John Constable's landscapes fell out of favour in France - but a Paris retrospective, with paintings chosen by Lucien Freud, is part of a resurgence of French interest in English artists, writes Lara Marlowe
John Constable was as sedate as the landscapes he painted, spending his whole life in his native Suffolk, London, Brighton and Salisbury. During the one major journey of his life, a seven-week stay in the English Lake District in 1806, Constable met the romantic poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He shared their belief that nature was a projection of the artist's emotions.
Constable (1776-1837) was the son of a prosperous grain dealer and his art is autobiographical, with much of his work dedicated to the countryside where he grew up. "The places that are familiar to me are those I paint best," he wrote to his closest friend, Archdeacon John Fisher, in 1821. "Painting is the same thing as feeling. I associate my carefree childhood with everything to be found on the banks of the Stour. That is what made of me a painter, and for this I am grateful."
The English painter first achieved recognition at the Paris salon in 1824, when Eugène Delacroix pronounced him "the father of our school of landscape". Back in England, the painter cringed to hear his wife Mary's translations of effusive French praise. "I imagine the pretty valleys and peaceful farms, spread out before the eyes of gay and frivolous Parisians, as objects of curiosity and entertainment," he said.
Throughout the 19th century, a Constable was a prestigious addition to any French art collection. But his popularity declined after the second World War, says Olivier Meslay, a curator at the Louvre and a commissioner of the exhibition, Constable: Selection by Lucian Freud. "Turner became the only English painter admired in France, because he was closer to abstract art, so in fashion from 1950. Constable was relegated to the rank of figurative painters, completely out of style - all the more so because the English made him the painter of their identity."
After decades of neglect, English painting is returning to favour. The École du Louvre has, since 1997, offered a course on English art between 1750 and 1880. And the Grand Palais is holding the first retrospective in France of Constable's work, including some 200 oil paintings selected by Lucian Freud, the grandson of the inventor of psychiatry and one of the most prominent contemporary British painters.
Freud, like Constable before him, has an emotional attachment to the Stour River Valley, where he spent much of his youth. "For me, the jolt (of Constable's paintings) is really extraordinary," Freud writes in an interview published in the catalogue. "I lived there. And this little path running down to the edge of a field brings tears to my eyes; it's so incredibly moving."
How does Freud expect the French public to react to the exhibition? "They will think: this is what England is about," he says.
Constable was born one year after J.M.W. Turner and the two painters were destined to be compared in their lifetime and long after. "His (Constable's) style has none of the poetry of Mr Turner's," a London newspaper wrote in 1819, "but it more resembles Nature."
Lucian Freud sides with Constable. "For me, Constable is more moving than Turner because you feel he is sincere towards the landscape; he doesn't use it to serve his composition, at the whim of his fancy." Two of the most touching canvases on show in Paris are the House at East Bergholt, the place Constable was born, and the portrait of his fiancée, Maria Bicknell. Constable's landscapes - and especially his clouds, rendered with a meteorologist's exactitude - are often compared with those of Dutch masters. The House at East Bergholt reminds one of Vermeer's View of Delft.
Maria Bicknell's portrait was an object of veneration for Constable. Her family were magistrates and Church people who looked down on the Constables because they were of the merchant classes. Like Jacob in the Old Testament waiting for Leah and then Rachel, Constable pined seven years for the hand of Maria Bicknell. But theirs was a happy union, producing seven children in the 12 years before Maria died of tuberculosis. Constable was finally admitted to the Royal Academy the year after her death, but his grief affected his painting. "Every ray of sunlight has gone out for me. At least in art. Is it surprising that I endlessly paint storms?" he wrote.
The Hay-Wain, The Leaping Horse and Salisbury Cathedral have adorned so many biscuit tins that their commercialisation detracts from our enjoyment of Constable's art. He called these his "six-foot paintings" - executed in large dimensions for showing at the Royal Academy. Yet seeing these works within the broader context of Constable's oeuvre rescues them from the brink of cliché-dom. More than half a century before realism and impressionism Constable pre-figured both movements with his belief that painting was a scientific experiment, and his determination to paint light.
Constable: Selection by Lucian Freud, is at the Grand Palais until January 13th. Open every day except Tuesday.
Internet bookings: www.rmn.fr/constable or www.fnac.com