Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishops Grounds

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Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishops Grounds: John Constable

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John Constable Oil Painting - Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishops Grounds

Keywords: Salisbury, Cathedral, Bishops, Grounds

Work Overview: Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds
Artist John Constable
Year 1823
Medium oil paint
Dimensions 87.6 cm (34.5 in) × 118.8 cm (46.8 in)
Location Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds is an 1823 painting by the nineteenth-century landscape painter John Constable (1776–1837). This image of Salisbury Cathedral, one of England's most famous medieval churches, is one of his most celebrated works, and was commissioned by one of his closest friends, John Fisher, The Bishop of Salisbury.[1]

Constable visited Salisbury in 1820 and made a series of oil sketches of the cathedral, which served as the model for this composition. The artist selected a viewpoint from the bishop's garden and included figures of Dr. Fisher and his wife at the bottom left. Following its exhibition at the 1823 Royal Academy, Constable observed: "My Cathedral looks very well....It was the most difficult subject in Landscape I ever had upon my Easel. I have not flinched at the work of the windows, buttresses, &c. – but I have as usual made my escape in the Evanescence of the Chiaro-Oscuro". His patron took exception to the dark cloud over the cathedral, and when he commissioned a smaller replica, requested "a more serene sky".

The painting embodies the full range of qualities of a quintessentially British landscape painting – the clouds, trees, a water meadow, cattle drinking at the edge of the pasture and the glorious architecture of a medieval cathedral – but all on a human scale.[citation needed] Paintings like this one have so conditioned our view of rural Britain that it is now difficult to imagine a time when the countryside and country life were not held in such high regard.[citation needed]

A version of the painting also resides at the Frick Collection in New York City. It is slightly different in that it shows different weather and hence light. Whereas the London version depicts the cathedral with an overcast sky, the version in the Frick shows the cathedral with a clear, bright sky.

A small version of the painting resides at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. John Fisher gave it to his daughter as a wedding present.

Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds, 1821–22, 89 cm × 114 cm (35 in × 45 in), São Paulo Museum of Art.
There is an earlier, homonymous version (1821-1822) of this painting at São Paulo Museum of Art in São Paulo.[2] It is said that Fisher, seeing its sombre and grave colors, disliked it and asked for a happier, lighter one.

This painting was made as a full-scale study for the picture of 1826 now in the Frick Collection, New York. The latter picture was completed for Constable’s friend John Fisher, bishop of Salisbury, who appears at lower left in both canvases. In fact the commission dates back to 1822; in the course of working on the composition, Constable opened up the tree canopy and added a sunny sky to frame the cathedral’s medieval spire, the tallest in England.

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Constable was not the first painter to be attracted to Salisbury Cathedral, although his oil painting may be the most successful and well-known image of the building and its surroundings.

Constable looks at the Cathedral from the woodland through green pastures and typical of his work, he depicts country gentry looking on as well as cattle grazing.

The cathedral featuring in Constable's work first went under construction in 1220 and it is famous for having the biggest cloister in England as well as being the guardian of the Magna Carta.

The Cathedral would have been central to the 18th century community which Constable was part of and it is known from his writing that he himself was deeply religious.

As well as being a building with which Constable had a great affection for, the Cathedral and its surroundings would have been considered typically English at the time. Undoubtedly this would have caught the artist's imagination as well as that of his French market.

Suffolk landscape:
Although Constable's main focus in this painting is the cathedral itself, the foreground draws the viewer's eye and is filled with tame woodland and pastoral animals. This view is from the grounds of the Bishop's palace, and is a typically pastoral scene reminiscent of Constable's other paintings.

John Constable's Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Ground was inspired by some of the great landscape painters that came before him. Men such as Claude Lorrain and Thomas Gainsborough were key in the development of Constable's art and their influence can be seen in comparisons between their work and Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Ground.

Claude Lorrain:
Lorrain was a master of Baroque landscape painting, a genre which was not deemed proper in the portrait painting art world of the time.

Paintings such as Landscape with Apollo and Mercury use a similar tree lined composition to that of Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Ground. The use of human or animal figures in the foreground is also very similar and helps to add a human element to the piece.

Thomas Gainsborough:
One of the first truly important English artists, Thomas Gainsborough was noted for his portraits but was also a very successful landscape painter. He was also from Suffolk, England and would have grown up in and captured the same landscapes as Constable.

Composition:
Constable would carefully construct his compositions, creating many preliminary sketches before starting to paint to make sure he would be totally satisfied with the results.

Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Ground is an obvious example of Constable's dedication to getting the composition right as he has used so many artistic techniques to ensure the view he wanted.

The arch of the trees perfectly encompasses the cathedral spire and frames the building. The lighter shades of the cathedral and the fact that it is bathed in sunlight draw the eye to it. The figures to the right of the image also turn the viewer's attention to the cathedral.

With their backs turned and the gentleman pointing at the building with his walking cane it is almost as if you enter the 19th century world and see the cathedral how Constable's contemporaries would have seen it.

Constable was outspoken about the way many of his contemporaries alternated or created landscapes to suit their purposes, so it is more than likely that this piece was based on the exact view of the cathedral during the artist's lifetime.

Brushstroke:
Constable was a very innovative artist of this period and used a thick "impasto" brushstroke throughout his work. This technique allowed him to not only create depth and movement in his work but also realism and detail.

Color palette:
An innovator for depicting natural beauty and reality in art during the 19th century, Constable was noted for using earthy, natural tones. He would also mix colors over one another on the canvas to create depth and movement.

One example of this is in the artist's trees; he uses reds to compliment the otherwise overly green painting and this created deeper tones and contrast in the piece.

Use of light:
Constable's use of lighting in Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Ground is best demonstrated in the contrast between the woodland and the meadow in front of the church.

The stream acts as a divide between the two areas and thanks to the shade given by the trees the wood appears much darker, with the artist employing the use of browns and dark greens in contrast to the paler yellows of the distant meadow.

The cathedral is lit by the sun which draws attention to it. As the focus of the painting this building is highlighted and its possible that with this Constable was trying to evoke the sense that the building, being a house of God, was higher and more important than the everyday people and objects surrounding it.

Method:
Constable is known to have spent many hours sketching before committing to painting. Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Ground would not have been any different and many of his oil sketches of the composition can be seen at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England.

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“I should paint my own places best,” Constable once said, referring to the Suffolk landscape he grew up in and which he painted with an almost religious devotion. Yet in the course of his life, Salisbury too became one his “own places”.
He first visited this small city in the west of England in 1811 on the invitation of the Bishop, one of his first and most important patrons, for whom he painted Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Gardens,

a version of which can be found in New York’s Frick Collection. Over the years he made many more trips producing over 300 paintings and watercolours of the area.
It was in Salisbury, too, that the painter formed his closest friendship with the Bishop’s nephew John Fisher: “we loved each other,” Constable wrote towards the end of his life, “and confided in each other entirely."

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