 I'm very pleased to be chairing this next session, change of advertised plans, but I'm delighted to welcome Gillian and Eleanor. I'll introduce the previous few sections. I'll introduce Gillian, and then when she's done her bit, I'll introduce Eleanor for hers. So Gillian Forrester will be known by many of you. She's an independent art historian, curator and writer, but was formerly, for many years, senior curator of prints and drawings at the Yale Centre for British Art, where, amongst many great projects, there's a prize-winning volume art and emancipation in Jamaica, but she's got a particular interest going back decades, and I think to her time at Tate and before that, in James W. Turner and Constable. Her work, her paper today, evolves from work that she's currently doing on the print collection at the Yale Centre for British Art and in collaboration, too, with Mauna, who we heard from before on Constable's English landscape scenery. So we'll welcome Gillian. Thank you very much, Amy, and it's wonderful to be here, and thank you Mark and Steve for organising this really stimulating, provocative and interesting conference and all the talks have been great, and also thanks to Ella and Danny for superb logistical arrangements. So English landscape scenery again, we'll be able to produce a box set at the end of this. The talk is a bit long, I'm afraid. Mark tried to persuade me to cut it down very rightly, but I said the work would be ruined in Constable, and my life would be over if I cut it. So I'll speak at a reasonable clip. This paper, and I'm reading, I'm afraid, so no ad-libbing, but it goes more quickly that way. This paper derys from an ongoing collaboration with Professor Mawnar O'Neill on John Constable's various subjects of landscape characteristic of English scenery from pictures painted by John Constable R.A. The series of Mesotints engraved by David Lucas and published by the artist in the early 1830s that became known later as English landscape scenery, and in this paper is referred to as English landscape. The series has long been understood as a manifesto of Constable's aesthetic principles and a compelling articulation of his artistic identity. The front, and that's one of the title pages. There we have our friend. The frontispiece Eastburg Holt Suffolk depicts the figure of the artist himself, sketching and seated in front of the house where he was born. Below the image are inscribed the following verses. Hiclocus et artis nostri primordia no wit, anos feliceis, laetitiae quedieis, hiclocus ingenuus pureleis imbuid anos, artibus et nostri laudis origio fuit. As Searle Leslie noted in his memoirs of the life of John Constable, the artist's close friend, John Fisher, translated these lines as, quote, this spot saw the dayspring of my life, house of joy and years of happiness. This place first tinged my boyish fancy with a love of the art. This place was the origin of my fame, unquote. Scholars consistently have drawn upon this inscription to interpret the works in the series, yet the source remained unidentified until Mourner O'Neill's discovery of its provenance in 2011. The source of the verses is de laudibus divini sapienti, in praise of divine wisdom, written by the celebrated medieval priest Theologian and proto-scientist Alexander Neckham, probably around 1190. Apart from minor differences in punctuation, these lines correspond exactly to the text engraved on the plate of Constable's frontispiece. Divided into ten books or distinctions, Neckham's poem explores the topics of his prose philosophical treaties, de naturis rarum, relating the history of the elements and natural phenomena from the creation of celestial bodies to the interior of the earth. Neckham's central objective was to present the natural world as a manifestation of God's love, glory and power. As Ronald E. Pepper has noted, the poem is also punctuated by reflections on his life, therefore functioning as a kind of autobiography. The Latin text reoccurs in the 1603 edition of William Camden's Britannia, first published in 1586. In his county by county account of Britain, Camden's discussion of Hertfordshire includes a description of the quote of antiquity and dignity of the Roman settlement Veralum, which later provided the stones for the nearby building of St Orban's monastery, where Neckham spent his boyhood. In the course of relating the history of the site, Camden quotes Neckham's lines. Camden's objective was to quote, restore antiquity to Britain and Britain to her antiquity, unquote. And his citation of works by so-called Anglo-Latin poets such as Neckham was a critical component of this project, allowing Camden to delineate an independent tradition for the British English Church that could be traced back to the Roman Empire. The poem may have come to Camden's tension through the work of the antiquary John Leland, who cited it in his 1549 Chronicle, the laborious journey and search for England's antiquities. The first English translation by Philoman Holland appeared in 1610, and the passage later appeared in William Winstanley's Lives of the Most Famous English Poets or The Honor of Parnassus, published in 1683, describing Neckham as, quote, the learnedest Englishman of his age, unquote. Winstanley cited Mr Camden as his source, and noted that the text was thus Englished by his translator, Dr Holland. This poem is rendered thus on the screen. This is the place that knowledge took of my nativity, my happy years, my days also of mirth and jollity, this place my childhood trained up in all arts liberal and laid the grand work of my name and skill poetical, this place great and renanned clerks into the world have sent for martyr, blessed, for nation, for sight, all excellent, a troop here of religious men serve Christ both night and day in holy warfare, taking pains, duly, to watch and pray, and I'll come back to the, I tele-sized. It seems likely that Constable would have been introduced to Neckham's verses by his close friend Archdeacon John Fisher, who as the artist noted provided the English translation. Regardless of who provided the original impetus, the inscription and re-inscription of the Latin lines and their eventual appearance on the frontispiece suggest that they were of considerable significance for both Constable and Fisher. The attribution of these lines has prompted us to radically re-evaluate English landscape in relation to Constable's autobiography, politics and religious faith. We are proposing that the text has generated significant new insights into our understanding of Constable's strong commitment to the Anglican church and to argue for a repositioning of religious concerns as a central impetus for English landscape and thereby for the publication's close dialogic relationship with Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows as this conference demonstrates an exploration of Constable's writings which take the form of notations in his sketchbooks, correspondence with friends, patrons and fellow artists and the extensive letterpress he wrote to accompany the second edition of English landscape is vital to understanding his aesthetic, material and religious concerns. One of our methodological strategies for our research is to trace specific words and phrases that occur in Constable's writings and those of his contemporaries, a project which is becoming increasingly realisable as primary and secondary sources are made available online. This process is expanding our understanding of Constable's motivations and processes as we established that his use of specific words participated in a wider discourse. I will suggest in this paper that Constable shared a common language with friends and contemporaries which can be recuperated productively through an analysis of the artist's writings that situates them in the personal and professional milieu in which he was operating. The letters that Constable wrote to Lucas in the course of their lengthy and often fraught collaboration on the plates for English landscape and the subsequent series of single plate mezzotints after key paintings are particularly illuminating as are the list of emendations while the prints are in process and the corrections made directly onto the proofs and we'll know so much more about this when Catherine's wonderful work is done. The last can also be regarded, i.e. corrections made on proofs, can be regarded as a category of artist's writings and I'm presently also exploring Turner's practice of annotating proofs to communicate meanings to his engravers. Although Constable could never be described as a reticent correspondent, the need to mediate Lucas's laborious translations of his images seems to have forced him to extensive, if not always readily comprehensible, articulation of his aesthetic concerns. Constable also recognised the necessity of glossing the English landscape prints for his public by providing letter press. He noted to Lucas in January 1834, quote, I have been busy making a fly leaf to each of my prints. Many can read prints and cannot read mezzotint, unquote. OK, I'll just press on. My chosen text, we're at the letter at last, is a well-known letter to Lucas of February 15, 1836, regarding the single plate mezzotint of Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, which we read as a sequel and as I've already noted in dialogic relation to English landscape. It's quite a short letter, I'll just read it. The Salisbury is much admired in its present state, but it's still too heavy. We must break it up and we must bear in recollection that the sentiment of the picture is that of salinity, not gaiety, nothing garish, but the contrary, yet it must be bright, clear, alive, fresh. This passage is richly suggestive, but the choice of the word solemnity is particularly resonant and will be the focus for the remainder of this paper. The word solemnity and solemn evidently were multivalent for Constable in his third lecture on landscape painting given at the Royal Institution in 1836. He noted that Rise Down, he's talking about him, Contra-Claude, delighted in and has made delightful to our eyes, quote, these solemn days peculiar to his country and to ours when without storm, large rolling clouds scarcely permit a ray of sunlight to break the shades of the forest, unquote. Selemnity here is synonymous with occluded darkened skies characteristic of northern European painting. He used the word solemn and solemnity in his correspondence with Archdeacon John Fisher, Ciar Leslie and Lucas and probably others as well, but I haven't really trolled the correspondence at this stage. Primarily in the context of writing about other artists, including John Robert Cousins, Poussin and Richard Wilson. Is it going to come back? I wanted to show you there's a really beautiful impression of the Salisbury Cathedral, which was gifted by David Lucas in 1840, so I'm sort of, it doesn't have an inscription unfortunately, but all the image I've got hasn't, but I'm sort of taking that as a bit of a touchstone, you know, sort of maybe Constable's and Lucas's sort of intentions for it. Constable's deployment of solemn and solemnity in an art historical context may seem much somewhat generic, but I would like to suggest that the artist had in mind specific meanings for these words in relation to the Salisbury Cathedral, an English landscape mezzotints. Constable was formulating English landscape at a period when the Anglican church was under extreme pressure to curtail its clergy's privileges. Lucas embarked on engraving the first plate in late August 1829, just over four months after the enactment of the Catholic relief act. Timothy Wilcox, Poulschweiser and other scholars have convincingly suggested that the artist's painting, Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, described by Fisher as, quote, the church under a cloud, unquote, constitutes a response to the Catholic relief act and the drive to reform the Anglican church. Constable planned to include an engraving of Salisbury Cathedral in English landscape. Ultimately it was not incorporated, but several of the published plates, either overtly or implicitly, allude to the Anglican church. The word solemnity in solemn days are associated with ceremonial religious practice, and Constable made that connection explicit in his letterpress accompanying the English landscape mezzotint stoke by Nail and Suffolk, where he remarks upon the noble gothic churches of the eastern counties, quote, the venerable grandeur of these religious practices. The religious edifices, with the charm that the mellowing hand of time has cast over them, give them an aspect of extreme solemnity and pathos. The kind of effect could be introduced to striking or too impressive to portray it, and among the various appearances of the elements we naturally look to the grander phenomenon of nature. As according best with the character of such a scene, southern and abrupt appearances of light, thunder clouds, wild autumnal evenings, solemn and shadowy twilights, flinging half an image on the straining site with various tinted clouds, dark, cold and grey, or ruddy and bright with transitory gleams of light, even conflicts of the elements. To heighten, if possible, the sentiment which belongs to a subject so awful and impressive, unquote. Old Sarum was a notorious rotten borough, and Constable's apparent allusion to politics did not escape his contemporaries. However, the site also had great significance in a religious context. The liturgical form known as the Sarum use, established by the Norman Bishop Osmond in the 11th century at Storesbury, was in use until the Reformation. In his letter press, Constable observed that the city's decline began with the separation of church and state, and his decision to append a quotation from the letter to the Hebrews then ascribed to Saint Paul, here we have no continuing city. To the new plate published in the 1833 edition seems meaningful. The following verse in Hebrews states, but we seek one to come, but Constable's, this is the continuing city of God, but Constable's instruction to Lucas to engrave a sky, quote, constantly torn down, by tempestuous winds, unquote, a phrase that Timothy Wilcox, and this is in his excellent book, Constable and Salisbury, that Timothy Wilcox has suggested may derive from a papal document of 1217 cited in an anonymous pamphlet of 1774 suggests that such an objective would be fraught with difficulties. The word solemnity also occurs in a less familiar context. The writings of George Field, the preeminent artist, this is sort of like shift of travel, lame, shall I say. The writings of George Field, the preeminent artist, color maker in Britain at the period, a prolific author whose best known publication was chromatography or a treatise on color and pigments and of their powers in painting first published in 1835. Constable and Field became friendly around 1825 and were particularly close in the 1830s. Little correspondence has survived, but Field, as far as I know, but Field gifted to Constable a set of colors in 1825 and in 1829 a copy of Francesco Algarotti's treatise on painting. His vivid recollection of walking in a winter landscape with Constable that Leslie published in the memoirs suggests that their friendship was likely close. In 1835, Constable recorded in his subscribers' copy of the first edition of chromatography, quote, had the pleasure of visiting Mr Field Wednesday, July 10th, 1833, unquote. Field also took great interest in Lucas's mezzotints after Constable. In 1845 he drafted the prospectus for Constable's English landscape, the posthumous continuation of the mezzotint series by David Lucas and C.R. Leslie, and he advised them on how best to translate Constable's later works. It is also conceivable that Field might have influenced Constable's decision to print the English landscape mezzotints in black inks rather than, say, adopting the brown coloration of J.M.W. Turner's Lieberstudiorum, which had been an inspiration, stroke irritant to Constable's embarking on his own mezzotint series. Field was a brilliant chemist, but also preoccupied with the philosophical and aesthetic questions around the creation and use of colored pigments. In his chapter on black as a neutral in chromatography, he wrote, quote, such also are its expressive uses in painting in which it is the instrument of solemnity, obscurity, breath and boundlessness, the terrible, the sublime, the profound. And it is by contrast the prime power whereby all the magic of the chiaroscuro is produced upon this power of the neutral Rembrandt depended on as much too much perhaps as Rubens did upon the contrast of positive colors. The works of Rembrandt afford nevertheless the best examples of this power generally. And in the particular Department of Landscape we know of none so varied and perfect as the admirable series of mezzotintos recently published by our English Constable in a mode of engraving by the by, peculiarly qualified for exhibiting the powers of the pencil in light and shade. Field's highly charged rhetoric seems indebted both to Burke's treatise on the sublime and the poetry of John Milton and likely other sources, but its language and phrasing is also highly suggestive of a religious polemic or sermon. Field was a devout Anglican who like Constable and Fisher believed in the concept of intelligent design and I imagine that Field and Constable likely would have discussed their religious beliefs and anxieties about the condition of the Anglican church. They may also have talked about the religious and emotional associations of specific colors. Oh no, right. So we'll speed on through. So there's Sarram and there's the inscription which is added, interestingly, in 1833. There's George Field and that's a mezzotint by Lucas and Lucas becomes quite friendly with George Field and also Howard Cyan, the scientist. And there's a photo as the title page in front of this piece of chromatography with a pencil rather, not my pencil. And there is something from Chromatix, his earlier book from 1817 showing the black scale, the neutral. Is it black as neutral? There's my quotation. Oh right, and there is more chromatix. Field's highly charged rhetoric, I've already said that. They may also have talked about the religious and emotional associations of specific colors. A committed anti-Newtonian, Field insisted on adherence to the three primary colors to create pigments. He repeatedly invoked the model of the triad, equating the primary colors with the Holy Trinity. As John Gage has noted, and this discussion, almost everything I think about is absolutely indebted to John Gage. As John Gage has noted, Field only manufactured primary-column pigments. The first that he planted, which really made him his fortune. Alkaline or chrome yellow and ultramarine, a statement of his religious faith, as well as his scientific convictions. Field provided, in the count of his experiments, with the chromoscope, an instrument he had invented which could be fitted with prismatic lenses. These included, quote, a method by which a rainbow of any arcs may be super induced in a picture into which the artist may design to introduce it so as to try its effect and the best way of accomplishing it. I wonder whether Field and Constable discussed the introduction of the rainbow into the mezzotint of Salisbury Cathedral, perhaps dwelling on its crystallogical significance, as well as the scientific basis for the phenomenon. I have said little thus far regarding Lucas that we've heard quite a bit about him already today. The recipient of the letter that is the focus of this talk. This lecuna seems to speak to the engraver's marginal and instrumental presence in Constable literature, but clearly soon to be redressed. Lucas, an encompassed and sensitive engraver, could clearly read mezzotint, but he evidently had little or no formal education if the standard origin story is accurate. I don't know anything about his early life and whether he readily comprehended Constable's more complex written directives is uncertain. The few surviving letters, or relatively few surviving letters he wrote to the artist, are typically quotidian in content and language. There were particularly virulent diatribe that Constable sent him in mid December 1834, did goad him into self-defence, albeit courageously articulated. So I don't have time to go into that, but Constable accused him of only being concerned about money. Lucas' family was virtually starving. That was tough. Constable's language in his letters to Lucas ranged in register from highly wrought literary tropes to vulgar vernacular, often within a single letter. His use of course expressions is also suggestive of a keen awareness of class distinctions. It seems unlikely to me that Constable would have used the words arsend, or the gardener's shitten house, either in conversation or correspondence. But I may be wrong about this with Archdeacon John Fisher, as he did in a letter to Lucas regarding the mezzotint to Salisbury Cathedral. Lucas has already been mentioned today, always addressed Constable as sir, whereas to Constable the engraver was always Lucas. As Judy Crosby IV has noted, Lucas' career seems to have suffered from the perception that he was Constable's engraver. And his output otherwise is very slight indeed, actually. His health was likely adversely affected by the stresses of Constable's relentless demands. And as Maurena has already noted today, he died in the Fulham Workhouse suffering from dementia and paraplegia in 1881. Part of our larger project is to recuperate Lucas, and we hope, and this hope seems very likely to be fulfilled, we hope that this will be an outcome from the renewed collective focus on the letters that this fascinating conference has initiated. Thank you. But now it's my pleasure to introduce Eleanor Ling, who is senior curator of prints and drawings at the Fitzwilliam Museum, and she's currently researching the print albums belonging to Lord Fitzwilliam. And as part of that, a conservation and digitisation project prints by David Lucas after Constable and Constable's letters to the engraver that are held at the Fitzwilliam. And it's from that that her paper will derive today. So let's welcome Eleanor. I jumped around on the screen, and I'm really hoping the rest of them have, because that was a precise plain of spence. Thank you very much for, I appreciate all the thanks that the other brilliant speakers have said. It's a great pleasure to be here. So I want us to imagine that we're David Lucas in our studio, waiting to hear from our employer, John Constable, about your latest attempt to translate his work into print. A go-between, probably your brother appears in the doorway clutching some papers. What are these, and how is your employer's instruction communicated to you? Of the circa 200 letters and notes mostly written by John Constable to Lucas published by Leslie, and then Shirley in 1930, and then revised and supplemented by Beckett, 160 of them at the Fitzwilliam Museum. They date from 1829 to just prior to Constable's death, and they're one element in the museum's significant holdings of prints and archival documents related to Constable's great pre-making project, The English Landscape, about which we've heard from the three fabulous previous speakers, so I don't need to delve into too much detail. What I want to do with this paper is to re-investigate how useful or not it is to consider the letters in the prints together, what the potential pitfalls might be, bearing in mind Constable's regular references to the developments of the plates, as we've heard, and the fact that they were often presented to Lucas with brief impressions. Beckett's edition of the correspondence is undeniably a triumph, in the chapter devoted to Lucas, he so brilliantly interweaves the letters with context. But the vast scope of the undertaking of all the volumes and the costs involved at that time meant that some things were unachievable. The letters are unillustrated and not given precise references locations. Thanks in no small part to the PMC that Fitzwilliam is embarking on a long overdue project to catalogue and digitise its letters, and I'm interested in what potential there is to do something interesting with regard to shedding new light on the prints. One of the questions I said I would answer today in the proposal was what value is in having physical letters digitised to use in conjunction with Beckett's transcriptions, which are going to be put online, but with the Suffolk Records Society, and narrative. The benefit is very clear when you come across letters like these, with drawings and annotations on them. The digitisation project will make these little sketches, small as they are, freely available for the first time. But that's not exactly what I want to be focusing on today. The letter, or note I've chosen, is an undated one. This is the front and back. Dear Lucas, and I challenge anyone who's not familiar with Council's handwriting to even read that as a capital D. Dear Lucas, I send the mill with a little dark on the sky at the top of the left-hand side. Also, I wish the meadows to be toned down a little so that the water beyond where the sail was should gleam a little. It's like my mother's directions. Turn left where the cinema used to be. Also, also, also broaden the light and perhaps heighten it on the water near the barge heads. When shall I see you as Tulane etc etc. Shirley called this letter number six. The print Constable refers to is this one, Shirley five. Shirley numbered, then letters number, and then prints you would just refer to as the Roman five. It shows dead and mill. The mill golden Constable added to his business by 1793, situated on the Riverstow north side of dead and Essex. The views much changed in the present day. And it shows dead and church in the distance, which does indeed lie beyond this location, but slightly not quite exactly like this. And it was added to that later on the development of this plate. I'm very interested in these types of letters and notes, which denote the stage in production of the prints English landscape, as we've heard, was a complex undertaking. Constable had no set idea of the finished project when he set out and turned up the contents of each number or part as he and Lucas worked. Some plates started earlier in their venture, went into later issued numbers. Constable and Lucas edited the prints many times, resulting in some of the highest state changes in the history of printmaking. Catherine's task is a huge one. It's very great to undertake. I'm interested in attempting to pinpoint these changes in time in relation to the letters. The Fitzwilliams is a good place to start. The museum owns over 500 impressions of Lucas' Constable prints. They came in two main tranches in 1910 and 1954. The first gift arrived from Alfred Lucas, Lucas' brother, who's mentioned in the letters, a man who carried the proofs, letters to and fro between painter and printmaker. The prints were bought on block in a two-part sale of Henry's study Theobald at Christie's in April 1910. Lots 969s through 1098 were withdrawn on the 28th of April after the sale had started purchased by John Charrington, who was seen to take up the post of honorary keeper, Prince of the Fitzwilliam. He had identified, with the help of their auction catalogue, this group of princes, a transformative gift for the museum's collection of mezzatins, which up to this point have been predominantly 18th century. The richness of this group of 302 prints gifted by Charrington acted as a magnet for subsequent editions. Donations of further working proofs out of Lucas' tools, which all referenced this 1910 gift. In 1954, another large body of Lucas' work, drawn from the other major collections dispersed in the first half of the 20th century, was given anonymously through the NAACF. There are around, as I said, 500 impressions in total. The Fitzwilliam prints tell the story of each plate through the English landscape from earliest pools, fresh and rich to the finished lettered compositions, which are often pale in comparison to their earlier counterparts. The fact that the majority are working proofs, several touched and annotated by Constable in different medias and other significant aspects of the collection, the touch proofs have the potential to be linked to specific direction and the letters significantly. For my purpose here, 152 of the 160 letters we have have the same provenance as the 1910 prints. They derive from Lucas' own collection, which you retained in the studio. I send the mill or starts the letter, my selection. Many other letters start in the same way. We have to consider it likely that some of these touch proofs that the Fitzwilliam were sent to Lucas accompanied by a letter. In the changes to the mill, Shirley divides states between progressed and published. It's my least favourite type of state ordering. He records five changes to the mill before lettering A to E and five with the lettering I to V, and then Osborne Barnard corrected to six after lettering. So 11 states altogether currently recognised. As Catherine has said there, potentially many more. I won't go into the state descriptions in detail, but the general development of the place according to Shirley is this. We read from top to bottom left to right. A very dark scene roughly vigorously blocks out before birds. Gable made lighter, signature and date added, obliterated, sorry. Poplar made taller, windmill and distance. Two birds added, windvane added. Two poplars differentiated the top lights on the face of the mill. Then we get into the published states. Lettered, painted by Jay Constable, painted by John Constable. Punctuation added, title and thick and thin letters. Re-worked image with many changes. Interindication where these might be, including dead in church. Then re-worked again, publication line removed and number 23 added. The Fitzwilliam has 11 impressions. Seven of them before the lettering and four after. One of them very heavily touched. The fourth one along the top. This time last year myself and Harry Metcalf, the Fitzwilliam's paper conservative, responsibility for the print collection, received a small grant to conserve impressions from two of the 22 plates of English landscape to prepare them from high resolution imaging. In doing this we discovered that although Shirley's order is sort of roughly correct as he made errors in state descriptions in ordering and numerous omissions as Catherine has said. We discovered several might need changes to the plate which are definitely not in the inking which constitute new states. Some impressions that came in the 1950s which Shirley might not have seen in another impression elsewhere. And although Lucas's annotations that the added to the prints, e.g. in this impression to taken in this state should be taken with a grain of salt, the omissions and discrepancies in Shirley's we discovered support the idea that small changes were regularly requested and made. Lucas very likely printed some stages in very small numbers, possibly even single impressions to save wear to the plates. So a great many working proofs will be unique. From the evidence of the Fitzwilliams collection alone and that's before you go anywhere else given that the eight of ours do not fully conform to Shirley's descriptions and more than the three states are not represented of the 11, it's very likely that there are many more than 11 states. Yes, I was going to add a little bit, I'll keep the script. If we return to the letters to interrogate the relationship between letter and print is what happens in the print accurately requested in the letters is the potential to measure how much of the collaboration is captured in the correspondence. Shirley records 16 instances of a mill being mentioned in the correspondence that are at the very bottom of the page of the catalogue resume, but the majority of those 16 record expenses or content plans which are useful in constable stinking but not relevant to the changes to the plates. Only five of the 16 make reference to the directional changes comes to both directional changes. Beckett's index is a bit more usefully broken down and he actually adds one more instance which Shirley had included in his 1930 catalogue but had omitted the crucial paragraph of referencing the mill which was I want the proof of the water mill printed as I have not seen it in its present state so there are six references to the changes but if we think about that at the very least 11 state changes and I think many more changes to the plates you can see how many more changes there are than that are referenced in the letters. In order to delve into the development of the plate a little more I hope I'll be forgiven in adding one more letter for consideration here. This is the image I showed at the beginning. There's a sketch of a cloud and then it says Alfred will direct your attention to the rifles and the mill which is now a delightful print. First the sky on the right and trees second the top of Poplar Trina the church, third the water dripping a little more from wheel for the willows below the church and softer the meadow light over four, five, top of large tree on left side. Shirley called this number nine locating it in Beckett though is a bit more problematic due to the fact that he does not cross reference with Shirley. This narrative dated letters easily found but undated ones especially in the case where the date is revised from Shirley they're a challenge to my surprise no one in the Fitzwilliam cross reference the two publications in the margin. So we have Shirley's number six and number nine. They're early on in the catalogue of Shirley's correspondence but he admits late in the development of the print. In fact his number seven which is dated 26 December 1829 records Constable saying the mill is now emphasis added a delightful print. Constable also mentions that he is sending what he hopes to be the last of the water mill. So in this sort of tip of the iceberg question as well as not capturing the majority of state changes we can also see that most of the state changes have happened prior to what's captured in the surviving correspondence we've missed the start essentially. Beckett agrees he places number six Shirley's letter number six much later on around 1833 not 1829. He does not place number nine in the chronology of the letters at all. He places that with no attempt to the date in Appendix C which is reserved for instructions for retouching and lettering which includes not just notes written on paper sent by Constable just not addressed to Dear Lucas and send us a letter but also notes on brief impressions which are not in Shirley's correspondence. Immediately then there's a value in looking at the instructions with development of the print we can tell who was right, Shirley for placing in 1829 or Beckett for placing in 1833 and we can help date the second which Shirley thought to be 1829 and Beckett left undated. Who's right about the date number six? The first letter mentions a person called Lane who Beckett identified as Samuel Lane and his difficulty in paying Lucas for his undated impression of Charles Mansfield Clarke. However Beckett also says that Lane was a constant i.e. reoccurring thorn in Constable's side and so an in-depth look at the instruction does an in-depth look at the instruction to support Beckett's dating. To recap this is the transcription for ease of reading of number six a little dark on the sky etc. Some of the changes are hard to gauge. I've talked to Catherine about this a little more water this sort of direction which would have been relatively fine for Lucas in that moment is frustrating for us because it is difficult to place more than less than what you need to know what comes before and after. More concretely however Constable mentions a sale but here we hit on another issue in looking at the letters and prints together the terms that Constable uses are not those used in Shirley's tape descriptions Beckett points out that even the title of the mill alternates Constable refers to it the water mill or a mill Shirley uses the word bluff which isn't used by Constable for instance. The sale element of the composition in a mill is one of the details that does not feature in Shirley but does change frequently in the dwellings of the plate. Here's some picks out do you see the little white shape mid image The little white area starts to change in shape throughout the movement and starts to disappear a morph into a tree around at the end. In changes to the published states sorry the chain it starts to morph in changes to the published states with the date 1832 so as a reminder Constable says I wish the meadows to be toned down beyond where the sale was There are numerous examples of Constable fiddling with the plates after the initial publication as we've heard so where does that leave us with Shirley's number nine which Shirley places sometime after number six but still in 1829 was it sent before or after the night we've just looked at to recap who it is and Beckett again all of these are quite frustrating instructions for us to read now it would have made sense to the two men at that state in the progress of the plate but are more difficult to us to place in chronology now water dripping a little more sigh more concretely there are some keywords that help us to state the letter the most important being church as I've mentioned earlier deadam church does not feature in the working proofs at all and appears topographically in congress in the lettered states so these instructions in Shirley nine 1832 as with number six not 1829 definitely not and I think it's worth considering 1833 though is too late date for these notes on the 22nd of November 1832 Constable sends this long note it's quite a hilarious one with changes that he wants made to several plates and the mill is on there here we go deadam mill nothing no changes and then in brackets but to be altered in composition a proof sent touched so no changes but changes and did he really send so many changes in the first in Shirley six and nine in 1833 after this where he says you know he's mostly happy or could we consider November 1832 is the point at which Constable was largely happy and then didn't send the two notes after this one one of the questions I'm interested in thinking about is as I said can the instructions of the letters be linked to a specific impression were any of the touch proofs which had the same provenance of the letters sent together I send the mill so Shirley number six Constable on Shirley number six number nine isn't addressed but implies Alfred was carrying the print and the note Alfred will direct you to changes Constable says knowing we can disregard any touch proof before 1832 the Fitzwilliam has two in these late stages here they are we know that they're this way round because the first one on the left has these low heavy clouds in dry point sorry, these low heavy clouds drawn in by Constable in wash and then later on they're added in in dry point by Lucas into the plate could the notes have been sent accompanying either of these touched impressions and does knowing which order the impression falls help us in determining which letter or note was sent first as a reminder Shirley placed this one before the one referencing the church are they indeed this way round or the other way round the reference to the sky the sky at left is troubling in the first note Shirley six as neither impression is marked there in the top left but there are some possibilities in the first touch proof the earlier one with the clouds in wash there are also markings in the water near the barge heads and on the meadows there's marking in the sky above on the left hand side could Constable have meant there not in the left of the sky altogether on the plate and in that case can the second touch impression be linked with the second note number nine sorry this is the details for that plate the wheel and the willows which are mentioned in that note are not touched on this impression but the trees in the sky at the right are as is the tree on the left touched in black ink which is axoned in the next state so we've got the state before with the sort of the top of the trees without sort of solid line and then this one this is washed to firm up the edge of the trees and then that's axoned in the next state which unfortunately has the scratching out that comes to often did so that marks in the trees I think this needs more consideration there are too many places in the print that are touched which are not referenced in the notes and what is the sketch at the top of the note in Shirley nine Shirley says it's clouds and Beckett doesn't notice appearance at all could it be trees this little note up here other pitfalls and that's I'm going to end my talk on other pitfalls all the touched proofs are at the Fitzwilliam of course even some of John Charrington's collection which formed this brilliant 1910 gift ended up elsewhere this one at the Met and not just not being able to see the printed image new imaging techniques such as reflectance transformation imaging RTI and multispectral imaging MSI potential to be useful on a heavily touched proof in the mill how I and I pinpointed some of the key areas of change in the early state the three distant poplars to help us look under a very very heavily touched impression where we couldn't see where the printed ink finished and the drawn additions started and with the help of the RTI we convincingly revised the progressive order of the Fitzwilliam's impressions through this close comparison of rocker marks and the developing shape of the trees so you can see from that this is the Fitzwilliam's and the asyncratic numbering four one three five three one three five five so previously when they were cataloged they were put the other way around because of the shape of the tree resembled the plate later on but actually looking through this special imaging technique we can see that the poplars are much shorter corresponding to earlier states in the plate it's not as the people who cataloged the print knew what they were doing they just they couldn't see underneath there so these new imaging techniques are really useful the other thing to consider is that not all touch proofs were instructions that are so many touched impressions of public states that it's possible that a good number of them were embellished by council for his own pleasure rather than an instruction for further alteration this impression of a heath is inscribed at the bottom light put down dogs white throat put up the land above the water trimmed but the plate does not seem to be altered and also another pitfall is interrogating if Lucas follows Constable's directions absolutely or immediately we know from looking at other of the English landscape prints and I think Catherine fed to this also that Lucas didn't always address Constable's desire changes that this print the River Stour oh sorry this is the heath to demonstrate that the dog's throat doesn't appear to change this is from Bones 1855 edition very late so you'd expect all the changes to be there in such a late impression so here we have the River Stour Constable obsessed after the plate was lettered for publication in October 1832 about the large sail on looking I think the large sail and the River Stour much too light I should like it toned down very considerably if you think so too and but the sail does change but it doesn't it might be much later on in the development of the plate so pinpointing this kind of change is difficult if Lucas isn't doing it absolutely on time so in conclusion there's a reason why this hasn't yet been attempted comprehensively and I've asked and I've asked a great many more questions in the last half of this paper than I've answered but in looking at the letters and prints closely I think there's something about the process of making methods of working relation to between Constable and Lucas that is revealed I think there's something interesting to add about visual and verbal means of communicating something to be gained in measuring how much of the collaboration is captured in the correspondence and how much lies outside evidence by the changes in the prints alone as we've seen the second note that I referenced the Shirley's number nine mentions Alfred as the explainer of Constable's instructions were the scrappy notes sent in lieu of or in addition to the changes on a proof potentially also can looking at the letters in relation to the proof tell us something about how their working relationship changed through the project are there similar number of instructions and notes and touch proofs to each of the plates or does Lucas better intuit what Constable wants as the work progresses so this is the working in progress thank you thank you very much everyone for your patience we're a bit delayed but we're going to take questions sorry everyone your fault I told you Ian there were two really brilliant papers and in fact all throughout the course of this afternoon I feel now really justified in feeling a little bit intimidated by English landscape scenery because it's so complicated isn't it I'm going to open up are there any questions in the room or online Sarah I'm at risk here of looking at your pictures of a mill of the first print that had the big screen of those versions is there actually an oil painting of that composition because as far as I'm aware for arrive from an oil sketch or a finished painting but that didn't seem to be particularly familiar to me at all or does that mean there's a missing Constable somewhere Annie there's the big picture of dead and mill but of that precise that precise composition with that funny mill building on the left and then the church in the middle it looks like elements brought from lots of other paintings and sort of all put together but that's not his usual practice as far as I'm aware I'm bought by Leslie Paris Leslie did an exhibition for Sandra O'Reilly galleries and the catalogue is actually quite hard to come by I think it's quite rare but in there he borrowed a lot of impressions of the prints from the med and he reunited that particular print with an original sketch by Constable which is in a private collection the US I think it belongs to a female private collector I don't know her name it may be mentioned in the book but what's particularly interesting and I actually think it might even be in listening Grome Reynolds but it's clear that that is just the starting point it's a possibly planner's sketch possibly a composition sketch but it has no inclusion of the mill or it made to in very bright form but also I don't think the church is included You've got a question from Rianne Addison I have a question unrelated to English landscape Elena on the verse letter or very early slide there were some drawings underneath in pencil and to me they looked like a hand plan and they're just like they are in Turner's letters and sketchbooks so can we see that slide again selfish of me cos I'm about to talk about studios and display Sorry what did you say Rianne was on I didn't Pardon? You said that I didn't hear what you said The pencil lines underneath one of the letters and I didn't know whether it was a hand plan on its side and Turner has the same in his sketchbooks and I'm about to talk about display so I'm just The benefit of having the letters on looks like an elevation of a house or a door and windows Was it? No There's still time left I don't know Are there any more questions in the room? One further complication that I'm sure you've run across Eleanor is that there's another mezzotin called the mill and it was started in 1829 it's one of the earliest ones and it's the upright mill which seems to have been put aside all and it's an upright but sometimes I found it difficult to tell which mill the notes were Have you been able to sort that out which mill is being It would be very helpful You made the paper away in 20 minutes I mean the titles yeah it's but I do think those ones refer to this I agree I didn't look at the other ones which could refer to that I just didn't know if you'd been able to sort those out I mean I've really only just started because with this plate Thank you If there's a question from Mona O'Neill Hi, Mona O'Neill My question is for Gillian and I'm wondering as I listen to your talk if we need to revise our understanding of Constable's education and his sort of pretensions maybe to be an intellectual and you know I'm just curious if you have any thoughts on that That's something that I don't think we ever really decided to put it that was and that was one of the many you know tabled for future use when we have more time or you know have read because I have to say I haven't I'm not really that on top of the Constable literature there are but I have a other than the room I'm sure we'll be able to say more about this so I'm rather unclear as to you know what his education consisted of and it didn't sound as if you know from the the work we've done on the Latin original of the inscription necessarily would have known Latin for example but I think it's a really important question actually it struck me and Steve Steve might know about this too but his work on the Salisbury Cathedral and the letter that you focused on it goes in hand with his increasing interesting antiquarianism so it's probably that's a form of education that goes about education in itself so maybe those kind of pretentious Latin quotes these are being inspired by early histories of Britain of the counties yes I think so but it's hard to gauge how much yes do we know about his education a little James Hamilton James Hamilton he was he spent a very significant time in Edmonton in north London where he met a group of Quaker inclined people at the home of his his uncle Thomas Alan who is a brewer in St Catherine's Dock in London had made enough money to bring up his family in a villa in Edmonton and a run around him were a significant friend such as John Thomas Smith the engraver and antiquity of London an extraordinary man called John Crouch was an artist as well who took the early history of art and the literature from the 16th to the 19th century a man called James Winterlake he was one of the one of the founders of the Hudson Bay Company and one of the largest print collections of the time Edmonton where he was sent by his parents to learn about business and how the how the more than milling trade linked with a brewing trade he was sent specifically to become a good mill manager he came what he found there was a little Edmonton to him was a little university which touched his latent intellectual genius and it was there that he realised that he was an artist and not a businessman and it was absolutely crucial that we see an intellectual as much as a country of red artists he was more than that he had extraordinary breadth and depth and liberation and the aspects that we've touched on his back temper his his brosnes it seems to be a kind of response to frustration that in being denied again and again and again as a citizenship of the academy I'm taking years to become an academy when his contemporaries turner and already was actually 40 years younger became our straightaway and actually were on the board to vote him out so they all kept him out and built up and so of course he calls Lucas Lucas I think read your emails you also read one no no no, my inbox is groaning sometimes are a bit bros and quick and in a way when you write a letter from Gareth Street for example to post it at 9 o'clock in the morning it gets out at 11 o'clock you can reply it's almost quicker than email now oh, thank you