It was he who asked the young
painter the famous question, "Where do you place your brown tree?"
this freak of vegetation being one of the essential component parts
of the properly constructed academical landscape of the period. For
a year or two the youth placed brown trees, submissively enough, in
landscapes painfully precise in detail and deficient in atmosphere.
Then he did that which to a common, sensible mind would seem the most
obvious thing for a landscape painter to do, but which had been done
so rarely that the simple act was the boldest of innovations. He took
his colors out of doors, and painted from nature.
[Illustration: JOHN CONSTABLE. FROM AN ENGRAVING BY LUCAS, AFTER A
PORTRAIT BY C.E. LESLIE
Reproduced, by the courtesy of W.H. Fuller, from "Memoirs of the Life
of John Constable, Esq., R.A., Composed Chiefly of his Letters, by
C.R. Leslie, R.A." Quarto, London, 1843. This noble memoir, which
makes one love the man as one admires the painter, is unfortunately
out of print.]
Of the dreary waste of "historical" and arbitrarily composed
landscapes, even in the simpler honest productions of the Dutch
preceding this century, nearly all were painted from drawings; color
had been applied according to recipe; the brown tree was rampant
through all the seasons represented, from primavernal spring to
golden autumn.
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