to elevate the ordinary, together listening to John Constable who showed us how to see what lies around us all." —James Hamilton
Much like the artist he writes about —one who's meticulous in the details of their painting, writing and lecturing— author James Hamilton produces a biographic narrative in his JOHN CONSTABLE: A Portrait, that is studious in its detailed cast of 134 characters of family, friends, mentors, and fellow artists, in the maps of the countrysides Constable lived and worked in, and mostly in his insightful, descriptive depictions of Constable's most famous landscapes and portraits.
Much like Constable eschewing portraits for profit in favor of natural landscapes, Hamilton titles his book "A Portrait", when in fact, it is a sprawling landscape of the painters deepest creative desires, moral preferences, and unvarnished emotions regarding his art and of those he shared it with. A marvelous story. Bitter sweet, yet like Constable's paintings, a narrative well defined in its contrast of dark and light; a chiaroscuro of fine literary quality.
Much like the artist he writes about —one who's meticulous in the details of their painting, writing and lecturing— author James Hamilton produces a biographic narrative in his JOHN CONSTABLE: A Portrait, that is studious in its detailed cast of 134 characters of family, friends, mentors, and fellow artists, in the maps of the countrysides Constable lived and worked in, and mostly in his insightful, descriptive depictions of Constable's most famous landscapes and portraits.
Much like Constable eschewing portraits for profit in favor of natural landscapes, Hamilton titles his book "A Portrait", when in fact, it is a sprawling landscape of the painters deepest creative desires, moral preferences, and unvarnished emotions regarding his art and of those he shared it with. A marvelous story. Bitter sweet, yet like Constable's paintings, a narrative well defined in its contrast of dark and light; a chiaroscuro of fine literary quality.
Arundel Mill and Castle (1837)
Constable's final painting, left upon his easel at the time of his death.
Thank you Hannah
August 16, 2025
My interest in John Constable was the result of a recent visit to Dedham, England, where we learned that Dedham and the surrounding area, called Dedham Vale, is designated as an official “National Landscape” (formerly referred to as an “Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty”). It gained that designation partly though the area’s popularity as a tourist spot, beginning in the late 1800s, in turn as a result of its portrayal in the paintings of John Constable. (In fact, the Dedham Vale area is also referred to as “Constable Country.”) Constable grew up in the area of Dedham Vale, attended school in Dedham village, and his family owned businesses and property in Dedham and adjacent villages. The Visitor Center at Flatford Mill, where the Constable family had a mill, focused on Constable’s art and displays reproductions of some of his most iconic paintings of the area. Before this, I had heard of Constable but knew little about him or his work.
Curious about a couple of details of Constable, I checked my local library on a whim and found this book not only in their collection but sitting on the shelf and available, so I took it out. I am glad I did!
Rather than trying to evaluate how well the author wrote this book, my comments are focused on what I learned about Constable himself.
The first point is that the author was able to provide a very detailed portrayal of Constable, his family, his associates and benefactors, and of the times and circumstances, because he had access to a large volume of primary source material. His family included several inveterate letter writes, and much of the correspondence was preserved, as was much of what passed between John Constable and some of these closest friends, advisors, and benefactors. This large volume of material provides more first-hand detail than I suspect would be available for many other biographical subjects.
To my untrained eye, John Constable’s landscapes of Dedham Vale are realistic, and some (his so-called six-footers) are spectacular in their size and detail. But what Hamilton helps the reader to understand is how Constable’s landscapes did not follow the “rules” of the day – classic paintings were “supposed” to portray historic events or scenes from scriptures or legends, not ordinary daily life. This explains why Constable’s work was not accepted readily by the art establishment. Constable’s goal was to portray nature as it is, and to do so accurately. In using Dedham Vale as his subject, he also showed ordinary working people doing ordinary daily activity – harvesting hay, operating locks on a canal, and building or repairing boats. He could show these activities accurately because these were activities he saw daily, and he had participated in them himself. His family owned and operated mills and a boatyard and waterway facilities, and he had learned the business. He knows the people portrayed in the work and respected them and what they did. Which was entirely different from painting an image of battle scene from hundreds of years before.
The other particular feature of Constable’s paintings are his skies – his large paintings especially have ample space devoted to showing the sky, often filled with clouds. And not just white puffy clouds, but clouds of different sizes, shapes, and colors, and clouds influenced by the time of day and whether a storm approached. Constable had studied the skies, partly in support of his family’s need to know what weather was coming that might affect their harvests or their shipping. He knew the names of the plants in his pictures and insisted on drawing the accurately, and he had studies of clouds as well.
It was not easy for Constable to become what he wished to be, though. The term “struggling artist” may not appear in the book, but John certainly struggled in many ways for many years. His first struggle was apparently with school – he did not like it as a youngster and did not take well to his first two schools and was shifted twice. Eventually he ended up in a school in Dedham, where he found a mentor who noticed his interest in art and assisted him. As part of this, his parents had to give up their goal for him. Initially they hoped for him to be a clergyman, but the experience with first two schools, led by churchmen, proved that to be an unlikely path to succeed. (The corporal punishment did not please his parents, either.) More or less coincidentally, John’s parents had decided that their first-born son, Golding (named after his father), could not be expected to assume the usual role of the oldest son to take over the family business because of his poor health and difficult personality. So, they changed course and hoped that John – their fourth child and second son – could assume the mantle of heir-apparent to the father’s business. John is described as initially being quite willing to take that path, and as a teenager working hard to learn the business (in parallel with his formal schooling, apparently).
But his growing interest in art begins to manifest itself and his parents become concerned. Spending many hours outside, including his long daily walks from the home in east Bergholt across the River Stour to the school in Dedham, John does numerous sketches of the landscape he sees, but also sketches and ink drawings from more classic art he finds in books, including classic religious and mythological scenes as well as physiological studies.
One of the most consequential early acquaintances John made was his neighbor John Dunthorne, who had married a local widow. Dunthorne, an intelligent and skilled jack-of-all-trades, befriended Constable in his late teens, and helped him to develop his art. The two spent many hours together, sketching and painting, playing music, and talking. Dunthorne became one of John Constable’s closest friends, as did Dunthorne’s son later on.
The friendship with Dunthorne seems to have been a turning point for John. Hamilton describes John’s parents as concerned at first but later resigned to his change in direction away from business and towards art.
Hamilton tells of many other influences and benefactors on John’s artistic development. He was fortunate that his family’s friends and business associates led to people with financial resources and with art interests, many of whom were influential and supportive to John. But it was not at all an easy or automatic path even once his parents accepted it. There was always the pressure of money. Many artists made their income from painting portraits, and John faced pressure to do that throughout his career, almost to the end. His benefactors might buy his landscapes but also place a priority on yet another portrait of one or another family member or event. Early on his parents struggled to contribute enough money for John’s support, particularly during periods when the economy was poor and their business was suffering, so doing portraits was virtually essential, no matter how much it frustrated John’s true ambitions.
Another of the most important elements needed for an artist to succeed was membership in and support from the Ryal Academy [of Arts]. As he learned more about the artist community and had more exposure to the Academy, Constable developed an intense disdain for the politics of the Academy, and resentment of what he saw as the members’ prejudice against artists like himself who had new ideas or new styles of art, and yet he eagerly, almost desperately, sought their approval and acceptance. Eventually he was elected as an Associate member and later a full Member. Along the way, he contributed increasingly more to their activities and education programs, including the committee that selects and arranges the art to be displayed in the periodic Academy exhibitions. This activity involved choices by the Committee of Arrangement, not only of what paintings were to be displayed, but how they would be placed on the walls. For one such exhibit, one of Constable’s paintings was rejected, because it had “too much green,” according to one committee member, causing Constable to announce it was his. The resulting embarrassment resulted in a scene that Hamilton describes as “trapping the tormenting clique.” Such was the prejudice that Constable faced for his style of painting in which he tried to reflect nature as it was rather than the idealized landscape style of the established artists.
Once John is on his adult path to becoming an artist is his own right, he meets Maria Bicknell. A great deal of Hamilton’s biography details their courtship, marriage, and family life, as you would expect. Before their marriage, John is portrayed as madly in love with Maria, and she with him, and their correspondence certainly illustrates that. Their courtship was long and fraught because of family politics (and money), but eventually they married. But we could see what was coming as John told Maria that art was his “true mistress,” a statement that was truer than she might have imagined. Put another way, John always placed work before his family, except in the most desperate of family situations. Despite his professions of love for Maria, and his love and enjoyment of his children (7 eventually!), John spends much more time on his work than with them, and is often away from home. He travels for his work, but also to maintain his relationships with benefactors as well as friends, sometimes being away for astonishingly long periods of time and vexing Maria accordingly. (There was no cure for TB then.)
It is difficult to judge John’s treatment of Maria, not knowing what was “normal” for the time and culture, and not knowing how much was really necessary for his financial and artistic success. But in the end, she dies from “consumption,” a term for tuberculosis, at the age of 40, not long after giving birth to their 7th child. As the author sharply says, John “loved her to death.”
In summary, the author provides a clear picture of John Constable’s life, including his artistic development, his family life before and after marriage, and his life-long struggle for acceptance of his art and his ideas. Most important, the book helped me to understand what was new about Constable’s style of landscapes and how he was influenced by his upbringing in Dedham Vale.
It was helpful that the book includes 37 color plates, most of which are images of Constable’s works (mostly landscapes, some portraits, one mezzotint). Now I am eager to see some of his landscapes in person (although there are not very many in the US).
Curious about a couple of details of Constable, I checked my local library on a whim and found this book not only in their collection but sitting on the shelf and available, so I took it out. I am glad I did!
Rather than trying to evaluate how well the author wrote this book, my comments are focused on what I learned about Constable himself.
The first point is that the author was able to provide a very detailed portrayal of Constable, his family, his associates and benefactors, and of the times and circumstances, because he had access to a large volume of primary source material. His family included several inveterate letter writes, and much of the correspondence was preserved, as was much of what passed between John Constable and some of these closest friends, advisors, and benefactors. This large volume of material provides more first-hand detail than I suspect would be available for many other biographical subjects.
To my untrained eye, John Constable’s landscapes of Dedham Vale are realistic, and some (his so-called six-footers) are spectacular in their size and detail. But what Hamilton helps the reader to understand is how Constable’s landscapes did not follow the “rules” of the day – classic paintings were “supposed” to portray historic events or scenes from scriptures or legends, not ordinary daily life. This explains why Constable’s work was not accepted readily by the art establishment. Constable’s goal was to portray nature as it is, and to do so accurately. In using Dedham Vale as his subject, he also showed ordinary working people doing ordinary daily activity – harvesting hay, operating locks on a canal, and building or repairing boats. He could show these activities accurately because these were activities he saw daily, and he had participated in them himself. His family owned and operated mills and a boatyard and waterway facilities, and he had learned the business. He knows the people portrayed in the work and respected them and what they did. Which was entirely different from painting an image of battle scene from hundreds of years before.
The other particular feature of Constable’s paintings are his skies – his large paintings especially have ample space devoted to showing the sky, often filled with clouds. And not just white puffy clouds, but clouds of different sizes, shapes, and colors, and clouds influenced by the time of day and whether a storm approached. Constable had studied the skies, partly in support of his family’s need to know what weather was coming that might affect their harvests or their shipping. He knew the names of the plants in his pictures and insisted on drawing the accurately, and he had studies of clouds as well.
It was not easy for Constable to become what he wished to be, though. The term “struggling artist” may not appear in the book, but John certainly struggled in many ways for many years. His first struggle was apparently with school – he did not like it as a youngster and did not take well to his first two schools and was shifted twice. Eventually he ended up in a school in Dedham, where he found a mentor who noticed his interest in art and assisted him. As part of this, his parents had to give up their goal for him. Initially they hoped for him to be a clergyman, but the experience with first two schools, led by churchmen, proved that to be an unlikely path to succeed. (The corporal punishment did not please his parents, either.) More or less coincidentally, John’s parents had decided that their first-born son, Golding (named after his father), could not be expected to assume the usual role of the oldest son to take over the family business because of his poor health and difficult personality. So, they changed course and hoped that John – their fourth child and second son – could assume the mantle of heir-apparent to the father’s business. John is described as initially being quite willing to take that path, and as a teenager working hard to learn the business (in parallel with his formal schooling, apparently).
But his growing interest in art begins to manifest itself and his parents become concerned. Spending many hours outside, including his long daily walks from the home in east Bergholt across the River Stour to the school in Dedham, John does numerous sketches of the landscape he sees, but also sketches and ink drawings from more classic art he finds in books, including classic religious and mythological scenes as well as physiological studies.
One of the most consequential early acquaintances John made was his neighbor John Dunthorne, who had married a local widow. Dunthorne, an intelligent and skilled jack-of-all-trades, befriended Constable in his late teens, and helped him to develop his art. The two spent many hours together, sketching and painting, playing music, and talking. Dunthorne became one of John Constable’s closest friends, as did Dunthorne’s son later on.
The friendship with Dunthorne seems to have been a turning point for John. Hamilton describes John’s parents as concerned at first but later resigned to his change in direction away from business and towards art.
Hamilton tells of many other influences and benefactors on John’s artistic development. He was fortunate that his family’s friends and business associates led to people with financial resources and with art interests, many of whom were influential and supportive to John. But it was not at all an easy or automatic path even once his parents accepted it. There was always the pressure of money. Many artists made their income from painting portraits, and John faced pressure to do that throughout his career, almost to the end. His benefactors might buy his landscapes but also place a priority on yet another portrait of one or another family member or event. Early on his parents struggled to contribute enough money for John’s support, particularly during periods when the economy was poor and their business was suffering, so doing portraits was virtually essential, no matter how much it frustrated John’s true ambitions.
Another of the most important elements needed for an artist to succeed was membership in and support from the Ryal Academy [of Arts]. As he learned more about the artist community and had more exposure to the Academy, Constable developed an intense disdain for the politics of the Academy, and resentment of what he saw as the members’ prejudice against artists like himself who had new ideas or new styles of art, and yet he eagerly, almost desperately, sought their approval and acceptance. Eventually he was elected as an Associate member and later a full Member. Along the way, he contributed increasingly more to their activities and education programs, including the committee that selects and arranges the art to be displayed in the periodic Academy exhibitions. This activity involved choices by the Committee of Arrangement, not only of what paintings were to be displayed, but how they would be placed on the walls. For one such exhibit, one of Constable’s paintings was rejected, because it had “too much green,” according to one committee member, causing Constable to announce it was his. The resulting embarrassment resulted in a scene that Hamilton describes as “trapping the tormenting clique.” Such was the prejudice that Constable faced for his style of painting in which he tried to reflect nature as it was rather than the idealized landscape style of the established artists.
Once John is on his adult path to becoming an artist is his own right, he meets Maria Bicknell. A great deal of Hamilton’s biography details their courtship, marriage, and family life, as you would expect. Before their marriage, John is portrayed as madly in love with Maria, and she with him, and their correspondence certainly illustrates that. Their courtship was long and fraught because of family politics (and money), but eventually they married. But we could see what was coming as John told Maria that art was his “true mistress,” a statement that was truer than she might have imagined. Put another way, John always placed work before his family, except in the most desperate of family situations. Despite his professions of love for Maria, and his love and enjoyment of his children (7 eventually!), John spends much more time on his work than with them, and is often away from home. He travels for his work, but also to maintain his relationships with benefactors as well as friends, sometimes being away for astonishingly long periods of time and vexing Maria accordingly. (There was no cure for TB then.)
It is difficult to judge John’s treatment of Maria, not knowing what was “normal” for the time and culture, and not knowing how much was really necessary for his financial and artistic success. But in the end, she dies from “consumption,” a term for tuberculosis, at the age of 40, not long after giving birth to their 7th child. As the author sharply says, John “loved her to death.”
In summary, the author provides a clear picture of John Constable’s life, including his artistic development, his family life before and after marriage, and his life-long struggle for acceptance of his art and his ideas. Most important, the book helped me to understand what was new about Constable’s style of landscapes and how he was influenced by his upbringing in Dedham Vale.
It was helpful that the book includes 37 color plates, most of which are images of Constable’s works (mostly landscapes, some portraits, one mezzotint). Now I am eager to see some of his landscapes in person (although there are not very many in the US).
February 6, 2025
This was another of those books I read in January when I simply needed some down time or when sitting at the doctor's office, etc. I was quite interested in the way John Constable worked. He was considered one of the best English landscape painter in the Romantic tradition. The book, which is 496 pages, contains letters and bits of the man's passion and lots on his opinions.
September 18, 2023
Beautifully written and immaculately researched. I really enjoyed it and have given it 4 stars instead of 5 as I would have liked more pictures of the paintings described (though I know that makes the book more expensive).
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews