CONSTABLE PAINTED WHAT HE SAW—-THE WEATHER. Annalisa wrote me that: “The headline of this made me laugh.” The headline is: “‘Gloomy’ artist John Constable wasn’t down about life – he was just painting typical British weather says expert….” Mary Jane read the same headline and burst out laughing as well.
The article, by Dianne Apen-Sadler in the Daily Mail (July 23, 2018), begins: “John Constable’s gloomy landscapes have long been thought of as representations of his dark mood after his wife’s death, but an expert now claims he was just accurately painting miserable British weather.”
The new evidence comes from a study by the head of paintings at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Constable wrote the date, time of day and weather conditions on the back of his paintings. The study compared Constable’s notations with contemporary weather data which had been collected by a headmaster at a school less than six miles from where Constable would paint on Hampstead Heath. There were matches.