Cathy's Art Diary

Enlightening online discussion from the National Gallery around Nicola Moorby’s book on Turner and Constable. Matthew Morgan interviewed the author examining her argument that the two landscape artists were not the rivals they have been made out to be. She argues that there were very different characters who would not have been friends but that the perceived competition between them actually encouraged them to become better artists. She chose a series of pairs of paintings to compare the two artists and to examine their different approaches. There was a lively Q&A session at the end covering their relative fame at the time, their approach to the slave trade and why Constable did full scale sketches for his 6ft paintings.

Fascinating online lecture from ARTscapes looking at the later life and work of John Constable. Nicola Moorby, Former curator at Tate Britain, talked about the current   show at the Royal Academy which shines a light on a less familiar part of Constables career. She talked us through his earlier block buster works, the River Stour Six-Footers, which were seen as the pinnacle of work but then went to analyse the later works which have sometimes been seen as a falling off in his style. Alongside talking about the work she likened it to his life with the death of his wife, his election to the Royal Academy and his own ill health. She talked about how experimental his work was in this period not only working in oil but also returning to experiments in watercolour, prints and ink. We also looked at how Constable was trying to use his work to elevate landscape painting to the prestige of history painting at the time particularly looking at “Cenotaph to the Memory of Sir Joshua Rey...