Jacob Epstein: Rock Drill – An Essay

Although Jacob Epstein himself tried to stay independent from the avant-garde groups of his time, besides The London Group – an amalgamation of The Camden Town Group and the English Cubists which formed itself in 1913 – his sculpture Rock Drill inhabits many styles of the modernist movement. These included hints of Futurism’s fascination with machinery, aggressiveness and war; Vorticism’s concept of “the point of maximum energy” and Duchamp’s take on Dada with his readymade objects such as the bicycle wheel which he’d announced as a piece of art recent to the time of Rock Drill’s creation.

The sculpture was comprised of an actual drill, bought second hand, and what is described by Epstein in his autobiography as “a machine-like robot, visored, menacing” in plaster perching on the instrument, the complete piece standing at around 3 meters. This figure, simultaneously man and mechanical with both parts merging into an extension of the other, did still appear to have a few shreds of mimicked organic nature to it in the foetus or “it’s progeny, protectively ensconced” within its ribcage, and the lines in the back and shoulder of the form from behind, almost presenting an anatomical description of the muscles of a human body. Like in many of Epstein’s sculptures presenting pregnancy and the female form, such as Figure in Flenite, the neck of the model cranes forward and the arm that controlled the drill defensively and equally aggressively curves around the form within. The fierceness and mechanisation of this sculpture has strong links to the Vorticist movement with the style of abstraction, modernity, the penetration of the space around it and, though being completely immobile, a sense of movement and dynamism within the work.

While Gaudier-Brzeska and T. E Hulme – who was to write a book on the piece and Epstein’s other work before he was killed by a shell in 1917 – showed enthusiasm for the sculpture, much of the public were disturbed and disgusted by it when it was exhibited in 1915 along with works from other artists in the London Group. The Current Art Topics article in the May 1915 edition of the Fine Arts Journal can be seen as an example of this, openly slandering Epstein and the London Group’s exhibition, which the author describes as “refuse”, stating:

“The piece de resistance – the draw, of the show is Mr. Jacob Epstein’s performance entitled ‘Rock Drill,’ exhibited first, I believe, at Brighton a year or so back, to the scandal of the community. Neither it nor its meaning can be fully described in these pages, but I can quote the ‘Observer’ probably the foremost English Sunday paper whose art critic writes as follows: ‘The whole effect is utterably loathsome,’ * * * ‘Even leaving aside the nasty suggestiveness of the whole thing’ etc., etc.”

By the time of its exhibition in 1916, however, Epstein had dismantled the piece, removing the legs, the drill and cutting the arm that operated it off at the elbow, casting it in gunmetal in a rather bitterly ironic way and renaming the work Torso in Metal from the ‘Rock Drill’. The slaughter

that was witnessed in this time and the death of Gaudier-Brzeska in June 1915 on one of the French battlefields was said to have spurred many associates of the Vorticists into a realisation of the true horror of war and influence Epstein’s radical alterations to his work. It has been widely understood that this fragmentation of the sculpture was a mirror of the very same fragmentation and destruction that fell upon the men and their bodies on the battlefields and trenches of France during the War. Though having been cast in metal, these alterations made the sculpture appear no stronger, but defenceless and sad, unable to protect the progeny within him. Much later, Epstein would write about the previous state of the work: “Here is the armed, sinister figure of to-day and to-morrow. No humanity, only the terrible Frankenstein’s monster we have turned ourselves into.”

Henceforth, Epstein’s Rock Drill, a sculpture that was before violent and optimistic though ‘prophetic’ to the destructiveness of the First World War, became a symbol of the audacity and atrociousness of war and the demise of the avant-garde. Many avant-garde artists and those that had associated themselves and their work with the Vorticists had – or had known those who had – enlisted during the war days, leaving their numbers dwindling in Britain by the end as they died or recoiled from the movement and its implications of human abstraction and mechanistic energy. Epstein himself stated that he couldn’t see that forms of abstraction taken up later than 1913-14 made “any advance on the period, or produced more novel forms,” besides the use of mannequins in surrealism and what he describes as “lunatic collections.” Despite his negativity towards progressing appearances of avant-garde art, his work still had a profound influence on later artists such as Henry Moore.

 

Bibliography

Carroll, Luscombe. Current Art Topics, Fine Arts Journal. Volume 32 (5). 1915.

Comentale, Edward P; Gasoirek, Andrzej. T.E. Hulme and the Question of Modernism. Ashgate Publishing Limited. 2006.

Cork, Richard. ‘Rock Drill’: Rediscovering a Lost Revolutionary Sculpture. Available: http://www.henry-moore.org/hmi/events/past-events/2013/richard-cork. 2013. Last accessed: 2nd November 2014

Cork, Richard. Jacob Epstein. London: Tate Gallery. 1999.

Epstein, Jacob. An Autobiography. London: Hulton P. 1955.

Malvern, Sue. Modern Art, Britain and the Great War: Witnessing, Testimony and Remembrance. London. 2004

Redfern, David. History of the London Group. Available: http://www.thelondongroup.com/history.php. Last accessed: 30th October 2014

Walsh, Micheal J. K. London, Modernism and 1914. London: Cambridge University Press. 2010

Thought For the Week: Sexism of Studying Art

I will admit before I came to University, I believed there was equality between the sexes. My mother never made me feel any different from my brother and, when it came down to it, I just thought my dad was little bit prudish and old fashioned when it came to him letting my brother get away with bad table manners or loud and agressive attitudes (which were my not so secret talent).

But there isn’t, not completely, not at all. And it’s one of those things, we’re so used to it that it slips through the cracks. It’s not like racism, people see that a mile off now. Not that they always did. But if you say all black people are theives and crooks deepdown, it’s obvious to everyone that you’re a racist. Where as if you say all women are housewives or their only purpose is to have offsporn and care for them, it’s sexism but most ordinary people wouldn’t even think to point it out. Not that racism and sexism are remotely the same thing on any level, but racism is lot easier to see at the moment.

Since I’ve come to Uni, I’ve really seen it. And franky it’s soul destroying. No one has respect for you, or things you do. I’ve had conversations with men who are less educated on a subject than I am and won’t admit my point is right (or even factually correct, which it is) until another man has repeated what I’ve said in full as if they’ve made it up themselves. You work three times as hard as a man at university doing art and get half the marks if you’re lucky, and not because their work is good, but because they’ve got the lecturers, who are also all men, in their pockets. As a woman, they’ll name anything you do silly and girlish, like my themes of folklore and folkmusic, but a man who does the same is creative, innovative and intelligent. My work involving the death of a character, which does happen a lot in folklore, is – and I quote – “morbid and… unconventional…” while another male student whose work is based solely on drawing cartoon corpses is “an inspiring look at the world”.

They sound like small silly things, I will admit. But they add up and I’m tired of my work and thoughts and values being discredited solely because I am woman and I have a vagina. The thing that hit me hardest though and spurred me to write this post, was that I went to the Harry Potter Studio Tour yesterday with my friend for her birthday. When we got to to the art department’s section, I looked through the wall covered in works of art and at all the names of the artists there. The wasn’t a single woman. Not one. And if there was, they definitely didn’t display her. It really hurt, I was looking at it all thinking I’d love to do this sort of thing and then realising that I obviously don’t have the right genitalia for it. And that’s not an over-reaction. From my experience of doing Art in Further and Higher Education is that there are minimal men doing it. We’ve got a year of 60 pupils and 3 of them are men and I know for a fact that it’s very similar in most other Universities. But the men alway come out on top.

I don’t want my work to be judged on the hole between my legs.

I Have Returned From the Deep

So, I’m back from France after one and a half weeks of bliss: eating good food, learning interesting things and having a really pleasant, relaxing time not ripping my hair out over work – despite the hectic four days afterwards where I had very limited time and energy to pack all my things and drive 300 miles back to University. But I did manage to get some very good inspiration from my trip and some wonderful photographs that I hope will one day turn into prints. Especially those of the Penance Procession through Le-Puy-en-Valey (the town is a sight to behold by itself) at dusk just because the atmosphere was so awe-inspiring and surreal. I really wish I’d got some kind of recording of it because the feeling of being there, in crowd of so many people marching together through windy streets that echo the sound of choral singing and the chanting of those that march, while the sky turns to black and lamps of the procession seem to glow brighter with every stop, was simply amazing. As someone who isn’t particularly religious, beside the casual ingrained Catholicism, it opened my eyes to how so many people can believe so virilently in a higher being besides themselves because, in that atmosphere, I believed a little too.

Though, just as an area, the whole of the Haute-Loire (and much of the rest of France besides) is an extra-ordinary place to be. Wherever you turn, you can see history and culture – be it local or religious. From the story of La Bête du Gévaudan in Saugues to the chateaux that litter the contry side to cathedrals, churches and chapels in nearly every town, big or small.

I even managed to get some work done while I was gone, largely just sketches, but did pretty much finish my three final pieces for my illustration work – besides a few deails and little bit of work that needs to be added to them. For course, they’re no masterpieces. But they’re not as awful as they could be.

Why Manditory Life-Drawing For Young Adults and Teens Would Probably Do Us All a Lot of Good

I’m not in the country at the moment and, having no internet access for the next week, I thought I might make this weekly post pre-prepared about something that I’ve been thinking a lot about recently. Initially, it might seem kind of scary and a little bit pervy. I mean, who wants their underage child shut in a room drawing a nude figure? Who wants their child to see a nude figure full stop? Who wants their child to be exposed to something so raw and potentially sexual at all? And that’s the thing, it’s not sexual, or pervy, or weird. It’s only becomes anything of that nature if you believe it is.

At first, it only really sprung to mind briefly. I was sitting in my Tuesday class, drawing the model – who also happened to be a woman I talk to a lot while I’m doing my print work – and, while she is really a stunning woman with a truly amazing figure, I observed that she actually had a really hairy arse. I know it’s only something trivial and slightly stupid to point out about someone (and by all means I’m not criticising her for it), but it really got me thinking about, primarily, myself – as someone who has a condition that makes me as hairy as a small primate –  but also all the other models I’d encountered.

As someone who grew up being looked down upon by my peers for my weight, my height and my general self-presentation (or lack thereof), which of course resulted in a lot of horrible insecurities that lingered long after it stopped happening, I noticed that since I’d started doing Life-Drawing regularly, I’ve been a lot more happy in myself and my body – I’ve seen different bodies of all types, shapes and sizes and I’ve come to realise nothing about me or anyone else is disgusting or abnormal. I haven’t felt the need to diet or go to the gym, because I haven’t felt the need to worry about my body because, frankly, it’s just a body. And even then, because I am actually happy in myself, I haven’t put tonnes of weight on, I’ve lost it (and even if I had, it honestly wouldn’t matter).

But the occasion that really made me consider the idea that things might change if everyone did Life-Drawing happened 2 weeks ago. I went out for a meal and a drink with my old friends from 6th Form and for the fact that I’d drunk too much to drive, I slept on my friend’s sofa – who still lives with her parents. At some point in the night I was woken up by the sound of someone moving about in the kitchen next door, grunting a little as they did so. Knowing that my friend’s boyfriend had been feeling ill earlier in the night, I thought it’d be an idea to go check on him and make sure he wasn’t dying. It wasn’t her boyfriend – as I realised when I met him in the doorway. It was her father. Stark-bollocks naked and looking rather surprised. At first, I didn’t understand. It was just my friend’s dad. It barely even registered that he was naked at all until he covered his groin and said “Do you mind?” and even then I was less than bothered. Naked people, I see them all the time. Nothing new.

It wasn’t until a week later, when my friend commented on what happened – having found out from her mother – that I realised it was generally something peculiar and something most people are embarrassed by. This was largely because he father had thought it creepy that I hadn’t reacted at all, that I hadn’t covered my face in shock or disgust, that I had looked at him as if he had been wearing clothes. He’d instantly assumed that it was something sexual and lewd and that I must have fancied him. I don’t, I’ve got access to my fair share of romantic interests – all of whom aren’t middle-aged with 4 children.

But the thing is, this sort of thing has happened before. And not just to me, but a lot of my friends who do art – and specifically life drawing. I’ve listened to accounts of friends being flashed by old men in the park and severely disappointing them when they don’t react at all; of walking straight past a naked person in the locker rooms, completely unawares while their friends whisper rude things beside them; of people encountering their parents completely nude, wandering the house and not even taking any kind of notice.

And you may think: Well, so what? These people don’t mentally register naked people as something to be ashamed of, that’s no reason to force young people to draw people in the nude. But that’s exactly the point. When you do life drawing, naked people don’t register. If you have to see something every day in a situation that is completely void of sexual nature, it stops being sexual and just become something that’s just like everything else. If this element of sexuality in the nude figure was removed, there’d likely be a lot less sexism – at least in terms of cat-calling and the constant sexualisation of women in the media. You wouldn’t have people looking at someone on the street and going “hmmm, I wonder what they look like naked?” because nudity mentally registers on the same field as a clothed person, so it’s of no sexual interest unless some kind of sexual act renders it so. You wouldn’t be able to blackmail people with nude photos because, who’d care? It’s just a naked person. And with Life Drawing, comes respect. You respect your models. You don’t touch them at all. If you want something moved, you ask, politely, and they move. They in turn respect you for respecting them when they put themselves in what would be considered quite a vulnerable position. You talk to them, you become friends with them. They stop just being a naked body, and become a person. This sort of connection doesn’t develop like that in any other kind of situation where nudity is involved and I think it needs to. I think people have a lot to learn about other people and even if it’s only one generation at first, the youngest generation, in 10, 20, 30 years, it’ll be normal not to think of nudity as synonymous with sexuality. No-one would care about the nip-slips, the breast-feeders and the budgy smugglers, because they honestly don’t matter. People would be able to wear what they want without fear that it might “distract” or drive silly young men wild with lust.I want to live in a world where the body you live in isn’t something to be ashamed and embarrassed of.

Turner and British Landscape Between 1750 and 1850

A lot can be told about British opinion and tastes in landscape painting between 1750 and 1850 from the lines of James Thompson’s poem The Castle of Indolence:

‘Whate’re Lorrain light touched with softening hue

Or savage Rosa dashed, or learned Poussin drew’

First of all, and most simply, was the taste for older artists; those which had been around and in the public eye for at least a hundred years or so and therefore had successfully passed the test of time. Another – and equally as obvious, if not more – is a preference for central European landscapes and landscape artists. The lines also hint to interest in the idea of the Classicly Beautiful, which was more linked to the art of Claude, and the Sublime, which was more linked to art of Rosa, with Poussin hanging between both depending on which of his works one looks at. For all of this, the most relevant person to observe would be Joseph Mallord William Turner. Born in 1775 and dying in 1851, Turner lived through the very centre of the period of time this relates to, and was influenced at some point or another by all three artists mentioned in The Castle of Indolence, but most importantly by Claude who became a running feature in Turner’s art throughout the most part of his artistic career.

As I stated earlier, the most obvious idea that can be lifted from the lines is the taste for the landscapes of mainland Europe, mainly influenced by the scenery of Italy – or more specifically, Rome – and Biblical or classical tales. An example is Claude Lorraine’s Landscape with Narcissus and Echo, illustrating the story of a mountain nymph called Echo who falls unrequitedly in love with Narcissus, a beautiful young man who in turn falls in love with his own reflection and eventually wastes away until only a flower is left in his place.  While it shows this tale, it is predominantly an idealised Italian landscape, with Claude’s iconic use of yellow light that initially attracts the viewer’s eyes to the background – where there is a small town, boats resting in a harbour and a castle on a cliff – and way of employing trees and darker tones in the foreground as a mode of framing the landscape. The figures only rest in the bottom right hand corner, staking up very little of the painting. Other examples of classical and biblical narrative from the artists outlined in the poem include Rosa’s River Landscape with Apollo and the Cumean Sibyl and Poussin’s Arcadian Shepherds. This usage of Greek and Roman myths and legends – however marginalised it might be in some of the art, due to the lack of respect for pure landscape painting at the time they were made – may have worked as a catalyst towards the development of Neoclassicism in the mid eighteenth century, having helped found an interest in it, along with the advancement of archaeological discoveries of the time; though this movement initially developed in Europe as opposed to Britain.

Another influence in British taste in landscape, as the poem suggests, is Claude’s use of light. This was especially specific to Turner whose work had a great impact upon it from Claude, often using the same framing effect and, again, the appearance of classical tales. This also inspired him to travel to Italy from 1819 to 1820 and again in 1829 in order to study the scenery that had previously animated Claude’s work. He sought out places he knew from the paintings like the lake Albino and sketched out the key sites that Claude had made familiar to him in order to capture the French artist’s style and so that he could use them or their structure in his paintings after hand. Even in the pieces before he travelled to Italy, one can easily see parallels in Turner and Claude’s art, with some of Turner’s earlier paintings nearly entirely replicating that of Claude. A prime example of this is his Appulia in Search of Appulus in which the scene is almost identical to Claude’s Landscape with Jacob, Laban and his Daughters. Both show a landscape with a river cutting through it from the left and a long arched bridge stretching across it and reflecting against the water below. On the right of the scene in each, there is a small cluster of buildings, in Claude’s case it’s classical architecture and in Turner’s ruins, adding to the Picturesque effect of his work. The trees that frame the more central landscape are unbelievably similar in shape and structure, along with the placing of the sheep in the left hand corner and cows along the river bank in the centre of the painting. Even the details are exact, down to the colour of the figures’ outfits. There are, of course, many less obviously influenced paintings such as The Rise of the Carthaginian Empire which shows a river running between sets of buildings and tells a scene from the story of Dido, the female figure in blue on the left, as she builds her husband’s tomb which appears beside her in the painting. This can be coupled with Claude’s Seaport with the Embarkation of Queen Sheba. Though these paintings aren’t identical like the previous two, the structure in them is very similar with a central beam of yellowy light piercing through dark water and Claude’s work also being bordered by pale buildings and figures, emitting the same sort of atmosphere – however Turners seems marginally darker, with a greater presence of a tree on the right hand side, but this may have been done intentionally to emphasise the situation at hand in his own painting. For these reasons, Turner was often referred to, at the time, as the ‘modern’ or ‘British Claude’.

While Claude may have been an inspiration for Turner, he saw him as as much of a rival for his own work as anything, trying to surpass him, remake the Claudian legacy in his own image and further the legitimacy of landscape painting as Claude had done before him. This desire for them to be compared and for Turner to show himself as the superior finally manifested itself in physical form at the end his life when he bequeathed The Rise of the Carthaginian Empire and Sun Rising through Vapour to the National Gallery on the condition they be placed next Claude’s paintings Landscape with the Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca and Seaport with the Embarkation of Queen Sheba.

However, in Turner’s later work, he began to swap his Classic approach for a more Sublime one and his paintings became increasingly vague. While Claude’s influence still reveals itself through the light he uses, depicting “not objects of nature but the medium through which they are seen” and the lingering presence of dark, framing trees and yellow hue, his eye turned further toward the work of Rosa. Described in the poem as ‘savage’, Rosa’s paintings portray the violence of nature, with characters standing beneath looming cliffs and rocks, ominous, grey skies hanging above and bare, twisted trees punctuating the landscape. This can be seen in his oil painting Rocky Landscape with Huntsman and Warriors, showing four figures all comparatively small to the vast expanses of rock around them. A cloud blankets dark sky above and the gnarled trees frame the bottom of the picture. The atmosphere can also be found in Poussin’s Winter: The Deluge, depicting fierce weather – what appears to be the aftermath of a flood. In the background there is a thin streak of white from what must be moon light lining edge of a cloud, though at a glance looks like a flash of lightning. Both these paintings say something about nature’s raw power, an idea that influenced Turner in his paintings of stormy seas and perhaps to an extent the power of light that exhibits itself in his paintings. The painting of Turner’s that shows this power best is Snow Storm: Steamboat off a Harbour’s Mouth. While it seems to be primarily abstract, with only a few small details indicating the presence of something, the effect is still substantial. The use of swift marks and tones in the shape of the waves and the undefined border between sky and sea offer a glimpse into the brutality of the storm. The darker lines draw the eye away from the centre of the painting where a bright white light sits, that which initially attracts the viewer’s gaze, and to the plain of greys. As in Rosa and Poussin’s work, the pallet is dark and limited adding to the sombre atmosphere that the painting emits. In order to capture the pure ferocity of being out in a storm, Turner famously had himself tied to mast of a boat and left there for hours, founding the painting on the basis of experience.

Unfortunately, despite Turner’s own popularity with Ruskin because his work was deemed more true to nature than the old masters, Claude, Poussin and Rosa’s landscapes began fall into the background in Britain in the late 1840s and early 1850’s due to the rise of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, fronted by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Their principles in making art were based on Ruskin’s ideas after discovering his book Modern Painters. Expressing true nature for Ruskin meant recording it in precise detail and with the highest degree of finish. The Pre-Raphaelites tried to replicate this by painting outdoors in natural daylight and also with clear, bright colours on a white backdrop. Clear differences between Pre-Raphaelite landscapes and Claudian landscapes can be easily seen if only one compares them. For instance, looking at A Study in March otherwise known as In Early Spring by John William Inchbold – a follower of Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites – there is not a single hint of the old ways to it. The central focus belongs to foreground, not the distant background, which has been depicted in intense detail showing the flaking bark on an old tree and hundreds of twisting branches; even grass and dirt on the ground has been portrayed with minute precision. As for the scene behind it, where Claude or Poussin, might’ve had a landscape that stretches until the horizon or some kind of mountainscape, Inchbold’s stops rather abruptly with the appearance of the brow of a hill. Even those with further stretches of landscape and, like the old masters, narrative as well, such as Frank Dicksee’s Chivalry still don’t evoke the same effect. While Claude used trees to frame his landscapes and make certain parts stand out and Poussin’s more centrally narrative works have at least a small window to one behind one character or another’s shoulder or off to the side, the trees in Chivalry shroud the distant landscape, if anything, so only the slightest hint can be seen behind it. Much like a Study in March, the viewer’s eye is centred on the foreground that, again, has been scrupulously painted by the artist, down to the details in the closest leaves and the worn appearance of the tree to which the woman is tied.

Though Samuel Palmer’s work came a little later, and doesn’t quite fall into the bracket, there still an obvious influence from Claude in his prints and paintings after around 1860 – one of the most notable being A Dream in Apennine. As the title suggests, the painting is set in Italy, hinting further to the influence of Lorrain. There is a small group of figures in the foreground, a far stretching landscape that fades to blue at the horizon and the use of trees and  darker tones to frame the scene: all iconic characteristics of Claudian landscapes. This structure is also replicated in many of his later prints such as The Early Ploughman and The Lonely Tower, showing that the old masters’ legacy managed to live on in some form – even while Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites were at work and discrediting it.

An Essay on Constable and His Painting ‘The Haywain’

Towards the end of the 18th Century and into the early 19th Century, just as John Constable was establishing himself as artist, the Romantic movement was taking hold over Europe. This movement, unlike many before it, had very few stylistic characteristics and was rather more intellectually driven, moving away from the idea of enlightenment and classical, Roman and Grecian influences of the Neo-Classical. It focussed on longing and feeling and tried to revive Northern European sensibility and a sense of the past, rejecting the industrial revolution that was developing around them, but most prominently in England. This often turned the work to Medieval and Gothic influences which were generally singular to Northern Europe, taking the viewer and the artist back to a time that was more religiously aware and morally ideal, however romanticised their ideas of the time may have been.

While Constable’s paintings work on this idea of the past and the beauty of British landscape, they are not so much focussed on a Medieval past but instead a recent agricultural one, void of industry, like that in his childhood. He expresses this in a letter to his friend Fisher, writing: ‘I should paint my own places best. I associate my “careless boyhood” to all that lies on the banks of the Stour. They made me a painter (and I am grateful) that is I had often thought of pictures of them before I had ever touched a pencil.” The Stour which he speaks of is a river in the Stour Valley on the border between Suffolk and Essex and in the area in which he spent most of his youth. This particularly significant as a large fraction of his paintings were done of various locations in the Stour Valley, that shows an obvious link between his images of childhood and his artwork.

One of Constable’s famous paintings, The Haywain can be taken as an example of this, the scene being a view of the Millstream in Flatford – a location for many of his scenes. It presents an image from the bank of the river, Willy Lott’s house to the left in the shade of a cluster of trees and to the right a clear open plain, that is much brighter, where one can see the tiny figures of labourers in the distance. In the centre, a cart and cattle with two countrymen in it moves up the river. Constable describes the look and feeling of that painting as the ‘sparkle of freshness’ in a summer landscape after a brief rain shower, enforcing this sensation through the use of his own chiaroscuro in the detail of light and shadow but also contributed to by the shapes of the clouds in accordance with meteorological principals and his understanding of cloud formation, making the scene more real to the viewers’ eyes. The original title to the painting (Landscape: Noon), however plain and bland it may have been, shows an indication of the passage of time and makes it the centre of attention and the object of the viewers’ contemplation with both parts of the name applying equally to the whole painting as opposed to privileging a single object, as its more well know title The Haywain does.

Though the scene has a very naturalistic look, it was mostly completed in his studio having been amalgamated from a series of oil sketches and studies of the view and the details for the area, creating a largely imagined scene and, for example, taking the woman bending to fetch water and the dog from one scene and the cart in the river from another. In those cases, the images he used were intended only for the painting however there were earlier drawings he used to express detail such as the boat in the bushes that was taken from his earlier painting The White Horse where it appeared as a ferry boat in the boathouse.

While on the surface the painting may seem quite docile and a solely descriptive image, it has been argued that there are quite strong political undertones to it like many Romantic images. Constable himself was of a very conservative political viewpoint due to his loyalty toward the way of living he had been brought up in, making him a fierce nationalist with unwavering support of his country despite the King’s insanity and the corruption in the Church of England. It is said that the small figures of workers in the background of the image showed an anxiety about labourers in the rural society of the time, being in a period characterised by intense economic depression and agricultural riots. In the book The Dark Side of the Landscape, John Barrell suggests that the aim of this was to show peaceful labourers working productively in the countryside, but without showing the potential ruggedness that might unsettle those to view it, in order to give country workers better rapport in the eyes of high society.

In conclusion, even though certain details only apply to The Haywain, the strong sense of nationalism that characterises Constable’s landscapes and the love for his country and the area in which he grew up is evident in all his paintings. In these, the recurring theme of peaceful rural and agricultural life presents itself as much as the landscape, even in less fabricated scenes done wholly from life such as his painting Boat Building near Flatford Mill.

Bibliography:

• Clarkson, Jonathan (2010). Constable. London: Phaidon.
• Cormack, Malcom (1985). Constable. Oxford: Phaidon.
• Kroeber, Karl (1975). Romantic Landscape Vision. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.