The Outline of Art -

Book excerpt: THE OUTLINE OF ART - BY WILLIAM ORPEN - UNQUESTIONABLY the two greatest English painters of landscape, and probably the two greatest English painters of any kind, were Turner and Constable, who were born within a year of one another. Turner, as we saw in the last chapter, amassed a large fortune Constable, on the other hand, could hardly earn a bare living, and not until 1814, when the artist was thirty-eight, did he sell a picture to any but his own personal friends. How was it that, from a worldly point of view, Coilstable failed where Turner succeeded Thc explaination is to be found in the totally different character of thc landscapes painted by these two artists. Turner, as Claude had done before him, made frequent use of llorninal subjects as an excuse for his pictures of Nature there was a dramatic element in lis art which appealed to the popular imagination, and even when, as in many of his later works, people found difficulty in apprchending thc cleincnts of his style, they werc insensibly affected by tlie splendour of his colour and brought to adillit that these pictures, if difficult to understand, were paintings in the grand style. Constable never made use of fictitious subjects and titles as an excuse for painting landscapes......