Celebrating the artist who made Hampstead home

Estelle Lovatt on marking Constable’s 250th birthday

The backs of the heads of two people looking at a field — Credit – Cristina Schek

This year we mark the 250^th birthday of John Constable, the great British, Romantic Realist, landscape painter.

Born in East Bergholt, Suffolk, Constable later made Hampstead his home after falling in love with its lush green verdant setting and early Georgian and Regency architecture.

He first discovered the area whilst he was a young fine art student at the Royal Academy. Walking from central London to the Heath, he described the route as the “three miles from door to door [from central London to Hampstead]…see nature, and unite a town and country life”. Its spectacular verdant landscape reminded him of his family farm and Suffolk home.

Rising some 450 feet above the City of London, Hampstead offered great distance from the over-crowded, fog polluted, metropolis and became a relaxing, exhilarating, refuge for Constable, and his family. His wife, whose health was extremely fragile, benefitted from Hampstead, a spa destination.

He praised its fresh air, calling Hampstead “the lungs of London”. And admired “the finest views, unsurpassed in Europe, from Westminster to Gravesend, Kent, and the dome of St Paul’s”, which he painted, sketched and drew as one of the most lovely, spectacular, sights he found.

Constable spent the final 19 years of his life in Hampstead. Capturing views he said included “Childs Hill, fields in Hendon, church spires in Harrow on the Hill, and even Windsor Castle!”

He sketched farm labourers at work on the Heath tending their cows, sheep, horses, donkeys and dogs. Beneath ash, birch, elm, oak and fir trees growing beyond hedgerows, around the ponds.

In Hampstead, Constable developed some of his most experimental painting techniques, including cloud studies for his celebrated six-footer masterpiece, The Hay Wain, 1821 (at the National Gallery). Although the painting shows the River Stour and Willy Lott’s house it is believed he worked from sketches made by Whitestone Pond and completed this masterpiece canvas in the garden shed of his Hampstead home — not in Suffolk!

Constable loved Hampstead and felt a deep connection with the area. Writing how: “Every day in Hampstead makes me long for a walk”. He preferred the rugged landscape of the Heath to formal city parks, which he considered artificial, saying: “The gentleman’s park is my aversion. It’s not beauty because it’s not nature!”

He added: “My art is found under every hedge; in every lane – therefore no one thinks it’s worth picking…[But] the landscape is too large to go unnoticed…[and the] Canvas takes the place of God’s work; the landscape is God’s plan in eye; because since the Creation, no two days are alike, no two hours are alike. No two trees are alike. No two leaves are alike.”

He used “a thousand greens to capture the complexity of nature’s beauty.”

He said: “Here, Hampstead, let me take my everlasting rest.” Constable is buried with his wife, Maria, and six of their seven children, in the family tomb at Saint John’s Parish Church, Church Row, London NW3.

You can celebrate the great Old Master’s landmark birthday by following in his footsteps and joining my ‘Walk Constable’s Hampstead’ guided tour.

To visit the places where Constable lived, loved, worked and painted his magnificent paintings, under the effects of ‘Skying’ and ‘Constable’s Snow’, painted ‘alla prima’, ‘en plein air’ in Hampstead Village, London NW3, more than 200 years ago. You’ll be surprised what’s to discover… and might be inspired to pick up a paintbrush yourself too.

For details and tickets see www.estellelovatt.com or www.eventbrite.com/o/34402021167

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