[Illustration: THE PARSON'S DAUGHTER. FROM A PAINTING BY GEORGE ROMNEY
IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON.
This portrait, from an unknown model, gives Romney with all his charm
and more than his usual sincerity.]
To the London of 1800, however, were to be given two landscape
painters who may fairly claim the honor of placing their art on a
higher pinnacle than it had ever before reached. One of them,
John Constable, remains to-day the direct source from which all
representation of the free open air is derived, be the painter Saxon,
Gallic, or Teuton. The other, Joseph Mallord William Turner, may be
said to reach greater heights than his contemporary; but, unlike him,
his art is so based on qualities peculiar to himself that he stands
alone, though having many imitators who have never achieved more than
a superficial resemblance to his work.
Constable, founding his work on nature with close observance of
natural laws, was able to exert an influence by which all painters
have since profited. When he came to London, at the age of
twenty-three, to study in the school of the Royal Academy, he
attracted the attention of Sir George Beaumont, an amateur painter
who, by his taste and social position, was all-powerful in the
artistic circles of the metropolis.
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