Constable: A Portrait by James Hamilton (Hardback)

£25.00
Available
Product Ref. (e.g. ISBN, SKU)
9781474612913
Published:
17 Feb 2022
Format:
Hardback
Dimensions:
432 pages - 240mm x 156mm x mmmm
Weight:
0.100kgs
Author:

A fresh biography of the revolutionary British landscape painter John Constable (1776-1837).

As biographer of Gainsborough and Turner, James Hamilton's special insights give a unique perspective to Constable, and set him in his proper context as a giant of European art. While his paintings reflect visions of landscape that shocked and perplexed his contemporaries, he could himself also shock and perplex with his argumentative and revealing letters. John Constable was an active and energetic correspondent. His letters and diaries - there are altogether 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.

The paintings show him to be attentive to detail, spontaneous in gesture, brave in his use of colour, and so powerful an advocate for his native county that even after two hundred years his work is scrutinised for social and agricultural information. 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. His tight geographical boundary within the south of England defines his world view. Letters to and from his family shine light not only on Constable himself, but on his parents who had an enduring concern for him. 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 John Constable, the person as well as the painter. James Hamilton's biography reveals a complex, troubled man, and will explode previous mythologies about this timeless artist.

About the Author: James Hamilton is an art and cultural historian. His books include TURNER: A LIFE, shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and A STRANGE BUSINESS: MAKING ART AND MONEY IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN, which in 2014 was named Art Book of the Year by the SUNDAY TIMES. Hamilton was until retirement in 2013 curator of art collections and projects in Portsmouth, Wakefield, Sheffield, Leeds and the University of Birmingham, where he is a Fellow of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts.

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