Show how presentations of the English countryside of the period evoke notions of the picturesque and/or unspoiled beauty.

 

 

The title of the discussion is a large one for such a short paper. It concerns an inquiry into Picturesque and, secondly, an understanding of the elements of English landscape painting during the Romantic period. It also concerns the motives for painting countryside scenes around this time, and conceptions of beauty in a societal sense.

 

It is probably wise to begin with the greatest countryside painter England has known, John Constable. Constable painted Sussex, Dedham, and the Stour River many times during his long career. In his diaries he comes across as a realist who wanted to paint things as they were. His actual output speaks differently. He is not adhering strictly to what he sees, but is using techniques of accentuation which are commonly associated with the Picturesque tradition.

 

The Hay-Wain 1821, arguably his most famous piece, has often featured in post-cards. This is not such a flippant statement as it would seem. It is an idealistic scene, a stereotypical view of what someone might expect to see in the country. 

 

“Constable ‘had worked with John Bull conscientiousness over every inch of the canvas’. ‘Constable does not thrill. Roast beef does not thrill but it is wholesome and life-communicating’”[1]

 

The cliché which resides in minds of many people of what the English countryside should look like is ever present, so that when one is confronted with the Hay-Wain observes cannot help but feel nostalgia for the healthy, clean living in the country. The rolling hills, the hard working farmers, the faithful dogs, the rustic cottages, are all things which Constable puts in to solicit a certain reaction from his critics.

 

The Industrial Revolution was not something that happened suddenly. By the end of the 1820s Britian had successfully defeated Napoleon, and urban centres were expanding at phenomenal rates. Along with that expansion came crime, squallor and suburbia. The middle-class idealised the country life, the unspoiled beauty of which they thought they lacked[2]. One way of recapturing this was through art. It is no wonder than Constable’s perfect scenes continued to gain popularity as conditions in the cities became worse and worse. A good word for it is nostalgia, a sentiment which stems right through Romanticism from the days of the Classicists.

 

Constable’s other works have varying degrees of realism. He is best remembered for his Picturesque pieces which have identified him.

 

Turner is an artist who deserves a mention. Turner saw himself as an intellectual force in upgrading the status of landscape painting. He saw himself as the next in line after Wilson, Claude Lorraine, and Poussin[3]. Some of English landscapes are less realistic than Constable’s because Turner is more aware of the history of Picturesque drawing. He is deliberately going for an iconographic effect in his Crossing the Brook of 1815 using the depoussoir effect, a broad river, and a distant roman aqueduct.

 

He also painted the more mature Frosty Morning 1813,  which showed that the honest muddy grittiness of country life could be Picturesque. This was one of Turner’s favorites because he captured the scene with his own eyes while moving in a carriage. During previous times painting commoners on muddy roads would not have been a study in the Picturesque but a study in poverty. It was the cultural climate at the time which romanticised country life which made Frosty Morning 1813 into the Picturesque piece it is meant to be.

 

Wright of Derby’s subject matter is more political. His picture Arkwright’s Mills by Night, c.1782 is a backlash against the building of  factories by showing a rectangular mill surrounded by rubble and at the top of a crag, at the highest point of the picture, a set of Claudian trees are desperately hanging on for survival. Men and beasts move as dark shapes in the foreground. Back in the 1780s a large androgynous building like a mill must have stood out for its ugly boxiness more than it would today because 20^th century man is used to eyesores. Wright of Derby evokes elements of the Picturesque in the inclusion of the rest of the picture as if to say “here is your beautiful countryside, and look what you have done with it”[4].

 

Phillipe Loutherbourg has been blunt showing how the country side was being spoiled in Coalbrookdale by Night, 1801. Country cottages are seen crumbling. Children stand in the decay. The fires of the coal stacks glow unnaturally through the night creating a hellish scene of shadows and smoke. English draft horses, an icon representing good hard work, are whipped into action in the foreground by a cruel stroke of the whip. Loutherbourg’s reason for painting such a picture is political. He perverts the Picturesque.  The painting contains visual cues of country beauty, but the agenda is not to show nature, but the damage caused by mechanization.

 

By the time Constable came along the ongoing industrialisation is more dire, but he resorts to showing the Picturesque in a happy, and almost inane formulistic way[5]. It is as if he is trying to ease the social conscience by showing his public an England they identified with but which was, in reality, fast disappearing.

 

The last two paintings mentioned have been set at night. The time of day is important in Romantic painting. Common settings are sunsets and sunrises. They symbolise decay and birth respectively. Turner also did a whole series of works with lights coming through clouds and rainbows after storms[6]. Rainbows over the English country side are especially Picturesque because they occur rarely and people see them as lucky, hence their use. One of Constables works combines a dead tree, a river, a cottage a rainbow, a painting horse-drawn carriage, a fisherman with his boat, and the Salisbury Cathedral on a gloomy day[7].

 

Having started with Constable, it would be appropriate to finish with him. Especially to finish with the Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows 1831 which is almost whimsical because of the fact that it tries to cram in every possible Picturesque motif into one picture.

 

The force of the Picturesque in English Landscape painting has always been a set of iconographic cues, and a sense of nostalgia for the country life. These are the core elements and they have been used to show mindless beauty, as in the case of Constable, or a topical view of beauty being spoiled, in the cases of Turner, Wright and Louthenburg.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

REFERENCES

 

Belsey Hugh ed., From Gainsborough to Constable, Boydell Press, UK, 1991

Bermingham A., Landscape and Ideology, UC Press, 1986.

Butlin, Martin, Turner: Watercolours, Phobeus-Verlag Publishers, 1962.

Daniels, S. Fields of Vision : Landscape Imagery and National Identity in England the US, Oxford, 1994

Gilpin William, Essays on Picturesque Beauty, Gregg Publishers, UK, (1794) republished 1972

Gowing, Lawrence, Turner: Imagination and Reality, Doubleday Pub, 1966

Hirsh, Diana, The World of Turner 1775-1851, Time-Life, US, 1969.

Walker, John, Constable, Abrams Pub, NY US, 1978

Wilton Andrew, Turner in his Time, Abrams Pub, NY US, 1987