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we're in the National Gallery in London
looking at one of John constables
six-footers the six footers are a series
of paintings that are up six feet wide
and this was an unusual size for
landscape paintings in the early 19th
century the date of his paintings 1821
the original title was landscape noon
but it's now known universally as the
hay Wain and I think it's hard for us to
retrieve how radical it was to put
forward as your subject at this scale
nature landscape painting was one of the
lowliest subjects according to the Royal
Academy here in London because it was
the idea of painting something that was
right in front of you just like painting
a portrait was something right in front
of you so important history subjects
religious subjects they were often quite
large in less important subjects
landscape still lives they were painted
on smaller canvases so constable is
being ambitious here which might seem
funny because the subject seems so very
mundane what we're looking at is a view
of the store river where constable grew
up and hey weigh in a cart moving
through that river with a woman in the
background doing some washing a dog
barking some farmers working in the
field in the background the clouds
passing in the sky at noon so what is
constable heroic izing with the scale of
this canvas constables father was a
landowner and constable came from a
well-to-do family in rural Suffolk in
England this is a moment when the land
in the countryside is fraught when there
are very severe economic stresses and
unemployment among the workers in the
early Industrial Revolution machines
were perceived to be taking employment
away there was great poverty but we see
none of that here landscapes are
expected to be classical and beautiful
to show us something idealized but
constables refusing to idealize here if
constable is looking back to any art
history he's looking back to the Dutch -
artists like Rosedale look at the amount
of his canvas that's given over to the
sky
constable had studied meteorology which
was a new subject and that specificity
of Dutch painting capturing a time of
day the title of this painting is new
specifics that are very much opposite of
the idealizing tradition that was
recommended by the Academy and in that
way there is a subtle political
undercurrent however we're not close to
the workers we don't actually see their
faces the farmers in the background have
become one with nature there's no sense
of the landscape of nature being
something that's fraught at this moment
the artist was creating a new kind of
beauty finding beauty even in the most
lowly that was an expression of his
personal experience and I think that's
what makes this romantic when we talk
about the style of romanticism in
England we're thinking about a kind of
art that is personal that is emotional
and we have his lovely quote from
constable about this he said writing to
a friend the sound of water escaping
from mill dams willows old rotten planks
slimy posts and brickwork
I love such things as long as I do paint
I shall never cease to paint such places
they have always been my delight still I
should paint my own places best painting
is with me but another word for feeling
and I associate my careless boyhood with
all that lies on the banks of the store
these scenes made me a painter and I am
grateful it is I'd often thought of
pictures of them before I ever touched a
pencil so you can think about this
painting as Constable loving this
landscape so much being so intimately
familiar with it but even as this
painting is about his personal
subjective experience his memories it's
also a painting that is fixed in a very
particular historical moment because of
industrialization and because of the
growth of cities Nature has taken on a
meaning because it is now removed from
people's everyday experiences at least
those that would have seen this painting
in the Royal Academy in London
there's certainly real nostalgia here
the six-footers were well received
but the criticism that always comes
through is the lack of finish which was
so different from the prevailing
traditions in the Academy at this time
where everything had to be smoothly
painted where you were not supposed to
see the hand of the artist constable was
deliberate in creating a rough surface
that he felt captured the variety of
textures of nature that he was seeing we
can feel the paint moving across the
surface in the currents of the water for
example and the movement of those
billowing clouds but in some ways the
painting is also very traditional for
instance in its composition we're led in
from the lower right and we arcs lowly
across the foreground towards the left
and then circle back to the broadly lit
fields and then up into the clouds and
so it is a fiction that constable is
giving us this may appear to be a
snapshot of a view on the river but this
is actually something very carefully
composed in the artist's studio in the
city of London from oil sketches that
the artist had done outside it's a
distillation of his memory of his
experience and of his skill
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