Royal Academy, London
Turbulent, fervent and mostly unseen in his lifetime, the late paintings of John Constable are at once figurative, abstract and staggering to behold
A hard rain falls on a glittering grey sea. Wind harries sullen clouds across low-lying horizons. Overcast skies shed a pale glare on the churned earth below. Thunder and gloom, turbid brown rivers, corn standing solid as a wall at the field’s edge beneath squalls of paint, thick as mortar. This is summer in John Constable’s England.
Or, to be more precise, it is the season of late Constable (1776-1837), painted in the grief of bereavement. The Royal Academy’s stupendous new show may open with some early cloud studies and Constable’s The Leaping Horse, last of his so-called Six-Footers, but almost everything here was made after the death of his wife, Maria, in 1828. Constable was left to raise seven young children on his own, at the age of 52. He wore mourning for the rest of his life.
