Constable and the Pursuit of Nature
The Reith Lectures
BBC
4.2 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 20 November 1955
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This year's Reith lecturer is Dr Nikolaus Pevsner, the German-born British scholar of history of art and architecture, and author of the county guide series, The Buildings of England (1951–74). In this series, Pevsner explores the qualities of art which he regards as particularly English, as illustrated in the works of several English artists, and what they say about the English national character.
In his sixth and penultimate Reith lecture, Dr Pevsner describes the attitude of the English Romantic painter John Constable (1776-1837) and some of his contemporaries to Italian art, and compares his Englishness with that of Blake and Hogarth. He examines the sudden flowering of English landscape painting which began with Richard Wilson (1714–1782) and his Welsh landscapes, and argues that this concentration on landscape is a direct result of the temperate English climate.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures. |
| 0:04.7 | This lecture in the series The Englishness of English Art, given by Nicholas Pevsner, was originally broadcast in 1955. |
| 0:16.6 | We present the sixth in the series of BBC wreath lectures on the Englishness of English art given by Dr. Nicholas Pevsner. |
| 0:27.0 | In this lecture, Dr. Pebsner deals with Constable and the pursuit of nature. |
| 0:34.7 | Constable never visited Italy, "'nor did he visit Paris. |
| 0:39.7 | "'Nither did Blake, neither did Gainsborough, |
| 0:42.5 | "'nither did Hogarth. |
| 0:45.0 | "'I don't think Constable seriously wanted to know Italy. |
| 0:49.1 | "'There is a letter of his |
| 0:50.9 | "'about someone's mind and talent mouldering away at Rome, and in an address |
| 0:57.5 | to students of the Royal Academy, he warned them not to be in too great haste to seek instruction |
| 1:04.4 | in the schools of France, Germany, or Italy. Yet he was an ardent worshipper of Claude Lorraine's Italian landscapes, and he once |
| 1:14.4 | wrote to his friend Archdeacon Fisher that he feared he might be doomed, these are his words, |
| 1:21.7 | doomed, never to see the living scenes that inspired the landscapes of Clod. |
| 1:31.1 | That seems to contradict what I said just now. |
| 1:35.0 | However, the passage immediately goes on like this, but I was born to paint a happier land, my own dear old England, |
| 1:40.8 | and when I cease to love her, may I, as words were says, never more hear her green leaves rustle and her torrents roar. |
| 1:51.2 | Constable loved his country, and if such love can be taken as an indication of Frank, of naive Englishness, |
| 1:59.9 | then Constable ought to be as promising a case for my purpose |
| 2:03.5 | in these lectures as Hogarth, who signed himself Britophile, and as Blake, who called |
| 2:09.7 | English Blake. Blake and Constable are contemporaries, and they are what Blake called contraries. |
| 2:20.7 | They have indeed hardly anything in common. |
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