Constable by James Hamilton review: vivid portrait of the old-school Tory who reinvented art

“There is no easy way of becoming a painter,” John Constable announced to his early mentor and outdoor painting companion John Dunthorne in May 1802 – the first statement in a seven-point list that James Hamilton calls Constable’s “manifesto”. He was nearly 26 and, after a decade of slow but determined progress, had finished his studies at the Royal Academy and was about to turn professional. Obstacle No 1 soon presented itself, however. Constable was heart-and-soul a landscape painter, but the only way he could hope to earn a living was to tout his skills as a portraitist.

Hamilton has followed his practice in his marvellously readable 2017 biography of Gainsborough in subtitling his new book simply “A Portrait”. But where Gainsborough was a master of “the face business”, Constable recoiled from becoming a “Gentlemen and Ladies painter”. He acquired the skills – an 1820 oil sketch of his wife Maria with two toddlers on her lap is a gem of tender observation – but the necessary touting, like painting, didn’t come easily.

As a biographer, Hamilton is a patient, perceptive portraitist, attuned to every swerve in the currents of Constable’s life. Saved from having to head up the family’s milling and shipping business by his younger brother Abram, Constable spent the first half of his career watching younger contemporaries overtake him, then, after becoming an Associate of the Royal Academy at the age of 43, the second half grumpily adjusting to modest fame and juggling his studio time with family responsibilities as a father of seven with an adored but childbirth-clobbered tubercular wife.

With his sharp eye and satirical tongue, Constable had no patience for anyone other than family and a few loyal friends. He fluffed opportunities, was frank to the point of rudeness and, by the preening standards of Regency London, obstinately under-groomed. Samples of his waspish grouching crop up, enjoyably, throughout the book. Rival Royal Academician JMW Turner was “stark mad”. A landscape by William Collins reminded Constable, whose visual memory retained every detail of his native Suffolk, of “a large cow turd”.

Constable’s landscapes gradually won English admirers, often from the newly rich industrial bourgeoisie rather than country-house connoisseurs. But the only people who really grasped what he was doing were French artists. Encountering Landscape: Noon (later known as The Hay Wain) in 1821, Théodore Géricault was “stunned”. When a Parisian dealer showed it with View on the Stour near Dedham, Eugène Delacroix noted, “Saw the Constables. That was quite enough for one day.” The “richness of the green in his meadows”, Delacroix realised, “comes from his use of many different greens… What he says about meadow green can be applied to all other tones.”

Characteristically, Constable declined the invitation to go to Paris. “Think of the lovely valleys mid the peaceful farm houses of Suffolk, forming a scene of exhibition to amuse the gay and frivolous Parisians,” he mused. And besides, “I cannot speak a word of the language, and above all I love England and my own home.” Here speaks the old-school Tory, the dyed-in-the-wool opponent of religious reform and workers’ rights, who never once ventured abroad. Yet there is a strong case, which Hamilton reinforces, for seeing Constable as an unlikely revolutionary in this turbulent, transformative era, sowing the seeds of French impressionism.

Alongside Constable’s lively, opinionated voice, we hear many others. Hamilton’s cast list contains the names of more than 120 people, many of whom – like Constable – were habitual letter-writers and journal-keepers. There’s his mother Ann, shrewdly advising him to capitalise on his first portrait commissions: “Fortune will place the Ball at your Toe, and I trust that you will not kick it from you.” And there’s the love of his life, Maria Bicknell, whose inheritance-obsessed relations contrived to keep her cash-strapped suitor at bay for seven years. Some 170 letters survive from their courtship and married life. Writing from Brighton (“Piccadilly by the sea-side,” Constable sniffed), where Maria and the children spent several summers while he commuted to his London studio, she shared her delight in watching “the flying shadows on the downs” – knowing, of course, how Constable, perhaps the greatest painter of clouds, would see them too.

It’s at moments like this, of which there are many, that Hamilton captures particularly vividly the timbre of relationships and the textures of Constable’s day-to-day life, making you wonder whether “Constable: A Novel” might have been a truer title. There’s so much going on – art-world politics, children’s illnesses, house moves, money worries – that you have to remind yourself that somewhere, off-stage, is a quiet studio where the painting gets done. But when Hamilton does focus on Constable’s art, he gives it the space it needs, as in his two-page exposition of The Hay Wain – “a moment held for ever on a canvas flooded with green”.

“Nature is the fountain’s head” was the second line of Constable’s youthful manifesto. He never wavered. On a coach back to London from Suffolk in his 50s, he drew a fellow passenger’s attention to Dedham Vale: “Is this not beautiful?” “Yes Sir,” came the answer, “this is Constable’s country.” “I am John Constable,” he replied. Unless you’re inspired to retrace Hamilton’s steps through the hundreds of letters and journal entries on which he has drawn to such rich, multi-vocal effect, Constable: A Portrait will bring you as close as is probably possible to understanding what those four words meant.

Constable: A Portrait is published by W&N at ￡25. To order your copy for ￡19.99 call 0844 871 1514 or visit the Telegraph Bookshop