Constable

ONE OF THE TIMES AND SUNDAY TIMES' BEST BOOKS FOR 2022'Eye-opening and full of surprises . . . A treasure' Sunday Times'A biography as rich with colourful characters as any novel' TelegraphJohn Constable, the revolutionary nineteenth-century painter of the landscapes and skies of southern England, is Britain's best-loved but perhaps least understood artist.His paintings reflect visions of landscape that shocked and perplexed his contemporaries: attentive to detail, spontaneous in gesture, brave in their use of colour. 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.Yet Constable was also an active and energetic correspondent. His letters and diaries - there are 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. 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 the person, as well as the painter.James Hamilton's biography reveals a complex, troubled man, and explodes previous mythologies about this timeless artist, and establishes him in his proper context as a giant of European art.

A biography as rich with colourful characters as any novel . . . As a biographer, Hamilton is a patient, perceptive portraitist, attuned to every swerve in the currents of Constable's life . . . 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 . . . On a coach back to London from Suffolk in his 50s, [Constable] 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, The lively art historian James Hamilton reveals the "complex, troubled man" in this biography of the landscape painter John Constable, An eye-opening biography . . This life of the celebrated landscape painter is full of surprises . . . James Hamilton is rightly famed for his biographies of J M W Turner and Thomas Gainsborough . . . the most fascinating pages in Hamilton's book come from his close scrutiny of Constable's canvases . . . its magnificent colour plates lift it on to another plane. They track Constable's career from the early portraits to exciting sky effects like the tempestuous Rainstorm over the Sea, painted in Brighton. Such illustrations make Constable: A Portrait a treasure, One of the many merits of James Hamilton's estimable biography of the painter is to show Constable's long struggle towards acceptance and his insistence, against the evidence, that "there is room enough for a natural painture" . . . As the biographer of Gainsborough and Turner, Hamilton is a practised hand when it comes to 18th- and 19th-century British art, and it shows. He moves deftly between Constable's personal and professional life and the network of relations and patrons that kept him afloat, and he is just as attuned to the radical aspects of Constable's art. In his pictures, as Hamilton shows, nature does not stand decorously stand still but becomes a pulsating, living entity., Absorbing . . . [Hamilton has made] judicious use of Constable's extensive correspondence and other writings, drawing deeply on these rich resources to bring the artist's own words into the heart of his book. Hamilton is particularly illuminating on Constable's early life . . Hamilton brings this period to life . . . Hamilton's young Constable is avid for intellectual companionship and conversation about books, painting and poetry . . . Hamilton is an astute judge of his subject's complex character . . . Constable may be a challenging subject, but Hamilton's deft use of his compelling voice keeps the narrative moving

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 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.