Abstract
MB. L. C. W. Bonacina's paper on "John Constable's Centenary: His Position as a Painter of Weather"(Qtiart. J. Roy. Meteor. Soc., October 1937) is a notable contribution to that affiliation of the Nature studies of the artist and scientific worker which is so much to be desired. The character of the country in which Constable was born and bred evidently influenced his practice of emphasizing cloud effects in landscape. The Suffolk countryside where the celebrated pictures of Flatford Mill, Dedham Mill and Stoke-by-Nayland were painted is the plain seen by the traveller on the London and North-Eastern Railway when crossing the Biver Stour above Manningtree. Here the land presents none of those emphatic forms which in rugged scenery tend to concentrate attention on the lower half of the confronting hemisphere, so the eye ranges freely over the sky, and the cloud is as important as the field in the composition of the picture. Originals of Constable's paintings are readily accessible in the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum, and many are familiar as engravings, so that Mr. Bonacina's judgments can easily be tested. We welcome his conclusion that Constable's generalization of particular types of cloud in a manner not possible for photography is of service to the meteorologist. The analysis of certain pictures in which transitory forms are so perfectly depicted as to introduce a cinematic effect is a notable contribution to art criticism. It is indeed entirely appropriate that the student of natural science should thus contribute to the understanding of landscape painting, for the critical faculty is as a rule more highly developed in the man of science than in the artist—who does more than he knows.
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Constable's Portrayal of Weather. Nature 141, 70–71 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/141070d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/141070d0