 Fy hollwch, dyma'r fawr o'r gymoedd yn oed yn eich cydweithio i'r cymryd, i'r fawr o'r cymryd, argyrchu ffyrdd, argyrchu argyrchu'r fawr o'r cymryd, o'r cymryd argyrchu argyrchu'r fawr o'r cymryd, oed yn llwyth. Fy hollwch, Mark Hallott, yn y dyfodol yma'r cymryd. Fy hollwch, mae'r cymryd yn llwyth i'r fawr o'r cymryd, oedd ydych chi'n papuradau'r fawr o'r cymryd. The idea is to look at the room at the PMC. I am so pleased to say that this event is also being live streamed. It is for international online audience. It is recorded for a later release. We have a fantastic array of speakers. A great audience are full of questions and discussion around the papers. Felly, mae'n gwrs, ac wrth gwrs, mae'r cwestiynau y gynllun o ddechrau i yw'r cwestiynau, yn ôl i'r ddweud, mae'n ddweud yw'r grwsio. Wrth gwrs, mae'n ddweud o'r ddechrau i'r grwsio gyda'r perioedd mewn geirigau yma, ac mae'n gweithio i'r gweithio i'r gweithio i'r gweithio i'r ardalol. Mae'n ddiforogol i'r gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'r cyhoeddau'n gweithio'n gweithio, Fy enw i'r ffigurau hynny, ystod y Tyrnau, Cotman, Gertin, yw'r cyfrannu cyntaf, cyfrannu i'r promwnant yn y 1790s, sy'n mynd i'r bwysig i'r cyfrannu a llwyddon cyfnodau o adroddau ffyrdd y Llandscape Art yn y gweld y mediad. Yn ystod, yr ysgolwyr hwn yw oedd yr ysgolwyr yn gyfrannu'r ffrindig a'r cyfrannu i'r ffrindig ffyrdd yma. Thanks again, being under the author of the PMC research project. That you'll remember was devoted to the landscape print series that proliferated in late 18th and early 19th centuries. It is interesting in this respect that so many of today's paper's will focus on Consultables' collaborations with David Lucas on their own great print series English landscape scenery. There's clearly a focus of a lot of interesting scholarly work at the moment. Felly, y gynllunol y Lansgate yw'r ddweud yn ymddangos o'r cwnteg yn ei wneud, yn ymddangos y blaen iawn o'r ddechrau a'n ei osbryd ychydig am gweithio, y gall y gallu llifedwyr i gynhyrchu'r adnodd edrych yn adeg ofu'r hanesaf o'r ffordd. Mae'r adeg o'r adeg a'r adeg o'r adeg ddoddau'r adeg, ac mae'n ffrodd i'r ddweud o'r ddaeth o'r ddweud i'r ddweud i'r ddweud yma, gyda'r gwlad ddechu'r ddifat i fyny yw'r rhaid yn ddechrau'n ddwybod. Mae gennyddoedd gyrfa ar ddwybododd gwych.. ..sef ymgyrch yn roi'r gydag ar y cyfnod... ..en oedd efo ni mai efo modd ar gweithio... ..yawn y cyfnod, roedd amyniad, nidgyrch... ..o'r ffordd gennymu rhyngwyl... ..og yn brydol o gwladio'r 19th ysgol drwyddiad Bryddo. Y lwyddoeddrach i fod yn.. ..yndog yn gwybod mewn i. Y dyn nhw'n gwybod ddiwethaf yw'r dda'r ddweudio i fynd i'r ddweudio Steve Daniels. Mae Steve wedi ddweudio, a ddysgu y gallwn ni'n gweld rhai fwy yma, y dyn nhw'n ddweudio i'r cymryd sydd hwnnw, mae Steve wedi ddweudio i'r ddweudio i'r ddweudio arall y cael y rhai fwyaf yn y llwyaf o'r ysgrifennol ar y ddyn nhw, sy'n ddweudio ar y bydd ydym yn ysgrifennol ar gyfer Tref Bratton. Felly, mae'n fyddech chi'n gweithio'r sgwrs fel hyn. It was Steve, and I'm sure this is true, who came up with the simple but brilliant idea that this project, which he initially thought of as a book project, and will be interesting to see where this goes and we'll want to take it further, might centre upon the exercise of subjecting individual letters to or from Constable to a close reading, and to use these letters to open out and explore broader questions, including those we used to head our call for papers, yw'r eich ei ddweud o'r llethau ynghylch yn ysgrifennu o engineeringu a hyffredinol, o'r llethau yn gweithio ar gyfer y lleyddau a'i arddangos, o'r roi'r llethau ar y llêdd yn y llethau cymdeithasol ymlaen. I ddweud o llethau fel ysgrifennu a'r llethau ar gyfer yr aelodau'r ysgrifennu a'r ddweud o'r ysgrifennu am y dyfodol. Ond fy modd ond wegychaf yn unrhyw yng Nghoeddaeth yn gwneudio hynny, a byddai gynnwys yma geisio eich cyhoeddon i wedi cael ei dweud yma. Felly, wrth gwrs, rwy'n meddwl llawer gan ein ddemolwys yn ei bryd, yn y gydug ei wneud i ymweld iawn i hyn o ddweud yma. Rwy'n meddwl am gyrsiau yng nghyfodol ac yn gynteilio'r pwysig heb Daniel. Mae'r sgwrs cyhoeddon yn y dda, yn i ddim yn dal fel cyfweithi y ffordd, жoedd yn llawer mewn ydydd gyd, Ond o'r rhan o'r ystyried, bydd ymlaen i fynd i'r mynd i'r cyd-dweithio cyffredinol yn amlwg ac yn gyfacol i'r cyd-dweithio gŷnodd yn ymlaen i'r cyllid gŷnodd. Rwy'n credu i chi'n mynd i'r cyd-dweithio i'r cyflwyno, nid yw'n arlwyno. Yn ymwneud. Thank you Mark for that generous introduction. And thank you all for coming today. Mark said what we propose today is to re-open Constable's correspondence to address these major questions. The letters we're going to hear about today are less well known than a lot of those that have been published. And some have come to light after Beckett's great edition of the correspondence. And we're going to hear about accounts of the painter which are less familiar on portraiture, on life drawing, on his studio in London, on Sussex scenes. And as we heard, in the swing of the centre of gravity on Constable's studies, towards the last decade of his life, the 1830s, so-called late Constable. Before Beckett's great collection, a selection of Constable's letters had long been publicly available, particularly in the many editions of the memoirs of the life of John Constable by his friend, Charles Leslie, published in 1843. And the book is largely composed of Constable's correspondence, particularly with Leslie himself. Indeed, for much of the 19th century, Constables were better known to the public than his pictures. Some of the letters that Leslie published have become canonical texts in views of Constable's art. Although a subsequent critics were keen to demonstrate, Leslie's selection, abridgement, quotation and editing presented a particular, politely Victorian view of the artist. Domestic, amiable, familiar, sentimental, settled. When Beckett first published a selection of the letters from the correspondence to John Fisher in 1952, it revealed a rather different Constable, more rancorous, ambitious, contentious, more combative, whose letters shift register from high-minded pronouncements on art and life to a somewhat salacious humour. Does your wife see any letters, Fisher asks nervously at one point? And he asks for some to be burned, which evidently were not, otherwise we wouldn't know that he did ask them to be burned. And there's a third party in this correspondence, as some of you will know. There's John Bohr, that is the title of the magazine of that time, a loyalist church and king journal that Fisher was keen to publish some of Constable's remarks in. So it's part of that often rancorously reactionary sentiment, and it's rather like the letters between King Cleoemus, who you can ratcheting up the right-wing register between Philip Larkin and King Cleoemus. Beckett's publication of the Constable Fisher record of the friendship is significant for a long preface by the writer and critic Geoffrey Griggsen, who emphasised its contrast to Leslie's sentimental interpretation. Here was unexpagated Constable, his manliness, bold vigorous combative. And it's interesting it comes with a shift in Constable country in the preface to the collection. There was a map of the correspondence networks stretching from Abingdon on the Thames Valley to Weymouth on the coast, titled Map of Wessex. And that same year Griggsen issued a guidebook on Wessex in the Festival of Britain series, in which Wessex is singled out as being the primal heart of England. So it's interesting that the imaginative geographies of Constable can shift with the kind of correspondence that we read. And Beckett's multi-volume edition of correspondence, published in the 1960s, I think deserves its own social history of collection and co-production, published with the Suffolk Record Society, with significant funding from the Paul Mellon Foundation for British Art. And the society was founded by the historian Norman Scarf, who worked with W.G. Hoskins in the University of Leicester. And so you have two retired scholars. You have Scarf, who's retired from Leicester to his native Suffolk, founding the society. And Beckett, a fascinating figure who wanted to be an art historian but spent 40 years in the colonial civil service as a judge and magistrate in the Punjab. The first volume of the Beckett correspondence on his family in East Bergo repatriated Griggsen's Wessex man to the domestic circle in his native home. A new edition was published just before the Great Tate Bicentenary Exhibition of 1976. And this exhibition, the landmark exhibition, drew extensively on the correspondence and on the lecture texts in the discourses, not just for documenting Constable's life, but for complicating the relation between Constable's words and pictures, his ideas and his images. And in a catalogue essay, Connell Shields drew attention to the problem of conceptualisation, which Constable condensed into his maxims, which previous commentators, including Leslie, had really passed over. For example, Shields singles out, the art of seeing nature is a thing almost to be acquired as the art of reading the Egyptian hieroglyphics. And Shields says that, well, a really a starting point here should be the discovery and decipherment of the Rosetta Stone, which was one of the spores of war and Napoleonic wars. As well as Constable's paintings and drawings, the exhibition displayed manuscript specimens of the artist's writing, a letter, notes to lectures, and an extensively corrected proof from the English landscape scenery. His collaboration with David Lucas. And in the wealth of Constable's studies in the wake of the exhibition, scholars have focused on the meaning and the production of meaning in the letters and the lectures, including Michael Rosenthal in his landmark book of 1983. And Anne Birmingham in a 1987 article in Art History reading Constable, in which she draws attendance to the rhetoric of the correspondence, its literary sources, ideological assumptions, its claims for posterity, its changing registers, and what she calls the fractures in Constable's epistolary style. More recently, Treff Broughton, who is here today as discussant, has addressed the tropes, themes, and self-fashioning in matters of business and pleasure, and the relation to other literary forms of the time like novels and conduct literature, as well as conversational idioms like gossip and banter. And she's also noted how conscious Constable was of published letters as literary form. So, for example, a recently published edition of the letters of Nicholas Poussa, which Maria read to him, his wife translating from the French as he painted in Brighton, and the letters of the poet William Cooper, a new edition of which Constable was reading in bed on the night that he unexpectedly died. And Treff also draws attention to the time and the place of letter writing, often at the end of the day for Constable when he's hurrying with the postman's bell ringing for the collection and his handwriting deteriorating into a scroll. And also a number of letters are written by the window of particular views. There's a fascinating one to Maria from Wyvernhoe, which is picked out in the painting, in which he says he's looking over Colchester on a beautiful evening. In another, he tells Maria he was met by his brother Abram coming 12 miles from Flatford picking him up in his sports car, that is his gig, his two-wheeled carriage, which he assured me would not have been the case had I not sent him a note, a hasty note from the Hamstead stage, which is illustrated on the headline slide. He thinks it cost him about a penny for each word, so it's three pennies, three words. And that was a significant sum. And in one letter he writes to Maria just a few lines. I'm so hurried I shall write you again tomorrow. He's putting off a visit to her. He said I shall ruin you with postage. The speed of the mail in Constable's correspondence before the railways and the penny post seems remarkable. And one of the most famous letters to Fisher about the sky is the organ of sentiment has Fisher reading it over breakfast as it has come overnight rather than his newspaper. Glad to see your writing so clear and smooth, a certain proof of tranquil mind, and tranquility was a major ecclesiastical virtue for Fisher. Fisher referred to the tranquility of the cathedral. Your letter lay here on the table, Fisher tells, in part of the table talk he was having with a judge who came and they're discussing the merits of Constable's pictures. And one of the most intimate letters to Fisher indicates how compressed the hundred miles between Hampstead and Salisbury could be. So he's looking out from the West Heath and Constable sketches a panorama and he picks out Windsor Castle and Windsor Castle is in the diocese of Salisbury and Fisher ministered there. So it's a kind of relay station into Salisbury itself rather like the shutter telegraph which was happening at the same time. So widely circulated have been transcriptions of Constable's letters that we can lose sight and finally I'll show today of the originals. And I just want to show a couple of examples and this is probably the best known. It's inserted into a volume of Leslie's Memoirs in the Yale Centre for British Art and it was recently reproduced in a book called Artist Letters, Leonardo da Vinci to David Hockney. And the letter appears next to a picture postcard from Cindy Sherman. It's an early letter, 1794, the young Constable studying for his career writing to John Thomas Smith. It's one of a series to the then drawing master and topographical author living in Edmonton. And the final page of the letter which is shown here has a paragraph on Constable's anxiety. He regrets a sentence he's written to Smith. And Smith replies and Constable is very nervous because Smith hasn't used half of the paper. So he thinks he's crossed with him. And so he tries to placate Smith and one of the ways that he does it is by this view from my window of the house in East Bergold of the family's picturesquely thatched barn. And on the opening page he calls in friend Smith drawing him into the family and friendship circle. And the bearer of the letter to Smith he says is a native of our village and my shoemaker perhaps he's never been from 20 miles from home before. So all these questions about the penmanship, about the infrastructure of the exchange. The second example is from late in Constable's career in 1832. It's a note to the young engraver David Lucas during the production of English landscape scenery. And this is from a book of letters collected by Leslie now in the National Art Library at the V&A. So one of the things is an interesting issue is the way that the particular letters were collected. These have been rather too well stuck down in the album. But neither Leslie's brief extract in his memoirs from this letter nor Beckett's published transcription convey the performative force and urgency of the message. It's been sent from Constable's studio in Charlotte Street. It's timed half past seven in the morning to a way to reply from Lucas's house in Paddington. And it's one of a series of often lively sometimes frenetic exchanges of notes, packets of proofs and visits. And this note was perhaps carried by Leslie who lived in Marilburn rather than Constable's usual messenger Mr Pitt. There's kind of often a triangular traffic going between Leslie Lucas and Constable. Which is perhaps why Leslie kept it. And this one has been written on a circular by a Brighton pharmacist. Constable was there in July. His daughter was very ill. And Constable has crossed out the list of wares on it from soda water to self-injecting syringes. And the circular was clearly on hand as Constable was in a hurry. But it reminds us how the publication of English landscape scenery was transacted by issues and texts on trade and advertising. And while the words are dashed off, they are very carefully weighed and resonant. And they resonate with some of the papers that we're going to hear today. At this fraught time of deaths and maladies, the death of Fisher recently and illnesses, including Constable's own, his rheumatism making it painful to write. Constable had touched a proof, mezzatint, that Lucas had spoiled to convert a church tower into a ruined abbey. He says at the top, I have added ruin to the little Gleab farm and continuing with his customary black humour for not to have a symbol in the book of myself and of the work which I have projected would be missing an opportunity. And at the bottom of the page, Constable Moll's titles to mezzatins should a barge be either passing, going through or shooting a log. He settled surpassing, but he's weighing these words incredibly carefully. Five days later, Constable wrote Lucas a longer, more proper looking letter from Hampstead by a so-called fly letter by Express Mail, in which he says he will author a letterpress to each print. Descriptions, quotations, poetic display and principles of art and as much moral feeling as possible. Thank you and I will now introduce our first two speakers. I'd like to welcome first up Alexander Harris from the University of Birmingham. Alexander was part of the Landscape Now event that we had here and also the late Constable exhibition, any last exhibition at the marvellous show at the Royal Academy. But I want to pick out, which is not mentioned on her bio, but her book Weatherland, which has a fascinating section on Constable in which she's able to decode the meaning of some of the key terms, including organ of sentiment, that have been used so freely in Constable's correspondence and that's a much wider book about weather and climate and landscape. Alexander is going to be talking today to the title New Friends, New Scenes, Constable in the Arran Valley. Thank you so much for having me here. I've been thinking a good deal lately about local sources, local history and the way that the kinds of imaginative geographies, as Stephen Sibrillian puts it, that emanate from books very particular to certain places, how those come together with the more canonical histories of art and literature. So, for me, there was something very special about Constable's letters in that they appeared in the Suffolk Records Society series, which, in the Bodleian anyway, is filed under topography. It's a different section to our history and there they are amongst the Ipswich merchants, diaries and the various Edmunds cartulories. That colliding of different kinds of source, seeing Constable as a local writer, is very intriguing to me and the area that I've been looking most at is Sussex. So, the Sussex Records Society has been my great source for the last few years. So, I wanted to take us down to Arundel, where Constable goes on a kind of holiday. So, I'm going to take us on a sort of holiday and we're going to look at a wish you were here letter, though of a rather special kind. We're equipped, our props for the trip are Constable and Sun's stoneware flagon and a beer bottle, because we are going to meet a brewer down on the river Arran in West Sussex, a port town, a rural town, a historic town in a valley of water meadows, which is and is not like the water meadow country of the star. Leslie, the recipient, will be of course important as we think about this letter, but we're also going to have another major figure in it, George Constable of Arundel. And I guess I'm going to try and tell a sort of microbiography, micro-art history emanating from one moment in time, July 1834, John Constable sitting in the drawing room at George Constable's house. And with hindsight about George Constable, we might have a strange light cast over the letter, but we shall get there. So, let's just start off on this letter. My dear Leslie, in all my walks about this beautiful spot, I am continually thinking of you. How much your company would enhance the beautiful things which are continually crossing my path? John is enjoying himself exceedingly. The chalk cliffs afford him many a fragment of oyster shells and other matters that fell from the table of Adam in all probability. But our friend here, Mr George Constable, is a most sensible man in all matters of science, and he has won John's heart by a present, the arrival of which in Charlotte Street was such dread of an electrifying machine. Well, we've got many a vivid image there, the electrifying machine. In fact now, when Cooper, John Cooper was in Sussex, very close to Arundel, he was also given an electrifying machine to help Mrs Unwin after her stroke. So they are very much around and about at this time. But the fondness between the two Constables, no relation, had ar risen really in a family context in that both had sons of about the same age who were interested in fossils and George Constable was sending fossils to young John Constable and encouraging his interest in science and geology. So what a lot of friends who are parents say is, I'm happy when my children are happy and I think that's at the root of this trip that John Constable takes down to Arundel. Just before we take this off the screen, I'll come back to some elements of it, but this sense of in all my walks I'm continually thinking of you stays with me so much. What is it that Leslie would see and show him? What is it that Constable could express to Leslie about this place that is so different from what he gets from George Constable? The amateur painter, keen collector, local man. Those are very different kinds of seeing and different kinds of knowledge and there's clearly for John Constable a sense that to be with Charles Leslie would be to see this landscape with a more painterly eye I suspect that they would together work out the meaning of beauty in this place in a slightly different way to what he can do with the local brewer. That picture's all right, that's good. George Constable had, he'd admired English landscape scenery, he'd met John Constable in London and the invitation down to Sussex came after John Constable's illness and he had written, I sincerely wish I could prevail on you to take a trip to Arundel. I'm sure you would derive great benefit from it. I'm using the Eichel and Gardener 1783 map of Sussex because it's so beautiful. I know I'm 40 years out, but it does give you a sense of the relief topography of the downs, the line of the downs, Arundel situated just on the south side of the downs and the way the Arund cuts through the high ground of the chalk. At the top the way that you and Gardener do their shading shows you the scarp slope of the downs so to the north of the downs you get the really rugged, important word for Constable, rugged scenery on that side and then the dip slope on the southern side which I think is going to correspond a little bit more to Constable's notion of beauty in that smooth dip slope. At this time it's a busy port town so it's both rural but also full of working lives. I want just here to add in an extra comment about, well we've got this George Constable on the letter on the screen. Just to say how interesting I find it that Beckett chose to group the amateur artists together in volume 5 of his series of letters and he did so because he was so struck by the pattern of Constable's friendships with amateur artists, his respect for them, the freedom he felt in talking with amateur artists about art. But of course lots of people have brought out this grey area between amateur and professional. George Constable, he's a professional brewer, he is never going to be called a professional artist. But there's something that is very, I think freeing for John Constable about making this new friendship with a man so enthused about painting landscape but not in any sense a serious London competitor. So the sun, John, went ahead and here's what you encounter coming into Arundel. This is a little bit of a wetter, this is a wetter scene that you might have in mid-July. I always seem to be there in the winter when the water meddys are indeed watery. But I just wanted to put up an image that shows you this mix of the rural, of the downland, of the water meadow, the way that hilly hangars meet water in such contiguity and the castle which Constable is going to try and work out what he thinks of. Here also more scene setting, the big ships could come up the river to Arundel at this time, they can't now. But it was a customs port alongside Littlehampton so lots of shipping would come right up into Arundel and you get the warehouses all along the river. And there is George Constable's brewery, that's from 1880. I cannot find an image of how it was in 1834 but it was clearly a big enterprise and it was on the same site on Queen Street going into the town over the river. Between them this party gathered for 10 days in the summer to go off from this centre touring first to Bighna. I wonder why they went first to Bighna and I suspect it might be because Constable knew about it from Charlotte Smith's Elygiac Sonnets which is something I'm going to talk about today but could be a big area of study. They went fossil hunting. This was the main event and the chalk of Sussex is jolly good for finding those oysters that fell from the table of Adam in all probability. I find the phrase so striking. I think it's one of the most vivid and surreal in all of Constable's correspondence so far as I've read it and it means that when I walk through Ofam hangars now I actually have this image of this sort of giant Adam sitting at a table on the down and to think of Constable having in his mind this sort of domestic scene of Edenic oyster slurping and for his host George Constable to have had completely other scenes in his mind because if you were interested in geology in Sussex at this time you were reading Gideon Mantel whose fossils of the South Downs came out in 1822 followed by a sequence of geology of the southeast books in the 1830s. That was the news of the moment. Another interesting geologist with a very local focus on this area Dr Peter Martin based in Portborough he'd published his geological memoir to work out how the whole area had been formed in cataclysm and so on so these people were imagining the warm tropical seas of Sussex and oysters falling through millions of years to form chalk and Constable is imagining Adam at his table and he's thinking about the stories that time-mangled matter might tell his time-mangled matter he writes to Constable in an earlier letter a praise I think taken from a fellow corrected there but the mangled matter of a story taken from Shakespeare and it makes me wonder what the bar there's a bar told him the oysters that fell from the table of Adam in all probability but our friend here Mr George Constable is the most sensible man in all matters of science I just wonder about the implication of that but is he positioning his Adam against George Constable's science and the geology or is it a sort of throat clearing but Constable starts drawing he needs to get a sense of the relationship of the castle to the town as he's going to say the castle here is the chief ornament of this place but all here syncs to insignificance in comparison with the woods and hills the woods hang from excessive steeps and precipices and the trees are beyond everything beautiful I never saw such beauty in natural landscape before I wish it may influence what I may do in future for I have too much preferred the picturesque to the beautiful which I hope may account for the broken ruggedness of my style a phrase much quoted and to me quite perplexing this distinction he's drawing between the picturesque and the beautiful and the rugged in his style and how he thinks that this landscape which is I think both beautiful and picturesque all together might change that he goes on from thinking about those steep hangars and excessive precipices to the flatlands of the meadows the meadows are lovely so is the delightful river and the old houses are rich beyond all things of the sort but the trees above all anything is beautiful only last night I stumbled on an old barn situated amid trees of immense size like this I'm just so sure I know I should have found there is a picture of the barn was cut out by Leslie and I'm bound in to one of the grangerised copies of his memoirs and I believe it's the one which was in the PMC collection is now at the British Museum but I'm just going to wait to be absolutely corrected and I will do the rest of my homework after the conference for my purposes I'm just lapped by this idea of John Constable going out in the evening last night in a summer dusk away from all of that hubbub of these two big families and wandering amid these ancient barns and being drawn to these buildings this relationship of the natural to the built environment which is something you're so aware of around Arundel where you really do bump into these barns he adds that it's from the time of King John and I wonder whether that's a kind of impressionistic guess or whether it relates to the fact that George Constable really was reading his antiquities I'm going to say a little bit more about that before I end but I want to take us into the house again I'm worried that I'm going to be corrected within 30 seconds but George Constable's house was traditionally identified as Sefton house on Arundel High Street but I believe it's not that it's this house on Mulchavar's street and a very fine prosperous merchant's house it is too at that time it wouldn't have had those projecting bays so you get a flat fronted good late Georgian townhouse and if we go inside this is not the inside this is what the Geoffrey Museum think we might find inside in 1830 that's why I've put it in half fade into this sort of thing so here's Constable writing and I love this sense that we can feel him writing in George Constable's drawing room in the drawing room in which I'm now writing he says to Leslie, are many enormous pieces of stained paper by Copley Fielding as well as of Paul Robson and Hovel and some oils by William Daniel therefore I hope you'll excuse whatever this letter may contain well frankly this is why I chose this letter it's just so waspish and mean and funny and it was cut out of course by Leslie who wouldn't have wanted to publish such an offensive judgement on Constable's fellow artists but this sense of kind of in-joke between Constable and Leslie knowing that they might feel the same things are these enormous pieces of stained paper produced by the old watercolour society people I've found you some examples I don't know which ones George Constable has somebody in the room probably knows which enormous pieces of stained paper were on George Constable's walls but Copley Fielding had done a lot of work around Andal very very recently and is quite possible that they met Copley Fielding takes the elevated vantage point from the noble park does the very highly worked exhibition view Fennel Robson he just died so that poor Fennel Robson he's set slightly apart from the criticism of the other items in George Constable's collection Leslie had been hoosting just before he left for America by Fennel Robson just the August before August 33 Fennel Robson hoosts at home a goodbye party for Leslie and then is dead within two weeks so that's why we get that poor poor Robson and then as for those oils I've just given you some examples of what William Daniel did with Andal and one can see immediately how Constable might be wanting to do something very different but also how the ways of painting Andal had become so fixed you did the giant castle with its noble baronial elevations and you did that big view from high up on the down looking over the parkland to the sea and so straight away Constable is off doing old farmhouses at Houghton and lots and lots of scratching out this textural rebellion from those big polished views of Andal he doesn't really do the chalk you get that the chalk in the background there is amberly chalk pits which is a truly dramatic environment just blazing under the sun because of that white powder gets everywhere I'm intrigued that Constable chooses those rich buildings rich beyond all things of their kind and the geology is their setting for those working lives as it is for the Fithlworth Mill I'm actually not going to talk about oh sorry I'm not going to talk about the forgeries we can do that in the questions but I'm going to end with something that I realise quite late in making this talk Constable comes back again to stay with George Constable in Andal the following year and settles down on my swanborn lake which is just beyond the castle part of the castle park and makes the drawing which he will use when he starts his big oil amondol mill and castle I think that there's a combination of interests and forms of local knowledge that start to come together for him that's very intriguing and one of those forms of knowledge comes through George Constable the Brewer who introduces him to Mark Tierney the antiquary who in 1834 this is the key year just published his two volume very antiquarian history of Arundel which is mainly full of working out the pedigrees of the dukes of Norfolk about which Constable is slightly sceptical Arundel is very much a Catholic town and there may well be some tension in ideological thinking there but as he gets to the end of his book a book which Constable asked to borrow he asked to meet Tierney he was interested in Tierney moves away from the tracing of dukes and he traces the history of the mills of Arundel and he ends by saying that the only surviving one of four previous swanborn mills is the one which was mentioned in the doomsday book and he says that to sit by swanborn lake and to watch the mill is a thing of beauty beyond all beauties of Arundel he says the steep aclivities on each hand clothed with luxuriant forest trees or exposing the wild and rugged surface of the rock these with the stillness of the place present a scene with which the feelings of the heart will readily unite and the mind hastening back to the age of the confessor will fancy itself beside the mill which was at work nearly 800 years ago so it seems to me that Constable alights on this world of local thinking about industrial and working history and how that might go back to King John or the confessor and he sort of empties it out of the textbook history but keeps and distills this sense of how 800 years might be present in the moment sitting by swanborn mill and I think that some of that is coming through from George Constable the Brewer and that we start to see it in that letter to Leslie where he's mediating between two kinds of influence the professional artist and this local man who can introduce into other kinds of local knowledge and that's where I shall end, thank you Thank you, wonderful beginning for us I'd now like to welcome Amy Concanon who is mountain scenic curator in historic British art at Tate and she's curated major exhibitions on Turner and Blake and Nottingham PhD thesis used Constable as a starting point to explore a much wider visual culture of urban landscape so a new urban Constable in various cities and towns around Britain but she's returning to an early love of hers she worked for the Wordsworth Trust and is still a trustee and is going to speak to us on strengthening ties and gaining esteem Constable writes to Wordsworth 15th June 1836, Amy Indeed I did work at the Wordsworth Trust and actually the letter that I'm going to talk about today I spent literally hours if not days with because one of my first tasks was to invigilate a Constable exhibition that Tim Wilcox here had been involved in and so I spent hours looking at this letter inside the case but it's actually quite nice to come back to it and think about it properly Thank you very much for having me as part of the day This is one of those letters that doesn't feature in the Becket edition of Correspondence It was discovered too late for its inclusion and it was discovered at auction turning up in 1977 in a group of Wordsworth family papers which then were purchased by Dove Cottage the Wordsworth Trust I've also got a slightly pixelated middle image but it's there for illustration Written on the 15th June 1836 less than a year before Constable's death It's the last in a series of markers of his admiration for William Wordsworth It's also the first of a trail of evidence that indicates that to some degree this admiration was mutual It was sent precisely 30 years after the men first met and it offers chance to reflect on how Constable mobilised the art of letter writing as well as his professional outputs in this case English landscape scenery which is going to come up time and time again today and the series of lectures on landscape that he gave He uses the art of letter writing and these two professional outputs as tools in a strategy I think to underline and cultivate connections and ultimately prove his worthiness The personal and intellectual common ground between Constable and Wordsworth pillars of British romanticism whose regional affiliations between Suffolk, Dedham, the Lake District particularly Grasmere became enshrined by his professional outputs and public personas These connections may seem very obvious to us now and there has been lots of work done on those connections There won't be time to delve very deeply into those connections but that connection seems something that Constable is at pains to convey to Wordsworth in this letter So although it's short it opens up a very rich story I'm going to talk through its cast of characters both human and inanimate There's Constable's manifesto for landscape arts English landscape scenery So George Beaumont Reverend Thomas Judkin one of these amateur artists that we've already heard about and then of course Wordsworth I chose this portrait I'm not going to use it again, it's a bit later but I like the way he's looking down on Constable But first though I want to address the limitation of the transcription So much if not all of the literature about Literature about Constable utilises his letters They're a wealth of information and they contain so many reflections and accounts to draw on a veritable goldmine for all of us But so few of the books and articles has been mentioned already today So few of those texts actually reproduce those letters and I hazard so few of the scholars that use them have seen the documents in the flesh to which they refer I count myself in this number So we rely on those transcriptions But part of the reason that we're here today is because those transcriptions do have their limitations For me, as an art historian coming from a background of working very closely with a manuscript collection in my first job and possessing as a consequence a very nerdy fascination for paper Not being able to see that letter is often frustrating A letter, as my old boss Geoff Carratton of the Wordsworth Trust has written A letter is the representation of words, images and ideas in a form that itself has history and meaning It's one that holds clues to its creation and history And I think that was important particularly when we're considering the sentiment and the context in which these pieces of paper were created So thinking about this letter as a piece of paper what clues to its creation and its history does it give of the kind that Constable sometimes made drawings on It's folded in half and it's used on both sides covering all of the sheet So there's no possible accusations that Constable is issuing a slight He's used all the paper with a front, an inner and then a back page It was cut down from a larger sheet as can be seen from the torn edge at the bottom and the paper maker a watermark hints at this The letter was made by a writer and co manufactured most likely in North East Wales Papermill and bought by Constable in London Folded it measures just smaller than modern A5 He writes in brown ink now quite faded but he hasn't folded it as Constable might a regular letter He simply folded it into thirds and then written words worth name on the outer face This letter didn't need a seal It was containing a gift a copy of Constable's English landscape scenery I've included here a letter a couple of letters for comparison that were folded in the standard way where the paper itself becomes its own envelope You fold it back on itself and then seal it Incidentally these ones are sealed with black wax signifying a period of mourning most likely I did have a thing about I took it out because of time but the handwriting the handwriting here is less legible than that in this letter and I think that plays into the idea that Constable's in a more stable frame of mind certainly wants to present himself as such and impressions mattered he was writing to the most famous poet of the day he really wanted to make a good impression I'm going to read that letter My dear sir may I beg as a mark of my sister esteem that you will do me the honour to accept my little work on the Kyrysguro the subjects of which are for the most part in the neighbourhood of Dedham in Essex, one of the early and favourite haunts of our valued friend the late Sir George Beaumont whom my mother knew a little boy I feel that I am indebted to him for what I am as an artist and it was from his hands that I first saw a volume of your poems how then can I ever be sufficiently grateful my little work occupied me during a season of sadness occasioned by the loss of the mother of my seven children I heard from Mr Judkin of your intended tour I wish you every happy result from it I shall always reflect with pride that you was at one of my lectures my last is tomorrow but I fear I must not again flatter myself with the hope of seeing you there I am my dear sir most truly your faithful and obliged John Constable the sound of this letter is I think buoyant with a hint of anxious energy Constable was on something of a role professionally speaking he'd been made an RA member of the Royal Academy in 1829 though his admittance to that professional inner sanctum didn't prove to be a fixal for his professional woes the gift he gives to Wordsworth English landscape scenery and the lecture mentioned in the letter that Wordsworth attended were ways that Constable channeled his determination to be taken seriously but also to reinforce the interdisciplinary intellectualism of landscape as a genre as something that was both in his words scientific but also poetic Constable's lectures took place on Thursdays in May and June 1836 the one that Wordsworth attended was held at the Royal Institution building it was dedicated to the landscape of the Dutch and Flemish schools Wordsworth was there for Constable arranged this slot with scientist Michael Faraday and sent out invitations so Wordsworth was there for prompted to attend but there were also adverts placed in the press Constable doesn't appear to have been offered a fee to speak to give these lectures unlike most Royal Institution lecturers the value to Constable was that platform the opportunity to consolidate his professional standing cultivate respect from his peers widen his connections and to speak about landscape art symbolically in a building dedicated to science thereby underlining his thesis that there was a science to the understanding of landscape art and to the production of great landscape paintings this is again it's a bit later the image but that's Michael Faraday giving a lecture also packed Wordsworth lectures Constable's lectures were but the desk that Faraday stands at that was his desk and is still used today in the Christmas lectures so I like the idea that Constable himself also used that desk the letter can be seen alongside English Landscape scenery and the lectures as part of that broader project to bolster Constable's standing and to look to posterity the passing of time and life itself had been marked by the passing of significant people most significant of course was Maria who died in 1828 but also his mentor George Beaumont mentioned here in 1827 Constable's friend and greatest confident John Fisher died suddenly in 1832 as did Constable's studio assistant John Donthorn who was the son of an old friend so while the letter has two ostensible purposes to express thanks to Wordsworth for attending his lecture which he does so effusively being honoured flattered and delighted that the poet was there and to enclose a gift that's the second purpose these acts point towards a deeper purpose I need not rely on the social theories of gift giving to point out that the copy of English Landscape scenery was sent as a material investment in this relationship motivated by a sense of urgency to capitalise on Wordsworth's interest in him a desire to make remake and deepen connections against a background threat marked by the passing of people close to him that life was short but Constable could not of course know that time was running out and that he would die within a year of writing this letter this letter wasn't the first time that Wordsworth and Constable had interacted and I'll expand on that shortly but this letter was sent at the high point of Constable's admiration and engagement with the poet's work though he wasn't an uncritical fan of Wordsworth ten years before this letter so in 1826 he described one of Wordsworth's poems as being in bad taste but did admit that it contained some beautiful descriptions of landscape Constable's references to Wordsworth and his alignment of their practice through quotation either in private correspondence or in public in the file leaves in the letter press to English landscape scenery intensified in the years running up to the writing of this letter dated 1836 Wordsworth had played a role for example in Constable's deepening interest in rainbows which featured more and more in his late work in 1829 Constable made a copy on scrap wrapping paper of Wordsworth's 1807 poem The Rainbow painting and poetry were sister arts in Constable's view each with a mission to call to mind was something higher than just mere representation and though no volume of Wordsworth's poems owned by Constable exists which I find puzzling Wordsworth with his focus on place, nature and introspective feelings was his natural counterpart indeed both men acknowledged the formative impact of particular landscapes the valleys of Grasmere up in the Lake District and Dedham down in Suffolk they acknowledged those landscapes and the power that they'd had on their own creative powers and they both produced manifestos that centralized autobiography within their practice Constable in English landscape scenery and Wordsworth in the Prelude which was to be published later but he'd already got more or less a full draft of it by this point the poet like Constable regarded his art form as a science and Wordsworth wrote that poetry was the history or science left self-deprecating they described as my little work a tactical means to bring Wordsworth to bring to Wordsworth attention their professional and intellectual alignment and saying thank you for his attendance at his lecture Constable seeks to strengthen the connection by playing then another card reminding Wordsworth of their personal alignment via Sir George Beaumont Beaumont our valued friend according to the letter the foundation stone here the force that brought poet and painter together into one another's orbit in the first place Constable nods to this by informing Wordsworth that it was from his hands that he first saw a volume of Wordsworth's poems Beaumont was an amateur painter influential patron and connoisseur whose collection formed the nucleus of the National Gallery he was roughly 20 years older than both Wordsworth and Constable and Constable's biographer Leslie called him the leader of taste in the fashionable world but I actually prefer watercolourist Thomas Hearn's description of Beaumont which I think comes closer to this sense of his forceful personality so Hearn called him the supreme dictator on works of art both men enjoyed a beneficial link with Beaumont but they received differing degrees of respect from their patron friend though there were costs attached to the relationship in both cases for Constable one of these costs was that Beaumont would ask him to prepare canvases for him to paint on and bring him into all sorts of business that Constable didn't really care to be drawn into but Beaumont positively lionised Wordsworth despite on occasion affecting to despise what Beaumont stood for Wordsworth allowed Beaumont to illustrate a volume of collected poems and dedicated it to him as a quote, memorial of a friendship which I reckon amongst the blessings of my life blessings Beaumont had given various gifts to Wordsworth of significant financial help renting houses for him to stay in all kinds of benefits like that of which Constable didn't really receive to the same degree but Constable also felt very much indebted to Beaumont although at the same time felt very much his social inferior he referred to him in English landscape scenery to their first meeting as having entirely influenced his future life and he reinforces that gratitude in the letter to Wordsworth saying that he is indebted to him for what I am as an artist it was Constable's mother who'd introduced Constable and Beaumont and the reference in this letter to the fact that Constable's mother knew Beaumont as a child looking at that closely extraneous, it's not detail that necessarily needed to be there but I think I read it as a kind of emphasis that's almost competitive in town on the hereditary longevity of Constable's association with Beaumont and the strength of their bond one of Beaumont's most agreeable characteristics was his impulse to connect people for their mutual benefit he had the resources and the influence to matchmake and so it was with Constable and Wordsworth in 1801 or 2002 Beaumont had shared with the young Constable Wordsworth and Colridge's groundbreaking volume lyrical ballads a statement poetic statement that ordinary people's lives and the incidental beauty of nature could be the stuff of poetry written in an unpretentious language it was when Constable went north for his tour of the Lake District in 1806 an experience which he found disagreeable that he met Wordsworth in person that first meeting didn't go entirely well if we're to believe gossip Joseph Farrington's second hand account so Constable met Farrington shortly later and he'd apparently told Farrington he remarked upon the high opinion Wordsworth entertains of himself Constable then told Farrington of how Wordsworth had asked a lady at a party to notice the singular formation of his skull Constable then reported this is quite ridiculous Constable then reported that Colridge had joined in and said Colridge Samuel Taylor Colridge was Wordsworth's friend collaborator sometimes thorn in his side reported that Colridge had said that this formation of his skull was the effect of intense thinking but then Farrington observed to Constable Wordsworth must have thought in his mother's womb and of course that little anecdote reflects Farrington's own potential bias and pleasure in his own joke but nonetheless Constable's impression and communication of Wordsworth's conceitedness might also reflect his own inferiority complex and perhaps a hint of jealousy that was maybe born out by their treatment different treatment by Sir George Beaumont through Beaumont the two met several more times in the preceding years including in Brighton in 1824 but I venture that both men had at this point in 1836 the point of writing this letter 30 years after they first met at this point I think they had an appetite for nostalgia for their youth and for their former selves they've now matured and any early heat of the first impressions was gone and in its stead certainly for Constable was an opportunity to seal a bond of intellectual and social kinship though it's entirely typical of Constable to pour out personal feelings I think he's opening up to Wordsworth in this letter about his personal sorrows when he talks of English landscape scenery as a salvation during his season of sadness after the death of Mariah it's tactical it's another way to cultivate that friendship a showing of vulnerability and soul sort of man to man Constable references others to emphasise their connections Mr Spedding down in the post script that's it yep in the post script is likely to be lawyer Anthony Spedding business partner of Constable's father-in-law and brother to Wordsworth's childhood friend John Spedding of Keswick since the parcel could in the end be conveyed to Wordsworth in London this again is another extraneous detail a detail intended to signify that Constable mattered to and could indeed call favours from people that Wordsworth was close to in the body of the letter he reports hearing of Wordsworth's impending tour of France and Italy from their mutual associate Reverend Judkin who would go on to conduct Constable's funeral service in 1837 and according to Leslie he conducted this service with tears streaming down his face but Constable's wife Maria described Judkin very weirdly as one of your loungers so again can imagine this sort of rotating cast of characters of amateur artists just wanting to hang out with him another amateur artist Judkin was a sycofant in 1826 he sent Constable a sonnet equating him with Wordsworth Constable sent this on I think he says something like without comment straight to Fisher so Constable withheld his own feelings about this sonnet but asked Fisher's opinion Fisher wrote back I haven't quoted the poetry because it's bad Fisher reassured Constable how Judkin's poem was although it was bad certainly not in the style of Milton which is what Judkin had hoped it was gratifying to show you how persons think of you you are secure of both present and future fame but never of popularity few men like Shakespeare, Walter Scott and Hogarth unite the two don't be anxious about celebrity it will find you out sooner sitting at your easel quietly if you made any stir Constable never really lost that anxiety I don't think and this letter shows it but I've included that quote to give you the background of that anxiety and the kind of feelings and that personality behind why this letter to Wordsworth was so important so returning to the purpose of the letter to thank Wordsworth for attending his lecture what was it that motivated Wordsworth to even go there's much to be said about Wordsworth and art and in short our appreciation of Wordsworth's approach to art has been skewed by certain statements he made about paintings inadequacy to appropriately convey sentiment, feeling and nature he was wary of any deception and any artificial rules like the Gilpinian picturesque and of course he'd lived through that boom in tourism of the Gilpinian kind and he and Dorothy and Coleridge often joked very disparagingly about the kind of stream of middle class tourists tramping by their cottage window in search of views that were picturesque but there's a wealth of evidence to show that Wordsworth did appreciate painting not least quotations from William Haslett on Wordsworth's eloquence on the subject he had a particular interest in northern old masters northern European old masters which was the subject of Constable's lecture and indeed both poet and painter had numbered amongst the many illustrious visitors to merchant Carl Aders' collection of northern European paintings years before this letter was written this subject of specific interest knowing of Constable through others in his network and having received an invitation to attend that lecture may have been enough motivation for that attendance but there may have been an extra prompt a month earlier earlier than the writing of this letter 36 Royal Academy Exhibition opened and it featured this painting by Constable the senate after the memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds it depicts a monument erected for Reynolds 20 years after his death by Beaumont in the grounds of his home Colotton Hall as part of a sequence of tributes to illustrious figures the monument was inscribed with words that Beaumont had commissioned from Wordsworth to pay tribute to Reynolds and Constable had sketched this monument in the glade that it's in when staying with the Beaumonts over a decade before turning to paint it Beaumont had died in 1827 but the prompt for returning to this sketch is thought to have been the plans to remove the Royal Academy from its original home at Somerset House to the National Gallery Trafalgar Square where by this point Beaumont's most prized old master pictures now hung its inclusion in the Royal Academy Exhibition by Constable and his motivation to get it painted in time for that exhibition was therefore a tribute to his own of his own to both Beaumont and Reynolds and he's spotlit Wordsworth's part in this tribute by reproducing the lines from the monument in the catalogue to the Royal Academy Exhibition so it's an important point of triangulation between Beaumont, Wordsworth and Constable coming the same year that this letter was written at a turning point in the Royal Academy's history when it moved this was to be the last exhibition held at Somerset House 37 it would be at the National Gallery and although Constable couldn't know it it was also the last Royal Academy Exhibition that he would partake in it's highly likely though we don't know for sure that Wordsworth visited the exhibition and saw this visual public expression of the ties that bound he and Constable there is an added poignancy and that this is an inherently nostalgic painting paying tribute to the man Beaumont whose career whose influence Constable's career so much and this was to be the last painting that he exhibited in public a month after the painting went on show Constable gave the lecture that Wordsworth attended and then he wrote the letter towards the end of it he hints not very subtly I don't think that he'd love Wordsworth to come to his last lecture which was to be the following day he says I fear I must not again flatter myself with the hope of seeing you there full of self-deprecation Wordsworth attendance at the 9th of June lecture no doubt influenced the content of that final lecture according to Beckett much of the lectures were delivered off the cuff but there are drafts and Leslie's comprehensive notes taken from them but at the final lecture the one after the one Wordsworth had attended Constable quoted Wordsworth and not just any Wordsworth the lines he used were the last lines from a sonnet inspired by one of Beaumont's pictures a picture that we don't know where it is now but these were the very same lines that Constable had quoted in his introduction to English landscape scenery again drawing Wordsworth directly into his intellectual projects in ways that underlined in public the ties that bound them to round up I want to consider the question did Constable matter to Wordsworth there's much evidence to suggest that the painters respect for the poets but did the poet care about the painter Seamus Perry has recently argued that Wordsworth didn't he's written that Wordsworth seems to have shown no interest in his contemporaries work but I do think that Wordsworth's attendance at the lecture and the part he played in securing Constable's legacy beyond this point belies that though this letter was to be the last known point of engagement between the two men in 1837 after Constable's death a campaign to acquire a work by Constable for the National Gallery got underway the cornfield was chosen along with others including scientist Michael Faraday who'd given Constable that platform to deliver those lectures at the Royal Institution poets Samuel Rogers an artist like William Etty David Wilkie and Francis Chantry Wordsworth subscribed to the purchase of this work he offered one guinea out of a total of 300 to be raised writing to Leslie that he was happy to pay a tribute of respect to most so admirable an artist this is a rather kind of polite non-committal phrase it's respectful but it is evidenced on the less of Wordsworth's interest in Constable and desire to be part of a network to preserve his memory peer pressure may have played a part but Wordsworth he wasn't always he knew his own mind a few years later in 1844 Constable's daughters sent Wordsworth a copy of Leslie's memoirs of John Constable he replied with typical formality that he was much interested in the volume and regretted that he had not I had not the good fortune to fall in with your father till the latter part of his life when we met with mutual pleasure he reported to them that English landscape was a work most honourable to his genius and that it was pity that he did not prolong his stay in this beautiful country i.e. the Lake District that we might have had its features reflected by his pencil I do wonder whether Wordsworth knew that Constable hadn't really enjoyed his time in the Lake District and therefore not found enough material to paint an oil painting there's quite a number of watercolours but no significant output in oil and I wonder too whether if Constable had done so he would have been able to fall in with Wordsworth just that bit more sooner in life but as it is, Wordsworth's attendance at Constable's lecture and his subscription to the cornfield and the letter to Constable's daughters do show that Constable was held in some esteem by Wordsworth even if the artist did not live to see the labours of his efforts to cultivate that link which this little piece of paper signifies come to full fruition Thank you very much that was a fantastic start to the day I just wanted to say to Amy that I'm really grateful to you for pointing out the lack certainly on my part of having seen and certainly handled any of Constable's letters I'm primarily dealing with paintings and not even watercolours or anything and I think that's a major omission is the fact that when you read about we're all quoting from the letters you often don't know where the actual physical letter is because you might want to see it but you'd have to go around the whole of England looking for it but the thing that was really interesting was the fact that you described the brown ink because that had never occurred to me before and my contact with Constable's ink is in the underdrawing to the oil paintings which we can often see particularly in the latter part of his career really readily with the naked eye so we know that there's loads and loads of this pen and ink underdrawing and I'm often calling in people to do infrared reflectography and we get these great surprises where we can see squaring upgrades which are in pencil which is graphite but we can't see the underdrawing at all and the fact that it's brown which often you can't really make out in the painting because it's overlaid with paint but it had never occurred to me to look at the letters it probably means it's iron gall ink which is not carbon which is why we can't see it in the infrared so that's just like ping in my brain after nearly 40 years that you've just made that point so I just wanted to say thank you for that That's great I was almost going to take that out because I thought well isn't it obvious to everybody so I think it's my that first job I've worked in a in an organisation that was about manuscripts it had a big collection of paintings, sketchbooks and watercolours but primarily it was to display manuscripts and we were always thinking about ways to make those pieces of paper behind glass come to life and I thought that actually to start that description was important because there's so much that you take for granted in words on a piece of paper and that removal as you say from the transcription is frustrating at times although it's not a very exciting letter not like the one Steve showed with the illustration Great, thank you Thank you both for those wonderful papers and these really intimate moments in Constable's life that you brought to us I wanted to ask Alexandra about this the phrase about the phrase of broken ruggedness and if you had more to say about that in relationship to Constable's whether watercolours or paintings from Arendelle or anywhere else because there was something very striking about the links you were drawing between that and his sort of geological eye that he was developing in that moment but also that kind of dash butt this brokenness of articulation of a kind of fisher of discourse that he's trying to kind of get in between but what I don't understand is whether he's apologising for past ruggedness and aiming for but he's clearly not aiming for a new smoothness because then he goes and does his most ruggedly fabulously layered sketches and using watercolour which of course to so many people is that crystalline smooth surface and changing it into as rugged as a watercolour can be I'm pushing it a graphite over the water mills at Fethleworth as much as he ever did on the Starr I think and well but there is this contrast though when he paints the water meadows and when he does the amazing drawing of North Stoke and of Cathanger where the landscape is very very flat because you're dealing with water in a day and what you've got to get at is this very intricate structure of soft liquid liquid landscape of of reeds and and of a canoe they found a canoe at North Stoke that had sort of melted almost into the mud and they were discussing whether it should be preserved with mutton broth etc. liquid landscape liquid versus ruggedness seems to me what's coming together here and I think it's very ambivalent that line I think he was liquid and ruggedness but I'm really happy to hear what other people there's a sketch of the canoe in the letter in the in the British Library so so you know that graphic aspect of the letters which we've been considering is really important Troy Thank you this is following on from that very interesting question about the ruggedness quote and going back also to Amy's point about paper and how we don't see the actual letters so it's it's in italics that phrase isn't it? Will it be becket? Yes yes yes do we know what that means do we know what becket means by those italics I suppose I'd always thought it was a quotation that Constable was saying they think I was broken and rugged well you know watch out but he also underlines natural landscape just a few lines earlier it's quite an emphatic sense about the whole letter where these phrases coming to mind and even this sense of writing to Leslie measuring up beauty and picturesque it's like he's got all these phrases these art history phrases that he's weighing up in relation to this new landscape he's looking at so I don't know that it's from a particular source but it's a really good point let's try and find out Just to add to that I was thinking a fantastic talk thank you both so much the rugged is such a you know it's a sort of trove but it's a cliche isn't it so there's a lot of parodic references at that period by art is to picturesque and to Gilpin so I wonder if you know there's something a little bit sardonic or he's even self-parodying or you know there could be a you know obviously it's very rich and probably multi-valent but I'm just wondering you know whether there's that as well there's a sort of embedded critique of the picturesque I know he's wondering and this may be just too tangential but when he's thinking of Leslie and Sussex he's thinking of Leslie there partly because Leslie spent so much time at Petworth's so Constable's going into a place that he completely associates with this fine, with the House of Art with fine society that he's sort of resisting and I wonder where the part of that my ruggedness is in his mind is a kind of resistance to the Petworth's circle that Leslie was so familiar with is that possibly in the mix? I'll just make another coin, it also occurred to me for the first time you know when you were speculating about what you know what would what would Leslie say if he were walking along with me and you know I've never really thought about you know Leslie's transatlantic roots unless he grows up in America doesn't he? Yes and he's just come back so Leslie is seeing you know Constable's landscapes with America we know somebody that has grown up with that experience he's also looking at them with Washington Irving in mind and he's very conscious of interesting American tourism to Salisbury so that's the way that's working interesting in Petworth the address to Petworth is very very carefully written on the envelope it's not dashed off at the back again thanks very much for both papers absolutely fascinating sorry to go on about the picturesqueness and the ruggedness but the connection I think we need to remember that Leslie actually didn't really like Constable's laid style his broken style his picturesque style the way that the sort of light captures surfaces and thus the ruggedness so of course in Leslie's life of Constable he always says that the picture that he most admired or the Constable he most liked was the Hampstead studies that kind of smooth before to rugged so it could partly I think because but with all the other intimations that we've discussed and Constable's sort of attacking the picturesque I think it's also Constable apologising to Leslie but saying actually sorry mate I am going to apologise but no I'm not going to change my style super helpful thank you thank you I was going to ask about Constable's best handwriting and it's such a contrast this morning to Constable's angry handwriting to Lucas and I just wondered if much work has been done on what sort of people to whom did he use his best handwriting and to tradesmen to the range of mood that he starts out on when he writes a letter it's just so striking it's marvellous sort of polarity for the day and perhaps we can all keep that in mind I'm sure he didn't use his handwriting you use when you're writing a Christmas thank you letter as a child isn't it incredibly polite and rather so as you say rather self-conscious so I just wondered about the range and if anybody's worked on that side of him I hadn't but it was only in comparing and thinking about how it was with Constable had folded the letter that occurred to me in the handwriting the letters in the binary key that I'd looked at years ago are not very legible unless you're really familiar with Constable's script the the formation of the words is very flat it's very kind of scrolling whereas the letter to Wordsworth the letters are very upright and it's much more legible so there probably is a kind of psychological psychoanalysis to do that there's a letter from Fisher to Constable in which a word in Constable is so legible Fisher then transcribes it and sends it back to him and says is this a sketch yeah go on oh just that I think didn't you write a whole little section on the visual world of the writing Mark Mark Can I just repeat I thought there were two fantastic papers to start the day what a way to begin but I've got questions for you both because of time I'll just ask one of you Alex about that I thought the way you ended with that sketch that late sketch of Arendall was and how one could reread that sketch in the light of the things that you've been discussing was really powerful but I was very struck still by the fact and it's again a response to your letter that the power and the prominence of the tree right in the foreground that Arendall the castle is put well into the distance but it's there in the distance then now as you say there is a mill that gets a really powerful prominence in the in the drawing informed no doubt as you said by the kind of readings of the antiquaries that you've been exploring but then right in the foreground still is this extraordinary presence of the tree and that would be interesting to get your thoughts on the ways in which that kind of sets up a succession or a hierarchy of priorities or visual priorities from front to back Beautiful, thank you and the each trees of those hangars are really famously ancient Arendall from hangar but I don't see that I don't know any sketches that Constable did during that period just of sort of tree portraits as it were and in fact there's a whole sort of genre of the tree portrait that he would have known through Cooper I'm sort of interested in Cooper's Yardley Oak and that sort of sense of what is a tree by itself and what is its life and so on but for Constable it's so much about the tree and its setting and the relationship between tree and building and the the way the castle becomes clothed and softened the sort of expressions of this ugly castle becomes coherent because of the hangars infolding it somehow Tim may have written in your Salisbury book Tim that there's something in a letter the Constable writes to Fisher probably in Salisbury where he characterises different trees in the grounds of Salisbury Cathedral I've done that kind of characterisation of individual trees but you're not a part of it okay when you were searched the future digital edition of the correspondence you find there is another dictatorial Beaumont in the correspondence this is Beaumont the village postman in East Burgold who rings his bell and Constable has to dash off and finish his letters so we'll finish there now for coffee is around thank you very much for two wonderful papers