Identifier: greatpicturesassx00sing (find matches)
Title: Great pictures, as seen and described by famous writers
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: Singleton, Esther, d. 1930, ed. and tr
Subjects: Painting
Publisher: New York : Dodd, Mead and Company
Contributing Library: Boston Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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parts of England, but hailed with delight by painters for itssimple charm, has exercised a wider influence upon modernlandscape painting than all the noble scenery of Switzerlandor the glories of Italy; for here was nurtured that last andgreatest master of that school of English landscape painting,which made the Eastern Counties famous in the annals ofart. He was so essentially English, it might be said local,in his feeling, that he never left his country, and producedhis greatest works within the narrow limits of his nativevalley; in whom love of locality was indeed the very basisof his art. Constable, for it was he, like Rembrandt, was the sonof a miller, and was born at a time when the winds andflowing waters were powers in the land, bearing a goldenharvest on their health-giving and invisible currents, turn-ing sails upon countless hill-tops, and wheels in every river— before the supplanter, steam, was even dreamed of.His earliest recollections were mingled with the busy clatter
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THE HAY WAIN 185 of wheels, and the whirr of sails, as they sped round beforethe wind, was the music of his boyhood. His father, goodman of the world as he was, holding a high opinion of thesolid comforts gained by following his own profitable call-ing, placed his son, at the age of seventeen, in charge of awindmill, hoping thereby to curb his rising enthusiasm forthe more glorious but less substantial pursuit of art. Alas !how little can we predict the effect of our actions. Thisone, framed to divert his purpose in life, was the verymeans of leading him to study more closely the ever-vary-ing beauties of the sky, with its matchless combinations ofform and colour, and all the subtle differences of atmos-phere, which in after-life formed a distinctive feature in hiswork; and, for a landscape-painter, perhaps no early train-ing could have been better. His daily occupation bybringing him continually face to face with Nature, andnecessitating a constant observance of all her changingpheno

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