II. “I can hardly write, for looking at the ‘silvery clouds,’ and skies”: Attention and Materiality in Constable’s Sky Sketches in Oil on Paper

Artists have engaged in outdoor sketching for centuries, but the practice gained momentum in Europe through the eighteenth and nineteenth.¹ Driven by a growing conviction in the intrinsic religious, moral, and aesthetic value of the natural landscape,² and a concomitant waning in the belief that artists should only record nature indirectly through academic artistic conventions,³ a growing interest developed in observing and recording nature firsthand. As outdoor sketching became increasingly common, so did studies of the sky.⁴

Although many artists engaged in sketching the sky,⁵ British painter John Constable (1776–1837) stands out as the most dedicated.⁶ The intensity of his study of the sky—estimated at nearly a hundred oil sketches produced only in 1821 and 1822—has prompted much scholarly musing into the motivations behind it.⁷ The factors that may have prompted Constable’s devoted sky studies have been comprehensively discussed in essays by Louis Hawes and Anne Lyles, both of whom stress the interrelated multiplicity of his motivations and the dangers of inflating the importance of one over any other.⁸ Constable’s broad interests and wide reading exposed him to numerous influences; poetry, and literature across meteorology, theology, and art theory, are all likely to have encouraged his “skying” (the term Constable himself used for his sky sketching).⁹ He was also very likely to have been influenced by other artists’ cloud studies that he saw and copied, such as those by Willem van de Velde the Younger (1633–1707), Claude Lorraine (1600–1682), and Alexander Cozens (1717–1786), as well as paintings by seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish landscape artists.¹⁰ The sky was of utmost importance to his landscape paintings—the “chief organ of sentiment” and the “standard of scale,” as he put it.¹¹ Therefore, it follows that Constable would have wished to paint skies, with the freedom to experiment that sketching allows.

And yet, while Constable’s known interests, motivations, and influences are vital to our understanding of his practice, they cannot provide an entirely satisfactory explanation for the sheer number of studies he produced.¹² For instance, while some of the literature he is likely to have read explicitly encouraged the sketching of skies,¹³ it cannot fully explain the gusto with which he pursued such an endeavour.¹⁴ Indeed, Constable appears to have cultivated such a strength of habit of attending to the sky—a “‘Wordsworthian’ hyper-receptiveness”¹⁵—that he occasionally appeared unable to do very much else: “I can hardly write,” he wrote to C. R. Leslie on 16 August 1833, “for looking at the ‘silvery clouds,’ and skies.”¹⁶

It is important also to acknowledge that the purpose of his skying does not appear to have been solely for the improvement of artistic technique. Indeed, scholars have noted that the skies in Constable’s finished paintings completed after his intense skying of 1821–22 are not particularly distinguishable from those he painted before.¹⁷ And unlike some of his European contemporaries who used their sky sketches directly as reference material for finished works,¹⁸ there is little evidence that Constable used his in this way.¹⁹

As such, part of the scholarly interest in Constable’s skying includes a fascination with the level of attention he devoted to something that did not directly impact his artistic technique. After all, embodied in the familiar phrase “paying attention” is the implication that attention costs us something and that we should expect something in return.²⁰ Perhaps—posit those scholars who have considered Constable’s motivations—the value of skying lay in the pleasure of the activity: “by 1822 he may have begun sketching clouds without any definite ulterior motive, and perhaps had come to look upon his studies (privately) as end products, enjoyable for themselves.”²¹

Pleasure, attention, and the conditions that relate one to the other, are themes that pervade Romantic discourse, and Constable would have found plenty on the topic in his own library.²² For instance, a central idea of Edmund Burke’s Enquiry into the sublime is the interaction of the sublime with feelings of pain and pleasure: the way in which the sublime is felt through “contemplating”—or paying attention to—“terrible” objects.²³ And indeed, Burke’s definition of the sublime in nature refers to the natural world’s capacity to induce a particular and involuntary state of attentiveness: “the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other.”²⁴ Similarly, according to William Hazlitt, an artist is someone possessing particular powers of attention—“by habit he is led to perceive all those distinctions in nature, to which other persons never pay any attention”²⁵—and through this heightened perceptive mode, an artist has a greater capacity for pleasure: “a pleasure in art which none but artists feel.”²⁶ The artist’s particular abilities to attend to, take pleasure in, and manifest in material form their object of contemplation was the mechanism by which the viewer, or reader, could, in turn, take pleasure in and make use of art—a “pleasure derived from imitation” that “opens a new field of inquiry.”²⁷

Of course, an interest in questions of pleasure and attention did not conclude with the nineteenth century; such intellectual preoccupations continued into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, albeit in different forms and with different foci. This is perhaps most apparent in the writings of various British psychoanalysts, an unsurprising finding when one considers the importance of attention and inattention to that particular discipline.²⁸ For example, there is the work of Marion Milner, which “tries to describe the body’s forms of attention, and our attention to bodily states”;²⁹ and which seeks constructive uses for such states oriented towards a creative experience, or “transitional experience,” as the term was later coined by another psychoanalyst, Donald Winnicott.³⁰ With this in mind, it is worth noting the degree to which the rediscovery of the plein air tradition coincided with the development of, and concomitant interest in, such psychoanalytical discourse.³¹ For example, Arthur Conisbee, a pioneering collector and historian of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century landscape sketches,³² drew upon the “psychoanalytic-aesthetic” theories of Adrian Stokes to propose that, even before the Romantic period, “painting from nature was felt as a pleasure in itself. . . . Indeed, a large part of that pleasure is in being taken out of oneself.”³³

Attention, and the role it might have played in the skying practices of artists such as Constable, is the focus of what follows, both its topic and its mode of inquiry. Simply put, I summarise, through the lens of attention, those materials and methods that were used in the making of sky sketches. More specifically, after outlining what is known about Constable’s skying practice as a result of analytical investigations, I recount an attempt to reconstruct something close to skying. This involved mocking-up the materials used by Constable, transporting these outdoors, and recording observed skyscapes in paint; the exercise was informed by artists’ treatises, my own examination of sky sketches attributed to Constable in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and technical studies of Constable’s materials and methods—a large proportion of which are the work of Sarah Cove, who has published extensively on this area.

Constable’s Process

Constable executed sketches in oils on paper during his intense skying period of 1821–22.³⁴ Examination and technical study of these sketches have shown that he often laminated thin sheets of paper together with glue before applying a coloured ground layer to his homemade supports.³⁵ The prepared coloured grounds were likely to have helped him to execute studies in one layer while taking advantage of an expanded range of colouring effects, such as turbid medium and simultaneous contrast.³⁶ He would generally then cut these prepared supports to sizes that fitted within the lids of his painting boxes, and would transport these, along with oil paints in vials or bladders and brushes, outdoors to sketch.³⁷ He would execute sketches rapidly, wet-in-wet and in one sitting before the scene, resting his sketches against the lid of his box.³⁸

Constable appears to have been unusual among his British contemporaries in his preference for sketching outdoors in oils on paper.³⁹ British artists tended to prefer less cumbersome monochrome methods or watercolours, and only the Welsh artist Thomas Jones (1742–1803) is known to have preceded Constable in sketching skyscapes using oils on paper.⁴⁰ This method was common in France, however, and gained momentum by the 1770s.⁴¹

Hawes notes that Constable’s 1743 edition of the English translation of Roger de Piles’s French treatise, which recommends making direct studies of the sky at different times of day and different seasons,⁴² may have influenced his decision to embark on his skying campaigns.⁴³ The same treatise may also have influenced his choice of method; about painting in oil on paper, de Piles wrote that it is “doubtless the best for drawing nature more particularly, and with greater exactness,” compared to monochrome methods, despite it being a somewhat cumbersome method requiring “several implements.”⁴⁴ On the colours of clouds, de Piles urged that they be painted by direct observation since these effects are difficult to conceive of “by physical reasons”:⁴⁵ “Who can tell, for example, why we see, in the bright part of some clouds, a fine red, when the source of the light which plays upon them, is a most lively and distinguishing yellow?”⁴⁶

De Piles appears to have been continuing a tradition of advice in painters’ manuals on the importance of observing and recording the colours of clouds; such instruction had appeared frequently in painting treatises prior to that by de Piles,⁴⁷ including as early as the sixteenth century:

The mixtures of clouds are taught by the heavens themselves. The colors of clouds should be painted according to the many different shades which may be observed daily in the firmament. Every illuminator and painter I would therefore refer to the exalted Creator of the heavens, who colors them with so many wonderful tints, so that they appear ash-colored, fire-colored, red, reddish yellow and in all sorts of mixtures. An attentive pupil must therefore always see to it that he imitates such heavenly mixtures carefully in colors. Also the distribution of the clouds spread hither and thither over the blue sky. When painting the clouds, observe and attend well” (Boltz von Rufach, 1549).⁴⁸

Beyond materials and method—colour versus monochrome, oils versus watercolour—the process of producing a sketch would have presented Constable with a series of further choices. An artist must attend, to various degrees and at various moments, to the colours and form of the subject, their materials, their technique, the sketch in production, and perhaps their own responses to all of these. For how long, then, in what manner, and to what extent should each of these elements absorb the artist? The beginnings of an answer to these questions can perhaps be found in the writing of the French artist Pierre-Henri Valenciennes (1750–1819), who sketched in oils on paper.⁴⁹ In his own treatise, published in 1800, Valenciennes was directive about where and how he thought an artist’s attention would be best placed. He recommended that etudes d’apres nature should be done quickly, with attention focused on subject; the artist should not be distracted by too many details, nor by attempting any “finish” as would be conventionally expected of a studio oil painting.⁵⁰ In addition, he advised spending a maximum of two hours on a subject, or half an hour if it was a fleeting subject such as a sunset;⁵¹ after this, the sketch would cease to be true to nature, and the artist should move on.⁵²

Constable’s sketches themselves provide some evidence that his practice was similar to that recommend by Valenciennes. The inscriptions he tended to write on the reverses of his sketches suggest that he completed his skyscapes quickly, within one hour.⁵³ Constable reduced the inherently distracting nature of oil painting by minimising tools and pigments, and by using small, lightweight, easily transportable supports prepared with a layer of colour that could contribute to the final effect of the sketch.⁵⁴ Pinholes, squashed impasto, and lumps of dried paint from the palette on Constable’s sketches⁵⁵ might suggest his attention was fully occupied by recording his subject, with none devoted to careful finish. His sketches could be considered as material records of his attention.

In preparation for re-creating Constable’s skying process, which is described in the following sections, three sky sketches in oil on paper in the Fitzwilliam Museum that are attributed to Constable, although somewhat tentatively, were examined: Sky Study, Sunset (PD.7-1961); Sky Study with Mauve Clouds (PD.8-1951); and At Hampstead Looking towards Harrow (PD79-1959).⁵⁶ Photographs and micrographs of Sky Study with a Shaft of Sunlight (PD.222-1961) by Constable were also studied, but this sketch was on loan at the time of examination.⁵⁷ For brevity these sketches will be referred to hereafter as Sunset, Mauve Clouds, At Hampstead, and Shaft of Sunlight (Figs. 1–4).

The four sketches have the appearance of having been painted rapidly and in one sitting with a stiff brush. The sky scenes are executed in one lean paint layer directly on top of a coloured ground without any discernible preparatory drawing, and in all the studies the sky and clouds are painted thinly with impasto limited to the final highlights, which are applied last of all. The clouds have been worked up wet-in-wet and are painted thinly, but opaquely. Mixtures appear to have been rapidly created on the palette, creating a marbled effect in some areas. In other areas whites, blues, pinks, and yellows have been applied in thin scumbles with colours dragged over one another and minimal blending to create masses of clouds. At Hampstead differs from the other studies in that it includes a narrow strip of landscape, but the landscape also appears to have been worked up roughly concurrently with the sky—the sky paint overlaps the horizon in some areas and the horizon has been reinforced over the sky in others. The prepared coloured grounds do much of the work towards the final effect; the ground is left to show between passages and broken brushstrokes, and the blue ground serves to provide much of the background sky in Sunset. Where covered by paint, the ground still shows through in many areas since the paint has a very particular texture that retains the brushstrokes and is thin enough to remain transparent where bristles have left furrows in the paint; this is particularly the case for Mauve Clouds, on which there is extensive use of these brush-marked layers.

The studies examined survive in good condition with no adhesion issues in paint layers, or even any discernible craquelure. There are, however, creases and restored tears in the supports. Excluding Shaft of Sunlight, the studies’ original supports are difficult to assess as the reverses are covered by non-original secondary supports. At Hampstead’s support has been laid into a wooden tray while the supports of Sunset and Mauve Clouds are laid down on paper.⁵⁸ A centimetre-wide strip has been added along the bottom edge of At Hampstead, corresponding to the green area of the foreground landscape, at a later point than the sketch’s execution.

All three of the examined sketches were found to have been created with materials and methods similar to those Constable is known to have used based on technical studies of his sketches.⁵⁹ Constable used an array of methods to depict different weather effects, including scumbled layers with varied opacities.⁶⁰ The sketches are on laminated paper supports (Fig. 5) and are painted with the same limited range of pigments typically used by Constable.⁶¹ These findings are not sufficient to confirm an attribution to Constable. Nevertheless, the sketches do seem to have been executed in the same spirit of attention to nature that Constable exercised: the sketches were executed quickly and directly, in one lean layer onto a coloured ground (Figs. 6–8); pinholes and squashed impasto are present, possibly having occurred as part of the process of painting outdoors and transporting wet sketches (Figs. 9–13); a lack of regard for finish is hinted at by dried paint and other materials caught in paint layers, and by wet paint transferred apparently accidently onto one of the sketches (Figs. 14–16). Therefore, despite the lack of a firm attribution, the sketches examined were deemed suitable and useful references while attempting a reconstruction of the materials Constable used and the process he followed.

Studio Preparation for Skying

To understand Constable’s practice, Conal Shields has proposed that it is vital to pay “close attention to Constable’s handling” as it provides “direct indicators of what was passing through the artist’s mind, what was emotionally significant.”⁶² But simply observing the results of an artist’s handling is not the only route to such understanding. Indeed, Constable himself may well have urged a more practical mode of investigation: for example, he sought to copy Claude rather than just observe his paintings, because “doing it [would] almost bring [him] into communion with Claude himself.”⁶³ It was in the spirit of such a mode of inquiry that I tried to reconstruct something close to what Constable called “skying.” The exercise did not aim to copy Constable’s work, nor did I aim to paint like Constable, but Constable’s materials and processes were emulated closely in order to see whether an experience of these could throw light on the quality and nature of Constable’s attention.

The first step was to prepare some laminated supports. Pasting together full sheets of thin paper and preparing them with grounds before cutting, as Constable did, would have been the most efficient way to prepare multiple laminated supports at once,⁶⁴ but in the interest of experimenting with different combinations, I cut large paper sheets to the size I wished to use before laminating them together in a variety of combinations, and with various kinds of size and coloured grounds. I used a range of papers of differing weights, qualities, and surfaces in order to imitate the sort of selection processes an artist of the early nineteenth century may have carried out (albeit with modern equivalents of papers).⁶⁵ Until papers were produced specifically for oil painting in the mid-nineteenth century,⁶⁶ artists had to use papers manufactured for other purposes.⁶⁷ Constable used a great range of papers for oil sketching, frequently including low-quality papers, apparently often whatever happened to be at hand;⁶⁸ consistency, quality, and colour may not have mattered to him for informal sketches, especially once hidden by pigmented grounds and paint layers.⁶⁹

I created a range of pasteboards of differing compositions and ply using different papers, and using the various glues that would have been available to Constable: animal glue, gelatine glue, starch paste, or vegetable gum.⁷⁰ There is little information in artists’ manuals about preparing paper supports for oils,⁷¹ but artists may have adapted instructions for other types of painting, such as gouache.⁷² Constant de Massoul, for example, recommended pasting paper onto a wooden board for gouache using starch or flour paste mixed with hide glue.⁷³ The single sheets and prepared laminates were then sized in a number of different ways—with rabbit-skin glue, gelatine, starch paste, or isinglass—with some left unsized (Fig. 17). An artist working on paper or card in the eighteenth or nineteenth century may have sized their paper supports with various kinds of glue before applying a ground layer to stop the support from being excessively absorbent. Alternatively, sizing by the artist may not have been necessary if papers in the laminate had already been heavily sized by the manufacturer.⁷⁴

The final step in preparing the kinds of mocked-up supports Constable used was to apply various colours of grounds in different binding mediums to the prepared papers and paper laminates (Fig. 18). I prepared grounds matching those that have been identified on Constable’s sky sketches⁷⁵—pinks, buffs, browns, and blues—two of which (blue and pink) can also be found on the sky sketches in the Fitzwilliam’s collection.⁷⁶ I applied some grounds bound in oil and some in glue to see how they compared. Analysis has suggested that Constable switched from using aqueous grounds to oil grounds in the 1820s, but it has remained unclear why he would have made this change to his practice.⁷⁷ I found that the glue-bound grounds dried much faster, but the drying time of the ground may not have mattered to an artist preparing a batch of supports well in advance of a sketching trip. Oil grounds were best applied as pigment-rich, lean mixtures; any excess oil medium was not absorbed by the support and sat on top of the ground as a shiny, extremely slow-drying layer. In fact, it was surprising to find how little oil all the papers could absorb, regardless of how they were sized.

The same method of brush application was used on all the mock-ups; however, some ground layers were streaky, and others laid on smoothly with no brushmarks (Fig. 19). The streakiness of the grounds depended on the type of paper and size to which the grounds were applied. The grounds that dried with no brushstrokes were applied onto the lightly sized, slightly absorbent supports. Streaky grounds resulted when the same ground was applied to heavily sized papers, especially those that had been tub sized rather than internally sized by the manufacturer.⁷⁸ The streakiness of Constable’s grounds has been found to vary: sometimes they are thin and settled into the texture of the paper fibres, giving a slightly mottled effect that is similar to those found on the Fitzwilliam’s sketches; sometimes they are streaky or retain brushstrokes as can be seen, for example, in Cloud Study: Stratocumulus Cloud (Yale Center for British Art, B1981.25.155). As the ground paint layer tends to include lead white and barium, the streakiness of the ground is apparent in X-radiographs (Figs. 20, 21). Cove has suggested that this difference indicates his altering the medium he used for ground layers,⁷⁹ but from these experiments, it seems that it might also be related to the variety of kinds of supports Constable made use of.

Paints were prepared by grinding pigments into oil with a muller and slab, and I tested out various mediums in the studio. Presumably a fast-drying medium would be advantageous to the plein-air sketcher, as, for instance, Constable’s methods required his sketches to be touch dry within an hour so that he could pack and transport them.⁸⁰ While for his earliest sketches Constable employed linseed and walnut oil,⁸¹ he began to use faster-drying heat-bodied oil for dark areas,⁸² and a linseed oil and egg mixture from 1811 or 1812.⁸³ Cove’s tests of oil-egg binders found them to be touch dry within an hour;⁸⁴ I found that while using faster-drying mediums (such as lead oil or egg-oil mixtures) did help paint dry a little faster than slower-drying mediums (such as walnut oil), adjusting the proportions of pigment to oil seemed to have a greater effect on drying. An extremely leanly bound paint was necessary to approach a conveniently fast drying time with even the faster-drying mediums.⁸⁵ This may explain why samples taken from the Fitzwilliam sketches showed leanly bound paint layers, and Constable’s oil sketches that remain unvarnished tend to have a lean, chalky appearance.⁸⁶ While egg in combination with oil aided drying, its downside was a tendency to mould, necessitating more time spent preparing fresh paint more frequently. For this reason, I opted for pigments bound in linseed oil for my own sky sketching.

Pigments bound very leanly in oil could effectively re-create the sort of range of effects seen on Constable’s sky sketches, and on the Fitzwilliam’s sky studies—from very thin, smooth layers to stiff, crisp impasto highlights. However, it was difficult to re-create the translucency of some of the layers while using a paint that remained lean without adding significant amounts of translucent extenders to pigment mixtures.⁸⁷ Adding significant amounts of barium sulfate and chalk to the paint—up to 50%—and using a stiff brush, made it possible to create the effects observed in Constable’s sketches where thin layers of paint retain brushmarks and allow the ground layer to show beneath (Figs. 22–24). It is perhaps interesting to note that barium and calcium are detectable within paint layers of the Fitzwilliam sketches, and Constable’s paints are found to frequently contain considerable amounts of translucent extenders.⁸⁸ It has been suggested that he used these to manipulate the transparency of his paints.⁸⁹ Extenders may have helped him to achieve translucent glaze-like effects without using traditional glazing techniques, which dry slowly due to being medium-rich. Not only did the extenders add translucency to paints, but they also allowed lower layers to show through by way of the consistency they lent to paint.

Skying

I used the prepared supports and paints to re-create the process of sky sketching: I sketched some skyscapes out of a window, as Constable is known to have done occasionally,⁹⁰ and completed a number of others outdoors. De Piles describes plein-air sketchers taking with them “a flat box, which commodiously held their pallet, pencils, oil, and colours,”⁹¹ so I used something similar, carrying the minimum number of tools and pigments needed. I also used the lid of the box to support my sketches while painting, as Constable described himself doing in a letter to John Fisher on 5 January 1825: “they were done in the lid of my box on my knees as usual.”⁹² While sketching from a window of a controlled studio environment, I used the pigments and extenders Constable is known to have used for his own sketches: lead white, Prussian blue, Naples yellow, lakes, carbon black, vermilion, chalk, and barium sulfate.⁹³ For health and safety reasons, I substituted the palette with close equivalents for sketching outdoors in public areas—Prussian blue, titanium white, chrome yellow, yellow ochre, red and yellow lakes, carbon black, iron oxide red, barium sulfate, and chalk—but still prepared the paints by grinding the pigments in oil by hand.⁹⁴ I also used a tube of Gamblin lead-white replacement,⁹⁵ finding that it effectively re-created the viscosity of lead-white oil paint, and was therefore a better substitution than hand-prepared titanium white in oil. Painting indoors was convenient, as the number of tools was unrestricted, but painting outdoors had the pleasing advantage of allowing me to freely select which portion of sky to paint, unrestricted and undictated by a window frame.

Outdoors, I found it possible to sketch with very few implements and materials. One brush, either round or flat, was sufficient to create a range of marks, and very small amounts of paint were needed for each sketch. It was useful to examine the Fitzwilliam sketches, and attempt to re-create the kinds of effects seen on them in preparation for my own skying, as it quickly led to an appreciation of how little paint was used to create such images, and how precisely placed each brushstroke was without any working over; when I applied multiple brushstrokes on top of each other, the effect became less and less like those observed. When sketching in this way, I found that batches of prepared paint stored in glass vials or in mock polyethylene “bladders” lasted for weeks,⁹⁶ so although preparing them from powder was time-consuming, the effort did not need to be repeated.

All of the laminated papers and single sheets that had been prepared proved perfectly suitable to paint on with oils. However, the glue-bound grounds felt different to paint on compared to the oil-bound grounds. Paint was difficult to brush over the surface of the glue grounds, until I learned to thin them sufficiently with diluent and became more used to the fact that colours changed more as they “sank” and dried on the glue grounds. Papers with gelatine-bound grounds caused oil to spread out from brushmarks creating unpleasant-looking tide marks. However, once I discarded these particular supports and became more experienced with the glue grounds, I could begin to make use of their inherent advantages. For instance, as the paints dried more quickly over them, it was possible to layer brushstrokes over the top and, if sufficient extenders were added to upper layers, to play with layering effects. This advantage is hinted at by de Piles when he discusses painters using oils on paper: “the colours sinking, they could put colour on colour, tho’ different from each other.”⁹⁷

The pre-coloured grounds alleviated some of the challenges of painting skyscapes at necessary speed. I found the blue grounds particularly helpful towards sketching skyscapes quickly, with no need to spend time filling in the sky (video 1). However, I found it particularly difficult on the pink, brown, and buff grounds to re-create the obvious difference between sky and cloud seen in reality (video 2). No areas of my sketches seemed to re-create anywhere near the luminosity of the sky, or subtle gradations of shade in the clouds. With this in mind, it was certainly reassuring to be reminded that Constable described all great landscape masters as doomed to consider their

best efforts but as experiments, and perhaps as experiments that had failed when compared with their hopes, their wishes, and with what they saw in nature. When we speak of the perfection of art, we must recollect what the materials are with which a painter contends with nature. For the light of the sun he has but patent yellow and white lead—for the darkest shade, umber or soot.⁹⁸

On the topic of experimentation, it is worth noting that although testing a range of papers, sizing glues, and grounds was useful for seeing how they compared, each support selected from the range I had prepared required some getting used to while having to experiment also with pigment mixtures, paint thickness, and brush pressure to try to capture the skyscape before me. It has been pointed out with regard to landscape sketches of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that the informality of materials invited experimentation.⁹⁹ Nevertheless, some sort of baseline consistency in method, some controls in these experiments, seemed necessary.

With this in mind, it is perhaps unsurprising that the kinds of paper surfaces artists used have been found to be fairly consistent, where their entire oeuvres of works on paper have been studied, despite the fact that they may have used a range of papers.¹⁰⁰ Artists in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries would have found difficulty in repeatedly sourcing the same type of paper, and it is unlikely that artists at the turn of the eighteenth century would have been able to select a consistent paper by its name; the terminology of board types and paper finishes was very blurred.¹⁰¹ Also, local and regional variations in the preparation of rags for papermaking, and in papermaking practice, meant that a rich variety of qualities of papers and boards was always available to artists; for example, a “Not” (meaning not hot-pressed) surface from one mill might look like a “rough” surface from another.¹⁰² However, through experience working with a range of papers, an artist probably came to understand a paper’s capabilities and to select a consistent surface through handling it.¹⁰³

Beyond the material and methodological challenges, the actual act of painting the sky was extremely challenging; knowing where to look and what to focus on when trying to capture the unbounded space of constantly changing light, colour, and cloud in static, two-dimensional, material form was remarkably hard. Perhaps this should not have been surprising, given that for centuries experienced artists have declared the subject a demanding one.¹⁰⁴ To begin with, I struggled to spend more than twenty minutes on my sky sketches; this was not because I was satisfied with my sketch after that time, but because the clouds I had set out to paint had already changed, and I did not have the necessary visual memory or imagination to complete what I had set out to do.

Often, even before the clouds substantively moved or morphed, by concentrating for a moment on mixing and diluting my paints, I “lost my place” in the expanse of sky and forgot which portion of it I had set out to paint in the first place. Moreover, it was easy to fall into the tendency to try to “freeze” the skyscape onto paper, and then become frustrated when that skyscape inevitably changed. Accordingly, adaptation and flexibility were crucial: Constable seems to have had this in mind when he noted that “it is the business of a painter not to contend with nature . . . but to make something out of nothing.”¹⁰⁵ In all likelihood, as Cove has pointed out, having observed clouds forming and changing so often, Constable may have been able to continue to add detail from memory, from an experience of what “looked right,” and to anticipate the movement and development of the scene before him.¹⁰⁶ In contrast, my first attempts at sketches were completed in a state of heightened panic induced by the speed with which clouds move and the comparative slowness of my ability to transcribe them in some sort of representation in paint (video 3).

As a result, I found much of my attention to be overly absorbed by the handling of the materials and by focusing almost too closely on the clouds. In particular, it was easy to find myself suddenly overfocusing on a single aspect of the sky—for instance, a certain shade or shadow—before panicking to catch up with the rest of the scene and make sense of it, thereby losing my bearings with regard to the paint, the painting, and the skyscape. Michael Polanyi’s observation that our conception of a comprehensive entity can be destroyed by over-scrutinising its particulars—“an unbridled lucidity can destroy our understanding of complex matters”¹⁰⁷—appears to describe my experience in this regard. Trying to pay attention to the clouds as I was painting led to a sort of strained overfocus, certainly not the calm manner in which Joshua Reynolds envisaged Constable painting outdoors—“in a state of heightened consciousness, rapt in a species of hypnotic vision.”¹⁰⁸ Simply put, the more I sought to concentrate, the more distracted I was (video 4).

Over time, however, through practice and repetition, the situation improved. I gravitated towards the supports I found easiest to use and gradually found that I needed to expend less conscious effort while mixing and applying the paints. I became better able to respond to the properties of the support, to modulate the pressure of the brush and the viscosity and opacity of the paint, and to predict their effects and the way the tones and texture would appear upon drying. In this regard, some degree of tacit knowledge was developed, a sensory knowledge that went beyond conscious intention. Furthermore, I started to realise the benefits of what can be described, following Milner, as “wide-angled attention”:¹⁰⁹ a more receptive and softer focus on the sky and the sketch in progress. To cultivate such a form of attention took practice and appeared to both generate and depend upon developing more confident handling of the sketching materials.

To use slightly different language, then: rather than focus on the sky, it was important to develop a certain degree of sympathy with it. According to Lars Spuybroek, who draws on the work of the American Pragmatist William James, sympathy is a practice requiring a form of knowledge between intelligence and instinct; a non-discursive, nonanalytical intelligence acquired from skilled work,¹¹⁰ such as, we might say, sketching. This language certainly resonates with wider Romantic thought: to take one notable example, Johann von Goethe (1749–1832) is said to have believed in the capacity of natural phenomena to respond to human feeling, which became known as “the objective correlative.”¹¹¹ Relevant for the enquiry here is the fact that Carl Gustave Carus (1789–1869)—scientist, artist, and acquaintance of Goethe—felt the sky the primary vehicle for the objective correlative;¹¹² the particular nature of clouds, which lack a precise definition, means that they are “felt before they are seen or understood.”¹¹³

With the development of this sympathy, the process of sky sketching became increasingly pleasurable—as we can suspect a painter like Constable may have found it. The more I practiced attending to the sky, the more I noticed the sky around me, both in the act of sketching, and beyond that act as well. The problem of capturing it on paper was both rewarding and challenging enough to hold my interest; sketching it with any success was always just sufficiently out of reach, which gave the practice a certain addictiveness. Moreover, the frustrations and satisfactions of the increased congruence between my aims, my skill in handling the painting materials, and the sky itself—leading towards that state of all-encompassing “wide-angled” attention¹¹⁴—provided a potential link to understanding why it is possible to find pleasure in such an activity.

Milner wrote of the “feeling of delight” that comes from the dissolution of separation between subject and object as a result of a particular state of attention,¹¹⁵ and this chimes with my experience of sky sketching. Given that this process also appears to rely on, and generate, the aforementioned tacit knowledge, it appears worth noting Hazlitt’s proposal that “knowledge is pleasure as well as power.”¹¹⁶ Milner perhaps took this same suggestion just a little further in stating that the knowledge gained through one’s own experience is the sort that is truly needed if one is to “live at all, in any real sense.”¹¹⁷

Conclusion

This article has explored the benefits of combining an analytical approach with an experiential one. Using the language of attention, the first section outlined the materials and methods used in Constable’s skying. The second and third sections then traced the process of reconstructing the broader activity of skying. Re-creating and experiencing the approximate process of sky sketching was beneficial in revealing Constable’s otherwise hidden knowledge. In particular, the experience enabled further appreciation for the skill an artist like Constable must have had in handling a non-standardised range of papers, whose differing qualities affect the characteristics of ground layers and the handling of the paint. Moreover, such an activity also seemed valuable to begin to experience and understand the qualities of attention necessary for sky sketching, and the possible relationships between attention and pleasure. This sensory method of exploration seems particularly apt when considering artworks produced in, and inspired by, an age that put such value on the senses, feeling, and emotion as means of insight.¹¹⁸

Accordingly, attention and pleasure have been this article’s subject and its method. It has sought to build upon and extend Shields’s proposal that it is vital to pay “close attention to Constable’s handling”¹¹⁹ by paying attention to what a painter like Constable might have paid attention to. It has explored the extent to which it is possible to discuss the “materiality” of attention and pleasure. In this regard, therefore, and somewhat like a sky sketch, it is both a record of an experiment and a type of experiment itself.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to warmly thank Adèle Wright and Spike Bucklow (University of Cambridge) for feedback on drafts; Sarah Cove for very helpful advice on reconstructions and information about Constable’s materials; Richard Farleigh (University of Cambridge) for his kind advice on examining the Fitzwilliam Museum sky sketches; Chris Titmus for advice on photography and for taking X-radiographs; Lucy Wrapson and Iris Buisman (University of Cambridge) for conducting the SEM-EDX analysis on cross-section samples; Nicholas Robbins (University College London) for useful suggestions; and Jane Munro and colleagues at the Fitzwilliam Museum for allowing me to examine the sky sketches from the collection. I am also very grateful to the Materia editorial team and two anonymous reviewers for their feedback on this article.

Author Bio

Rowan Frame is a conservator at Julia Nagle Conservation Ltd. She gained her PGDip in the conservation of easel paintings at the Hamilton Kerr Institute, University of Cambridge, UK.

Image Notes

All photographs, except for X-radiographs, of Mauve Clouds, Sunset and At Hampstead were taken by the author and are © Hamilton Kerr Institute, reproduction by permission of the Syndics of The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Micrographs of Shaft of Sunlight were taken by Adèle Wright and are © Hamilton Kerr Institute, reproduction by permission of the Syndics of The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. All other photographs of Shaft of Sunlight, and X-radiographs of Mauve Clouds, Sunset and At Hampstead, were taken by Chris Titmus and are © Hamilton Kerr Institute, reproduction by permission of the Syndics of The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Mauve Clouds, Sunset, At Hampstead, and Shaft of Sunlight are in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Digital images of reconstructions were taken by the author. Digital images of Cloud Study: Stratocumulus Cloud are downloadable from the Yale Center for British Art website and, according to the website information, are free to use without permission providing acknowledgement to the Center is made.

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1. For an account of early landscapes made from direct observation, see Robert Felfe, “Naer het leven: Between Image-Generating Techniques and Aesthetic Mediation,” in Ad Vivum? Visual Materials and the Vocabulary of Life-Likeness in Europe before 1800, ed. Thomas Balfe, Joanna Woodall, and Clause Zittel (Boston: Brill, 2019), 58–59. For the growing momentum of outdoor sketching in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, see Asher Ethan Miller, “The Path of Nature: French Paintings from the Wheelock Whitney Collection 1785–1850,” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 70, no. 3 (Winter 2013): 8. ↩︎

2. Peter Galassi, Before Photography: Painting and the Invention of Photography (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1981), 21. ↩︎

3. Paula Rea Radisich, “Eighteenth-Century Plein-Air Painting and the Sketches of Pierre Henri de Valenciennes,” Art Bulletin 64, no. 1 (1982): 98. ↩︎

4. John Gage, “Clouds over Europe,” in Constable’s Clouds: Paintings and Cloud Studies by John Constable, ed. Edward Morris (Edinburgh: National Galleries Scotland and National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, 2000), 128. ↩︎

5. See Gage, 132–33; Ger Luijten, “Skies and Effects,” in True to Nature: Open-Air Painting in Europe, 1780–1870, ed. Luitjen, Mary Morton, and Jane Munro (London: Paul Holberton, 2020), 161, 164; and Miller, “Path of Nature,” 20. ↩︎

6. Louis Hawes, “Constable’s Sky Sketches,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 32 (1969): 344. ↩︎

7. For an estimate of the number of oil sketches of skies completed by Constable, see Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable (London: Tate Gallery, 1991), 228. Consideration of Constable’s motivations for sky sketching is found in, for example, Hawes, “Constable’s Sky Sketches”; Anne Lyles, “‘The glorious pageantry of heaven’: An Assessment of the Motives behind Constable’s ‘Skying,’” in Constables Skies, ed. Frederic Bancroft (New York: Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, 2004), 29–56; John E. Thornes, “Constable’s Meteorological Understanding and His Painting of Skies,” in Morris, Constable’s Clouds, 151–60; Mark Evans, Constable’s Skies: Paintings and Sketches by John Constable (London: V&A Publishing, 2018), 11; and Conal Shields, “Why Skies?,” in Bancroft, Constable’s Skies, 111. ↩︎

8. Hawes, “Constable’s Sky Sketches,” 29–56; Lyles, “‘Glorious pageantry,’” 29–56. ↩︎

9. For discussions of Constable’s engagement with literature and theory, see Hawes, “Constable’s Sky Sketches,” 361; and Leslie Parris, Ian Fleming-Williams, and Conal Shields, eds., John Constable: Further Documents and Correspondence (London: Tate and Suffolk Records Society, 1975), 25. It could be inferred that poetry influenced Constable’s sky sketching as he quoted from Wordsworth’s 1811 poem—which includes the lines “Praised be the Art whose subtile power could stay / Yon cloud, and fix it in that glorious shape”—twice in the introduction to his 1833 book of mezzotints English Landscape (see Hawes, “Constable’s Sky Sketches,” 351). Constable also copied out lines from The Farmer’s Boy (1800) by Robert Bloomfield, which includes the lines “There views the white-rob’d clouds in clusters driven / And all the glorious pageantry of Heaven” (see Lyles, “‘Glorious pageantry,’” 47). For discussions of Constable’s interest in meteorology, see Hawes, “Constable’s Sky Sketches,” 344–46; Thornes, “Constable’s Meteorological Understanding”; Lyles, “‘Glorious pageantry,’” 43; and Evans, Constable’s Skies, 11. Constable cited a number of passages from theologians in his lectures on landscape in 1836, and was familiar with literature such as Natural Theology by William Paley that expounded the view that the divine creator’s presence could be found through close scrutiny of nature (see Lyles, “‘Glorious pageantry,’” 47–48). “I have done a good deal of skying” (Constable to John Fisher, 23 October 1821, in Ronald Brymer Beckett, John Constable’s Correspondence, vol. 6, The Fishers (Ipswich: Suffolk Records Society, 1968), 76). ↩︎

10. In a letter to his friend John Fisher, Constable wrote of his admiration for Claude and Cozens: “There is some hope of the Academy’s getting a Claude from Mr. Angerstein’s, the large and magnificent marine picture, . . . though I can ill afford it, I will make a copy of the same size. A study would only be of value to myself, the other will be property to my children, and a great delight to me. The very doing it will almost bring me into communion with Claude himself. . . . In the room where I am writing, there are hanging up two beautiful small drawings by Cozens; one, a wood, close, and very solemn; the other, a view from Vesuvius, looking over Portici, very lovely. I borrowed them from my neighbour, Mr. Woodburn. Cozens was all poetry, and your drawing is a lovely specimen.” Constable to Fisher, August 4, 1821, in Charles Robert Leslie, Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, Esq. R.A. Composed Chiefly of his Letters, 2nd ed. (1845; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 89. According to Hawes (“Constable’s Sky Sketches,” 349, 349n16), Constable made sketches after Van der Velde the Younger and copied Alexander Cozens’s series of engraved skies published in his treatise A New Method of Assisting the Invention in Drawing Original Compositions of Landscape. Constable visited Sir George Beaumont’s collection, from which he studied several Dutch and Flemish paintings. See Sarah Cove, “Constable’s Oil Painting Materials and Techniques,” in Constable (London: Tate Gallery, 1991), 494) ↩︎

11. In an often-quoted letter to John Fisher, Constable wrote: “It will be difficult to name a class of Landscape, in which the sky is not the ‘key note,’ the standard of ‘Scale,’ and the chief ‘Organ of sentiment.’ . . . The sky is the ‘source of light’ in nature—and governs every thing” (21 October 1821, in Ronald Brymer Beckett, John Constable’s Correspondence, vol. 1, The Family at East Bergholt, 1807–1837 (London: Historical Manuscripts Commission, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1962), 77). ↩︎

12. Regarding Constable’s sky-painting, Shields (“Why Skies?,” 111) proposes that “the issue of just what motivated, and what in the end justified, such obsessive engagement with a pursuit which his English contemporaries, if they had any inclination that way, found minimally interesting and marginally useful, has yet to be examined, let alone explained.” ↩︎

13. For example, as Hawes (“Constable’s Sky Sketches,” 361–62) and Evans (Constable’s Skies, 16) note, William Gilpin’s Three Essays on Picturesque Landscape of 1792 includes a poem that mentions Willem van de Velde the Younger’s (1633–1707) “skoying” (van de Velde’s habit of making cloud studies in chalk from a boat on the Thames). William Gilpin, Three essays on picturesque beauty; on picturesque travel; and on sketching landscape: to which is added a poem, on landscape painting (London: R. Blamire, 1792). Hawes (“Constable’s Sky Sketches,” 361–62) notes that Gilpin’s text was widely read and Constable’s term “skying” is so close to “skoying” that it seems likely that Constable was aware of this text. Roger de Piles recommends making direct studies of the sky at different times of day and different seasons; The Principles of Painting, Translated ‘by a painter’ (London: J. Osborn, 1743), 129. Constable owned a 1743 edition of the English translation of de Piles’s treatise; Parris, Fleming-Williams, and Shields, John Constable, 34. ↩︎

14. Hawes, “Constable’s Sky Sketches,” 362. ↩︎

15. Hawes, 364. ↩︎

16. Ronald Brymer Beckett, John Constable’s Correspondence, vol. 3, The Correspondence with C. R. Leslie (Ipswich: Suffolk Records Society, 1965), 106. ↩︎

17. Graham Reynolds, “Constable’s Skies,” in Bancroft, Constable’s Skies, 25. See also Lyles, “‘Glorious pageantry,’” 36; and Hawes, “Constable’s Sky Sketches,” 360. ↩︎

18. See Michael Clarke, “The Bigger Picture: Landscape Sketches and ‘Finished’ Tableaux,” in Luitjen, Morton, and Monroe, True to Nature, 24, 27; and Miller, “Path of Nature,” 20. Outdoor sketches were not normally intended for sale or exhibition, but they formed an important private resource for many artists: Simon Denis, for example, categorised his various studies of nature into “skies,” “rocks,” etc., presumably for easier reference in the studio; and contemporary accounts of Johan Christian Dahl’s (1788–1857) working methods describe Dahl spreading his oil sketches on the floor of his studio as he composed his finished pictures; Miller, “Path of Nature,” 20. ↩︎

19. Hawes (“Constable’s Sky Sketches,” 360) and Reynolds (“Constable’s Skies,” 22) point out that none of the skies in Constable’s studio landscapes visibly derive from any of his sky sketches. It should be noted, however, that they still may have provided general inspiration and practice. ↩︎

20. Adam Phillips, Attention Seeking (London: Penguin Random House, 2019), 91. ↩︎

21. Hawes, “Constable’s Sky Sketches,” 360. See also the following: Thornes, “Constable’s Meteorological Understanding,” 156: “Constable was genuinely interested in and fascinated by his ‘skying.’ The ‘pure sky’ studies, as opposed to the ‘sky and landscape’ studies, made in both 1821 and 1822 show a love of the open air and skies for their own sake.” Freda Constable, “The Man of Clouds,” in Bancroft, Constable’s Skies, 16: “Perhaps [the sky studies] were to him a valuable resource of memorable painting battles won and pleasure gained.” Lyles, “‘Glorious pageantry,’” 50: “There is always the possibility that, like the rest of his nature studies, the clouds were painted, as one author has put it, ‘purely out of sheer fascination with such phenomena’—in other words, as ends in themselves. And when all is said and done, this is surely how to appreciate them.” ↩︎

22. A list of books in Constable’s library is published in Parris, Fleming-Williams, and Shields, John Constable, 25–53, and this includes Burke’s Enquiry and works by Hazlitt. Perhaps demonstrating how mainstream these intellectual preoccupations had become by the end of the eighteenth century, Constance de Massoul opens his handbook on painting—also found in Constable’s library (see Parris, Fleming-Williams, and Shields, 33)—with the lines, “Painting, by the pleasure it conveys to our mind, through the medium of sight, strikes the soul by the help of the senses.” M. Constant de Massoul, A treatise of the art of painting and the composition of colours containing instructions for all the various processes of painting; together with observations upon the qualities and ingredients of colours. Translated from the French of M. Constant de Massoul (London: printed by the author, 1797), 11. ↩︎

23. Edmund Burke, A philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful: with an introductory discourse concerning taste; and several other additions (1759; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 83. ↩︎

24. Burke, 95. ↩︎

25. William Hazlitt, “On Imitation,” in Romantic Critical Essays, ed. D. Bromwich (1817; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 93. ↩︎

26. Hazlitt, 95. ↩︎

27. Hazlitt, 92. ↩︎

28. Phillips, Attention Seeking, 80. ↩︎

29. Adam Phillips, introduction to Marion Milner*, The Hands of the Living God* (1969; New York: Routledge, 2011), xxxi. ↩︎

30. David Russell, “Tact in Psychoanalysis: Marion Milner,” in Tact: Aesthetic Liberalism and the Essay Form in Nineteenth Century Britain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 11. ↩︎

31. For an account of art historical interest in outdoor painting, see the introduction to Morton, Munro, and Luitjen, True to Nature,” 11. ↩︎

32. See Morton, Munro, and Luitjen, 11, for Conisbee’s role in the “art historical rediscovery of the plein air tradition.” ↩︎

33. Conisbee cites Adrian Stokes, “On Being Taken out of Oneself,” in A Game That Must Be Lost: Collected Papers by Adrian Stokes (Chatham: W&J Mackay, 1973), 80–95, in “Pre-Romantic Plein-Air Painting,” Art History, 2, no. 4 (1979): 423. Notably, the bibliography of Marion Milner, On Not Being Able to Paint, 2nd ed. (Melbourne: William Heinemann, 1957), includes several of Stokes’s essays. ↩︎

34. Sarah Cove, “‘Very Great Difficulty in Composition and Execution’: The Materials and Techniques of Constable’s Cloud and Sky Studies of the 1820s,” in Bancroft, Constable’s Skies, 123–52. ↩︎

35. Cove, “‘Very Great Difficulty,” 124. ↩︎

36. If a very thin, translucent white or light-coloured paint is applied over a dark ground colour, it will appear blue or cool grey even if it contains no blue pigment. This is known as the turbid medium effect. The grounds would have allowed Constable to take advantage of this effect and produce a much expanded range of blues and greys than would be possible by mixing pigments alone. Simultaneous contrast refers to the visual effect achieved when two colours—contrasting colours in particular—are placed adjacent to one another. Constable’s reddish or pink grounds, when left to show through between brushstrokes of blue sky paint, make the blue appear brighter and more intense (Cove, “‘Very Great Difficulty,” 127). ↩︎

37. Cove, “‘Very Great Difficulty,” 124. ↩︎

38. Cove, “Constable’s Oil Painting Materials,” 510, 514. ↩︎

39. Anne Lyles, “‘That immense canopy’: Studies of Sky and Cloud by British Artists, c. 1770–1860,” in Morris, Constable’s Clouds, 150. ↩︎

40. Lyles, “‘That immense canopy,’” 150. ↩︎

41. For example, Pierre-Henri Valenciennes (1750–1819) sketched in oils on paper (Clarke, “Bigger Picture,” 24), as did Jules Coignet (1798–1860), Alexander-Hyacinthe Dunouy (1757–1841), François-Marius Granet (1775–1849), François-Edouard Picot (1786–1868), Paul Flandrin (1811–1902), Charles Rémond (1795–1875), André Giroux (1801–1879), and Camille Corot (1796–1875); see Miller, “Path of Nature,” 4–43. ↩︎

42. Piles, Principles of Painting, 129. ↩︎

43. Hawes, “Constable’s Sky Sketches,” 361–62. ↩︎

44. Quoted in Hawes, 150. ↩︎

45. Piles, Principles of Painting, 129. ↩︎

46. Piles, 129. ↩︎

47. Ank C. Esmeijer, “Cloudscapes in Theory and Practice,” Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 9, no. 3 (1977): 123–48. ↩︎

48. Translated in Esmeijer, “Cloudscapes,” 126n5. ↩︎

49. Clarke, “Bigger Picture,” 24. ↩︎

50. Miller, “Path of Nature,” 9. ↩︎

51. Miller, 24. ↩︎

52. Luijten, “Skies and Effects,” 154. ↩︎

53. Cove, “Constable’s Oil Painting,” 515. ↩︎

54. Cove, “‘Very Great Difficulty,’” 123–52. ↩︎

55. Pinholes and flattened impasto observed on Constable’s sky sketches are described in Mark Evans, Nicola Costaras, and Clare Richardson, “Constable’s Sketches: Technical Observations,” in John Constable: Oil Sketches from the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: V&A Publishing, 2011), 145–6. ↩︎

56. Graham Reynolds comments that if Sunset is genuine its relatively small size may justify dating it 1821 rather than 1822 (The Later Paintings and Drawings of John Constable [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984], no. 21.125, pl. 328); that Mauve Clouds has to be “regarded as dubiously by John Constable” (no. 21.126, pl. 329); and that although the provenance of At Hampstead can be traced back to the family, the painting of the sky with short dabby strokes and the lack of resolution in the landscape strip give rise to substantial doubts about its attribution (no. 22.52, pl. 375). Museum records suggest an alternative attribution for Sunset and Mauve Clouds as “probably by” John Constable’s son, Lionel Constable (1828–1887). See Fitzwilliam Museum, Sky Study, Sunset: PD.7-1951, https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/826[https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/826](https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/826); Sky Study with Mauve Clouds: PD.8-1951, https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/827[https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/827](https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/827); and At Hampstead, Looking towards Harrow: PD.79-1959, https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/829[https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/829](https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/829) (accessed 12 March 2021). Lionel Constable’s works are frequently confused with his father’s. Sarah Cove, “Fit for Purpose: 30 Years of the Constable Research Project,” in Studying the European Visual Arts, 1800–1850: Paintings, Sculpture, Interiors and Art on Paper, CATS Proceedings III, ed. Joyce H. Townsend and Abbie Vandivere (London: Archetype Ltd, 2016), 95. ↩︎

57. Sky Study with a Shaft of Sunlight: PD.222-1961, https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/830[https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/830](https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/830)(accessed 12 March 2021). ↩︎

58. Some plein-air sketches are known to have been lined by the artist, or by the artist’s colourman at the artist’s request, for stability; the French colourman M. Haro is known to have mounted works on paper onto card for artists. Ann Hoenigswald, “Making Their Mark: The Handling of Paint in Plein Air Sketches,” in Luitjen, Morton, and Monroe, True to Nature), 31–42. Clarke (“Bigger Picture,” 24) notes that Valenciennes marouflaged his own oil sketches on paper onto canvas to preserve them for use as reference in the studio.

    The Fitzwilliam’s studies all have previously repaired tears, suggesting that they were mounted sometime after execution, and following the repair of tears. ↩︎

59. Cove, “‘Very Great Difficulty,’” 123–52; Cove, “Constable’s Oil Painting,” 510, 514. ↩︎

60. Cove, “Constable’s Oil Painting,” 510, 514. ↩︎

61. Pigments were analysed with the aid of scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive X-ray (SEM-EDX) analysis of cross-section samples in 2021 by Lucy Wrapson and and Iris Buisman, and using ultraviolet fluorescence imaging and polarised light microscopy (PLM) of sample pigment dispersions in 2021 by this author. SEM-EDX analysis indicated that Mauve Clouds, Sunset, and At Hampstead appear to have been painted using a similar, limited range of pigments: predominantly lead white, Prussian blue, red lakes, a carbon black, and some extenders (the pigments of Shaft of Sunlight were not analysed). Some areas of cloud in Mauve Clouds have a characteristic fluorescence in UV light indicative of madder lake pigment. PLM indicated that pale yellow highlights in the studies contain Naples yellow while the pinks in Sunset appear to contain vermilion and Naples yellow. Further, undetected pigments may be present in areas of the studies that were not subject to sampling. Different parts of the compositions (where possible to sample) appear to comprise similar pigment mixtures, but simply vary in proportions to achieve the range of colour effects. Constable generally used a limited palette for oil sketching that included predominantly vermilion, mars red, red lake, Naples yellow, yellow lake, Prussian blue, lead white, and charcoal black. Cove, “Constable’s Oil Painting,” 505. ↩︎

62. Shields, “Why Skies?,” 121. ↩︎

63. Constable to J. Fisher, 4 August 1821, in Leslie, Memoirs, 89. See also note 15. ↩︎

64. Cove, “Constable’s Oil Painting,” 499. ↩︎

65. The range of papers used included modern watercolour, traditionally handmade wove tub-sized, handmade wove cotton rag, vintage handmade laid, and tissue papers, and a millboard made for book binding. Some cotton rag papers were included because they may imitate more closely certain papers available in the early nineteenth century; although some early nineteenth-century papers would have contained linen and hemp from ropes and sailcloth, cotton fibres were common by this time due to the wide availability of cotton clothing since the invention of Arkwright’s cotton gin in 1793. Peter Bower, Turner’s Papers: A Study of the Manufacture, Selection and Use of His Drawing Papers, 1787–1820 (London: Tate Gallery, 1990), 17. Aside from the vintage handmade tub-sized paper, the other papers may differ from in their surface strengths from the papers artists used two hundred years ago. Modern papers are internally sized, which allows them to be dried quickly. In the 1800s papers were surface sized (tub sized) and then dried far more slowly, which lent the papers high surface strength. Bower, Turner’s Papers, 24. ↩︎

66. Peter Bower, A Brush with Nature: An Historical and Technical Analysis of the Papers and Boards Used as Supports for Landscape Oil Sketching, Works of Art on Paper: Books, Documents, and Photographs: Techniques and Conservation 15 (London: International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, 2002). ↩︎

67. Peter Bower, “Catching the Sky: The Papers and Boards Used by John Constable for His Studies of Sky and Cloud,” in Bancroft, Constable’s Skies, 153. ↩︎

68. Cove, “‘Very Great Difficulty,’” 124. ↩︎

69. Bower, “Catching the Sky,” 156. Constable’s sketches employ coloured wrapping, watercolour (Evans, Costaras, and Richardson, “Constable’s Sketches,” 146), writing (Cove, “Constable’s Oil Painting,” 500), and tissue papers (Cove, “‘Fit for Purpose,’” 123), and a mixture of wove and laid papers (Cove, “‘Fit for Purpose,’” 135). Constable also made use of millboard for oil sketching, but less frequently after 1810 (Cove, “Constable’s Oil Painting,” 500). ↩︎

70. Cove, “Constable’s Oil Painting,” 499. ↩︎

71. Leslie Carlyle, The Artist’s Assistant: Oil Painting Instruction Manuals and Handbooks in Britain, 1800–1900, with Reference to Selected Eighteenth-Century Sources (London: Archetype, 2001), 190. ↩︎

72. Cove, “‘Fit for Purpose,’” 122. ↩︎

73. “To paint in Gouache, you must first paste your paper upon a board made either of walnut-wood or mahogany, taking care that this surface be smooth, so that your paper may lay quite flat: then, upon the other side of your board, paste another sheet of Drawing-paper, the same kind as that that you mean to paint upon. This will prevent the board from warping, and neither time nor the injuries of the air will cause it to split. In order to paste your paper upon the board, make use of a paste made of starch or very fine flour; add to this, double size, or Flanders Glue, purified by vinegar.” Massoul, Treatise of the art of painting, 77. “The most celebrated artists of the present day make use of double size, a preparation obtained from parchment, or fine glove leather: This preparation is not, like gum, liable to change or crack the colour. A piece of this, about the size of a small apple, in a glass of water, will be found to be the necessary proportion.” Massoul, 75. ↩︎

74. Cove, “‘Fit for Purpose,’” 126, 135; Cove, “Constable’s Oil Painting,” 499. ↩︎

75. Cove, “‘Very Great Difficulty,’” 130. ↩︎

76. Having taped down my precut mock-ups, the edges of my sketches have a non-coloured border, which of course would not have been the case for an artist preparing full sheets and then cutting them down. ↩︎

77. Cove, “‘Very Great Difficulty,’” 126, 134. ↩︎

78. Tub sizing is the process by which the surface of a sheet of paper is coated with a glue, usually some form of gelatine derived from animals. See Bower, Turner’s Papers, 25. Modern papers tend to be made with the fibres pre-coated in size (i.e., internally sized) (p. 25). ↩︎

79. Cove, “‘Very Great Difficulty,’” 131. ↩︎

80. Cove, “‘Very Great Difficulty,’” 141. ↩︎

81. Cove, “Constable’s Oil Painting,” 505. ↩︎

82. Cove, “‘Very Great Difficulty,” 141. ↩︎

83. Cove, “‘Very Great Difficulty,’” 141; Sarah Cove, “‘Mixing and mingling’: John Constable’s Oil Paint Mediums, c. 1802–37, Including the Analysis of the ‘Manton Paint Box,’” in Painting Techniques: History, Materials and Studio Practice (London: International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, 1998), 211. ↩︎

84. Cove, “‘Very Great Difficulty,’” 141. ↩︎

85. Thanks are due to Sarah Cove for the recommendation to try preparing the paints as leanly bound as possible. ↩︎

86. Evans, Costaras, and Richardson, “Constable’s Sketches,” 154. ↩︎

87. This may also have to do with the fact that aged oil paints tend to be more transparent than new oil paint films. Annelies van Loon, Petra Noble, and Aviva Burnstock, “Ageing and Deterioration of Traditional Oil and Tempera Paints,” in Conservation of Easel Paintings, ed. Joyce Hill Stoner and Rebecca Rushfield (London: Routledge, 2012), 214). ↩︎

88. Cove, “‘Very Great Difficulty,’” 133. Barium and calcium were detected associated with white and colourless particles in ground and paint layers of the Fitzwilliam Museum sketches by SEM-EDX. It is important to note that barium and calcium may be associated with the presence of Prussian blue, present as colourman-introduced adulterants or additives of lead white, or as substrates for lake pigments, rather than having been purposeful additions made to paint mixtures by the artist. Nicholas Eastaugh, Valentine Walsh, Tracey Chaplin, and Ruth Siddall, The Pigment Compendium: A Dictionary of Historical Pigments (Oxford: Elsevier, 2004), 309, 145. ↩︎

89. Cove, “‘Very Great Difficulty,’” 143. ↩︎

90. See, for example, A View of Salisbury from Fisher’s Library, 1829, V&A (Morris, Constable’s Clouds, 110), and several conducted from the house in Hampstead in which he lived from 1827 (p. 105). ↩︎

91. Piles, Principles of Painting, 144. ↩︎

92. Beckett, John Constable’s Correspondence, vol. 6, 189. ↩︎

93. Cove, “‘Very Great Difficulty,’” 137; Cove, “Constable’s Oil Painting,” 504–5. ↩︎

94. Lead white and Naples yellow contain lead, while vermilion contains mercury, both of of which are toxic elements. ↩︎

95. Gamblin flake white is titanium dioxide ground leanly in alkali-refined linseed oil to a particular formulation that re-creates the “ropiness” and warm hue of lead white; https://gamblincolors.com/flake-white-replacement/ (accessed 5 May 2021). ↩︎

96. Thanks are due to Sarah Cove for recommending this method for transporting prepared paints for sketching outdoors. ↩︎

97. De Piles, Principles of Painting, 149. ↩︎

98. Constable, lecture, 2 June 1836, in Leslie, Memoirs, 338. ↩︎

99. Introduction to Luitjen, Morton, and Munro,” True to Nature, 12. ↩︎

100. Peter Bower, “Careful and Considered Choice: Thomas Jones’s Use of Paper,” in Thomas Jones (1742–1803): An Artist Rediscovered, ed. Ann Sumner and Greg Smith (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 101. ↩︎

101. Bower, “Catching the Sky,” 26. ↩︎

102. Bower, Brush with Nature,” 26. The terms rough, Not (not hot-pressed), and HP (hot-pressed) describe the finish of a handmade paper. Rough is the finish produced on a paper surface by the first wet press. Not is the natural finish of the paper when it is pressed against itself when it is still wet. An HP finish was originally produced by placing papers between heated and burnished metal plates in a screw press. Bower, Turner’s Papers, 26. ↩︎

103. Bower, Turner’s Papers, 41. ↩︎

104. Gage, “Clouds over Europe,” 128. ↩︎

105. Constable to John Fisher, August 1824, in Beckett, John Constable’s Correspondence, vol. 6, 172. ↩︎

106. Cove, “‘Very Great Difficulty,’” 124. ↩︎

107. Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (1966; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 18. ↩︎

108. Graham Reynolds, Constable: The Natural Painter (London: Cory, Adams and Mackay, 1965), 90. ↩︎

109. Phillips, Attention Seeking, 14. ↩︎

110. Lars Spuybroek, “Abstraction and Sympathy,” in The Sympathy of Things: Ruskin and the Ecology of Design (Oxford: Routledge, 2016), 124. ↩︎

111. Gage, “Clouds over Europe,” 132. ↩︎

112. Gage, 133. ↩︎

113. Spuybroek, “Abstraction and Sympathy,” 130. ↩︎

114. Phillips, Attention Seeking, 14. ↩︎

115. Milner, On Not Being Able to Paint, 142. ↩︎

116. Hazlitt, “On Imitation,” 94. ↩︎

117. Milner, On Not Being Able to Paint, 139. ↩︎

118. Shields, “Why Skies?,” 113. ↩︎

119. Shields, 121. ↩︎