1776-1837 British John Constable Locations 1837). English painter and draughtsman. His range and aspirations were less extensive than those of his contemporary J. M. W. Turner, but these two artists have traditionally been linked as the giants of early 19th-century British landscape painting and isolated from the many other artists practising landscape at a time when it was unprecedentedly popular. Constable has often been defined as the great naturalist and deliberately presented himself thus in his correspondence, although his stylistic variety indicates an instability in his perception of what constituted nature. He has also been characterized as having painted only the places he knew intimately, which other artists tended to pass by. While the exclusivity of Constable approach is indisputable, his concern with local scenery was not unique, being shared by the contemporary Norwich artists. By beginning to sketch in oil from nature seriously in 1808, he also conformed with the practice of artists such as Thomas Christopher Hofland (1777-1843), William Alfred Delamotte, Turner and, particularly, the pupils of John Linnell. Turner shared his commitment to establishing landscape as the equal of history painting, despite widespread disbelief in this notion. Nevertheless, although Constable was less singular than he might have liked people to believe, his single-mindedness in portraying so limited a range of sites was unique, and the brilliance of his oil sketching unprecedented, while none of his contemporaries was producing pictures resembling The Haywain (1821; London, N.G.) or the Leaping Horse (1825; London, RA). This very singularity was characteristic of British artists at a time when members of most occupations were stressing their individuality in the context of a rapidly developing capitalist economy  Related Paintings of John Constable :. | A Lane near Flatford | Dedham seen from Langham | The leaping horse | Brighton Beach | Branch Hill Pond |
Related Artists:
Johannes Natus
painted Peasants smoking and making music in an inn in 1660
Pierre-Paul Prud hon
French 1758-1823 Pierre Paul Prud'hon Gallery
Sultan Muhammad
Persian Painter, active ca.1505-1550 Persian illustrator. He was apparently a native of Tabriz and spent most of his life there. Contemporary sources suggest that he was at the height of his creative powers in the 1520s and 1530s when he was one of the leading painters in the employ of the Safavid shah Tahmasp. Sultan-Muhammad's documented paintings include contributions to a monumental copy (dispersed, ex-Houghton priv. col.) of Firdawsi's Shahnama ('Book of kings') made for Tahmasp between c. 1524 and c. 1529 and paintings from a copy (divided, New York, Met. and Cambridge, MA, Sackler Mus.) of Hafiz's Divan (collected poems), probably executed between 1531 and 1533. Sultan-Muhammad's paintings for these manuscripts demonstrate how the tradition of western Iranian painting as practised in Tabriz, Shiraz and other centres during the 15th century continued to be significant at the Safavid court .