Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Garden #5
by Eric Glaser
Title
Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Garden #5
Artist
Eric Glaser
Medium
Painting - Oil On Canvas
Description
"Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Garden"
Artist: John Constable (British, 1776-1837)
John Constable, RA was an English landscape painter in the Romantic tradition. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for his landscape paintings of Dedham Vale, the area surrounding his home – now known as "Constable Country" – which he invested with an intensity of affection. "I should paint my own places best", he wrote to his friend John Fisher in 1821, "painting is but another word for feeling".
Constable's most famous paintings include Wivenhoe Park, Dedham Vale and The Hay Wain. Although his paintings are now among the most popular and valuable in British art, he was never financially successful. He became a member of the establishment after he was elected to the Royal Academy at the age of 52. His work was embraced in France, where he sold more than in his native England and inspired the Barbizon school.
Title: Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Garden
Series Title: Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds
Object Type: Painting
Genre: Landscape art
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: Height: 88.9 cm (35 in); Width: 112.4 cm (44.2 in)
Collection: The Frick Collection
Current Location: Library
Credit Line: Henry Clay Frick Bequest
Constable painted several views of the south façade of Salisbury Cathedral for his intimate friends Dr. John Fisher, Bishop of Salisbury, and the Bishop's nephew Archdeacon John Fisher, who had purchased The White Horse. Constable’s first version of the Cathedral, done for the Bishop (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum), had a dark, cloudy sky. In response to the owner’s objections to its ominous atmosphere, Constable painted this version with a sunnier sky and a more open composition. As in the earlier canvas, Constable included the figure of the Bishop pointing out the Cathedral’s spire to his wife, and beyond them a young lady holding a parasol, presumably one of their daughters. The Bishop had died by the time the picture was completed, but it was acquired by his family. Two favorite subjects of nineteenth-century artists — a medieval ecclesiastical monument and a dramatic landscape — are particularly well united through the arrangement of tree trunks and branches echoing the rising lines of the Cathedral spire.
Source: Art in The Frick Collection: Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.
Text Credit: The Frick Collection, Google Arts & Culture
This is a Google Art Project image, thank you Google!
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Additional image editing by Eric Glaser
Uploaded
June 6th, 2020
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