Trump is a menace to the Western world

God. Depressing news today.

Canada was all set to elect the most conservative, pro-American, pro-Israeli government in a generation.

Then, Trump had to go trolling. He made those sophomoric jokes about Canada “the 51st state” to his MAGA base of idiots. And then, he couldn’t shut up about it. He never gave Poilievre or anyone else in Canada a moment’s thought. God forbid, he’s not at the center of something.

The Conservatives’ platform of law and order, free markets, standards of living, stricter controls on immigration, and pushing back on the left’s social engineering and wokery, and various other social excesses was the exactly what an ailing Canada needed.

Carney’s case to voters was that he was the guy to trust & stand up to Donald Trump. And that was just enough for voters to overlook ten years of stagnation under Liberal governments, and more of the same mentality to follow.

But it seems to me that a right-wing conservative candidate would stand firmer against Trump and the U.S. — as much (if not more) than a leftist candidate. Conservatives are by nature more defensive and staunch about their national integrity and sovereignty. Canadians should have stayed with their conservative candidate for the same reasons they stood with him prior to Trump’s retch.

And what did Trump gain out of the hostility and aggression to Canadian sovereignty? What did America achieve? 

In so many areas, we would have been better off having Prime Minister Poilievre. And so would Trump. Trump complained about the Fentanyl smuggling. But well under 1% of Fentanyl entering the US comes from Canada. And, if it is access to Canadian resources, we could easily buy them from Canada. And yet, Trump engineered precisely the worst for American interests.

As long as Trump wins; conservatism and America loses.

Israeli military taking accountability

I originally wrote this post a week ago — but decided to wait for the Israeli military investigation.

For those that aren’t aware, the IDF recently admitted to have mistakenly identified a convoy of aid workers as a threat. Video subsequently emerged proving that the ambulance was clearly marked when the Israeli forces opened fire on 15 humanitarian workers.

Below is the IDF statement (from Sky News):

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The key overarching point here that is that Israel has behaved in a way that her enemies can never:

1. The IDF have acknowledged that the killings were an error. 
2. They released an initial flawed statement, then corrected the record - publicly. 
3. They launched an internal investigation. 
4. They reprimanded and dismissed a respected and high ranking commanding officer for (1) breaches of orders, and (2) a failure to fully report the incident.
5. They said they will take measures to prevent a repeat of this in the future.
6. They didn’t censor the press or detain whistleblowers.
7. They didn’t parade bodies, or burn footage, or pretend it never occurred - like Russia.

That’s accountability.

It is impossible to execute a war without mistakes being made. Soldiers mistakenly shooting at targets is something that happens all the time in war. It’s very unfortunate, but it does happen - especially in conditions of poor visibility. 

And who doesn’t adjust, or admit, or even care?    Hamas.

Hamas have still not admitted that they’ve executed their own protesters. Or used ambulances to convey terrorists. Or launched rockets from hospitals etc.

The killing of non-combatants by soldiers within the IDF does not represent Israeli policy - unlike Hamas.

Israel’s oldest Holocaust survivor Nechama Grossman dies on Remembrance Day, aged 109

I sometimes forget how recent the Holocaust was. 

It can seem so distant and so removed - the black and white photos etc. This isn’t ancient history – it really happened and within living memory. We recently marked 80 years since the liberation of the Nazi camps.

I came across the recent death of Nechama Grossman (Ynet): 

Born in 1914, Grossman survived the Holocaust and went on to raise a large family in Israel. Her son, Vladimir Shvets, said earlier this week that his mother had endured unimaginable suffering but overcame it with strength and resilience.

“She experienced the worst and survived,” he said. “She raised her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and taught them that unbridled hatred cannot win.”

Shvets added, “We must all remember her story, remember her survival, so that her past never becomes our future.”

Elena Shvets, Grossman’s granddaughter-in-law, said the trauma of the Holocaust remained with her until her final days.

“They fled the Nazis, and she suffered terribly during the war,” she said. “Lately, she had dreams—she even dreamed the Nazis were choking her. These memories never left her. I hope she is at peace now. Until the very end, she was sharp and spoke with us. She passed away quietly.”

Remembrance days, for me, feels different.

October-7 was the Holocaust reattempted. It was the largest number of Jewish people deliberately targeted and killed in a single day since the Holocaust.

When we saw the videos of young people trying to run away in the Nova music festival — it was the same as the historic photos of Jews running to escape from Nazis, being shot at, and being caught and tortured. The recent video footage of October-7 brings back the memories of our most dark period.

It is important to remember — as I was today reading the obituary of this lovely lady whose courage and strength and compassion I salute.

Lincoln’s Inn library

Took these photos in the early morning.

A sense of repose & tranquility.

The Kashmir terrorist attack

What a horrific act of terrorism on Indian soil.

Pakistan is now apparently “denying” involvement. They’re acting all defensive.

Of course this was by a Pakistani sponsored terrorist organisation.

Pakistani ISI are well-known to have sponsored Islamic-jihadi terrorism - even to the extent of it backfiring (e.g. the attempted assassination on Musharraf).

Portrait of Constantijn Huygens and his Clerk by Thomas de Keyser (1627)

Fabulous portrait.

This masterpiece from the National Gallery in London features a picture which opens my new book.

Constantijn Huygens was a polymath. Secretary to two princes of Orange, diplomat, poet, musician, aficionado of painting, and owned a huge library and engaged in animated written correspondence with great intellectuals, including Descartes and contemporary painters - Pieter Lastman, Jan Lievens, Gerard Gerrit van Honthorst, Anthony van Dyck, Rembrandt etc. A giant during the Dutch Golden Age.

The objects on table - globe/maps, books, quill, papers etc. refer to a broad intellect.

Navigation instruments (?) and exquisite table cloth. So beautiful.

The distant gaze and the general expression of thoughtfulness and contemplation. 

His neatly trimmed beard and mustache suggest a refined gentleman.

Pope Francis’s death 1936–2025

Poor man. Pope Francis was really ill.

He appeared publicly only 24 hours earlier wishing worshippers in St Peter’s Square a Happy Easter.

He had a remarkable life.

A v. interesting article about his life in “Pope Francis – obituary”. I have excerpted: 

Bergoglio soon confronted a matter of life and death. As Provincial, he had asked some priests living in a “base community”, in a very poor district of Buenos Aires called Villa 1-11-14, to return to living in a Jesuit community house. Two of the priests, Fr Franz Jalics and Fr Orlando Yorio, refused to obey. The matter dragged on for more than a year, and in March 1976, after the intervention of Fr Pedro Arrupe, the worldwide head of the Society of Jesus, the priests were deemed to have resigned from the Jesuits. Bergoglio urged them to leave Villa 1-11-14 for their own safety and he offered them rooms in the provincial curia until their own plans were finalised. Five days later, a military coup overthrew the government.

On May 23, the two priests were abducted. Days after his election, Pope Francis was accused of having done too little to prevent their kidnap and torture. The accusation was that if Fr Bergoglio had let the regime know that he endorsed the priests’ work among slum dwellers, then the death squads would not have picked upon them. But it was by no means clear that this would have saved them. Once they disappeared, Bergoglio took brave and repeated steps to rescue them from the armed forces. He even appealed privately in person to the dictator Jorge Videla. The priests were released after five months. Yorio died in 2000, but the surviving priest, Franz Jalics, issued a statement in March 2013 making it clear he did not blame Pope Francis for his abduction. The two men had been reconciled in an emotional meeting.

In other cases, Bergoglio sheltered people on church property, often hiding refugees at the Colegio Máximo. To help one man, he even gave him his own identity papers, since they looked alike, allowing him to travel from Argentina disguised in a dog-collar. While Bergoglio was Provincial, none of the Jesuit priests for whom he was responsible lost his life. In looking back at the Dirty War, he emphasised its moral confusion: “There were Christians who killed as guerrillas, Christians who helped save people, and repressive Christians who believed they were saving the Homeland.” Bergoglio sought to recover from the horrors he had seen with the help of visits to a psychiatrist.

In 1980, after nearly seven years as Provincial, Fr Bergoglio was made rector of the Colegio Máximo. He built up the numbers of recruits to the Jesuit vocation and founded a new church in a poor district. When rampant inflation impoverished ordinary people, he raised sheep and pigs on the college land to provide food. Soon 400 children a day were being fed, which kept the Jesuit students very busy.

The National Gallery's major rehang - “from the tube to Titian in a minute and a half”

Finally London National Gallery’s major rehang is being unveiled May 10.

It’s being celebrated as CC Land: The Wonder of Art.

Jackie Wullschläger writing, in “The National Gallery’s rehang is a fine achievement — proof that it is a sanctuary of beauty” (FT) has shared some big changes (most especially the 1000 works on display and the Jan van Eyck self-portrait):

More paintings are on show (more than 1,000), and all look better, thanks to muted wall colours throughout, allowing the canvases’ chromatic richness to shine. The hang plays to the building’s strength, those numerous corridor-like galleries which entice you on, promising revelations, broad vistas, intriguing associations.

‘Algernon Moses Marsden’ by Jacques Joseph
Tissot (1887) © The National Gallery

At other times, fresh arrivals shift a room’s whole tenor ... Interloper among Renoir, Pissarro and Sisley, Tissot’s assertive businessman “Algernon Moses Marsden”, elbow resting on a flamboyant tiger’s rug, reminds us how diverse the 19th-century avant garde was. Marsden looks unreliable and was — he went bankrupt three times. Delightfully, his great-grandson, fund manager Martyn Arbib, made this recent purchase possible. 

Spurring the entire overhaul was the Sainsbury Wing closure in 2023, for its foyer to be redeveloped. Architect Annabelle Selldorf will vanquish what Finaldi called the “forest” of obtrusive pillars, to provide a better, brighter main entrance, not yet unveiled. It will deliver, Finaldi promises, “a warm welcome” and speed: “from the tube to Titian in a minute and a half.” 

An artist’s impression of the reconfigured Sainsbury
Wing of the National Gallery © The National Gallery

Compared with current queues and security checks, that sounds heartening: straight upstairs to room nine, the splendid Venetian gallery, now opening on a room for the first time dedicated solely to Titian — destination pictures “Bacchus and Ariadne”, “Diana and Actaeon”, “The Death of Actaeon”, pagan myths of seduction, cruelty, fate, brought alive in the richest, fleshiest painting, foundational to art history. 

Piero della Francesca’s pellucid, calmly geometric “Baptism of Christ” is back in its chapel-like setting. Jacopo di Cione’s “Coronation of the Virgin” with its orchestra of angels returns within a new carved frame, every finial and column painstakingly gilded, uniting its two parts. In an inlaid wood frame with wave decorations, Uccello’s gleaming, restored “The Battle of San Romano” — snow-white chargers, crimson/gold hat, grid pattern of broken lances — looks almost modern; “like de Chirico”, Finaldi says. 

Northern Renaissance pictures large and small, amply though not sparsely hung, have also settled into this faux nave setting. Watching over them is Van Eyck’s quizzical “Portrait of a Man”, another restoration success: overpainted black ground removed, narrow sloping shoulders clearer, contrasts of light and shadow thrown by the extravagant creased turban more vivid.

Some very joyous new displays loftily transcend culture wars, celebrating individual (male) genius — all the Monets, from the realistic choppy seascape “La Pointe de la Hève” to the abstracting “Water-Lilies”, gather for the first time in one room, demonstrating continuity as well as sustained experiment — and personal taste. 

A theatrical gallery partly reprises Charles I’s rare collection, reuniting famous pictures of turbulent post-execution provenance: Tintoretto’s vigorous, intense narrative “Esther before Ahasuerus”, from the Royal Collection; Correggio’s soft, blue-gold-white harmony of figures in a landscape “The School of Love”. Charles’s reign, Finaldi says, “was a key moment when the English court was at its most refined and engaged with Europe — and he lost his head!”

Pivotal to Finaldi’s vision are particular relationships between artists, taking Turner’s demand that his seaports hang alongside Claude’s as “nodal points, steering elements”. Rembrandt’s “Self-portrait at the Age of 34” hangs with its model, Titian’s “Portrait of Gerolamo Barbarigo”; Dutch Caravaggesque follower Gerard van Honthorst is next to the master.

JMW Turner’s 250th birthday - Pick your favourites of Britain’s greatest painter

Turner’s 250th birthday is celebrated in 2025.  Born 23 April.

Jackie Wullschläger (see below) has written a wonderful essay about why JMW Turner still excites and enthrals us. Comparing him to the post-impressionist artist; “Turner and Van Gogh painted what they imagined”. 

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Top 10 Turner paintings

1. Venice, Noon (1845)

2. Fishermen at Sea   (only 21 y/o when painted this)

3. Caligula’s Palace and Bridge (1831)

4. Norham Castle, Sunrise

5. Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps

6. The Fighting Temeraire

7. Regulus

9. The Shipwreck

10. Frosty Morning

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Wullschläger writing in “Turner at 250 — why is he so beloved?” (FT):

The immediate answer is that the pictures are deeply pleasurable. As museums tend towards the conceptual and political, Turner guarantees painterly delight. His impact is instant and sensuous, his themes vast and inclusive: man and nature, present versus past, the rise and fall of empires. He engages and immerses.

Turner is theatrical, and also ambivalent — so we go on talking about him. His most political painting, “The Slave Ship”, subsumes man’s inhumanity to man into a tempest where, dashed with maimed bodies thrown overboard, a violent lurid ocean “burns like gold, and bathes like blood,” wrote Ruskin.

In painting, he did both. His idol, 17th-century painter Claude Lorrain, inspired his ambition, monumentality and grandeur. But coming of age during the French Revolution, Turner belongs to romanticism’s disorder. Smashing Claude’s classical equilibrium, he created pictures for a churning industrialising age, uncertain of its relationship with the natural world, thus newly fixated on landscape in painting and poetry — Turner’s peers are Constable (born 1776), Wordsworth (1770) and Coleridge (1772).

When Turner finally reached Italy in 1819, he was over 40, and responded not to its classical tropes (he was a hopeless figure painter) but to its radiant light. From then on, a golden luminosity suffused and heightened his paintings, not only of Italy — though his Venice views, converging shifting watery effects with themes of imperial decline, have a special elegiac beauty. 

The 19th-century age of materialism and realism, when artists from Constable to Monet insisted they painted their own visual experience, is fascinatingly bracketed by Turner and Van Gogh, who painted what they imagined. Van Gogh’s agitated spirals are descendants of Turner’s spinning vortices — a direct line felt if you go from the National Gallery’s Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers exhibition to the Clore.

Both Turner and Van Gogh were northern European artists who found their fullest expression under the Mediterranean sun, unprecedentedly raising the colour key to challenge what painting could be. Dazzling, consoling, beguiling, they brighten the winter and troubled times like rare northern lights.

Cherry blossoms on my street

The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne by Leonardo da Vinci

Today is Leonardo’s birthday.

This painting depicts St. Anne (grandmother to Christ), the Virgin Mary, and the infant Jesus. Christ grapples a sacrificial lamb. Christ holding the lamb, to be scarified ... and, thus, Mary holding Jesus, in turn.

This had to have been a very difficult composition. The Virgin Mary has to sit on her own mother’s lap! 

Either way, very beautiful. A serene landscape, balanced composition, and such charm in the love and passion evident in the delicacy and sweetness among the trio.

According to Waldemar Januszczak (in “Art review: Leonardo da Vinci, Louvre, Paris” The Times), this is his greatest painting;

... the awesome showing of Leonardo’s Virgin and Child with St Anne, a picture that usually hangs in the Louvre’s longest corridor, where the glare does it no favours. This, too, has been cleaned, and the results are staggering. What finesse they reveal. What beautiful physiognomy.

What gorgeous treatment of fabrics. What clever symbolism in the dark chasm above which the perfectly arranged group is balanced.

Leonardo’s greatest painting isn’t the unfortunately absent Mona Lisa, available only in a virtually real comic interlude at the end of this event. It isn’t even the gorgeous Madonna of the Rocks, which is here. No. His finest surviving achievement as an artist is this religious masterclass, filled with light, whose contribution to this strained exhibition is to show up everything else on display and to argue irrefutably for the primacy of painting.

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“Rembrandt-Hoogstraten: Colour and Illusion” at Kunsthistorisches Museum - PART 1

I was in Vienna in January 2025.

I was very excited to visit the Kunsthistorisches Museum to see its blockbuster exhibition Rembrandt-Hoogstraten: Colour and Illusion.

I have always loved Rembrandt and this exhibition showcased 57 works. There was a wealth of international loans by the master in Austria. 

Ultimately, I found it a beautiful and fascinating dialogue between the Dutch Golden Age master and one of his most successful and innovative students, Samuel van Hoogstraten (who achieved great success at the Habsburg court).

For me, it’s one of the highlight exhibitions of 2025.

Rating: ★★★★★ 5/5

Note: This is part 1 of the write-up. Two more parts to follow.

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Part 1: Rembrandt as the teacher

The first room introduces us to Rembrandt as teacher (as well as renowned painter, printmaker etc.). He began taking students in Leiden and continued until close to his death. Samuel van Hoogstraten was one of Rembrandt’s most successful students, starting his apprenticeship around 1642/43 at about age 15.

This room explores Van Hoogstraten’s early work which show stylistic and thematic similarities to Rembrandt’s (including creating convincing illusions).

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Self-portrait wearing a Hat and two Chains by Rembrandt (1642-3)

This is how the exhibition opens!

A magnificent self-portrait by Rembrandt. He paints himself courscating. 

Rembrandt captures himself in such splendor - beautiful gold chain & adorned with sumptuous fur. The light makes him glow and shine. I rather like the bulbous nose, slight wispy hair behind his ear, the subtle wrinkles in his the lowered neck.

This self-portrait was made during the time when he was Van Hoogstraten’s teacher. Rembrandt is famous for his many self-portraits - spanning his entire career. 

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Self-Portrait by Hoogstraten (1645)

Van Hoogstraten clearly emulates his master.

The powerful & contrastive use of light, and the central focus of the face.

Like Rembrandt, painted with aplomb - as a courtier with the traditional gold chain

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Self-portrait at a Window by Hoogstraten (1642-3)

I quite like this pen-and-brown ink self-portrait.

Trying to capture the fleeting expression and a sense of depth.

What makes this special is that Rembrandt, apparently, made 3 strokes of his pen to correct the outline of the right arm and shoulder.

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The Holy Family with a Curtain by Rembrandt (1646)

Interesting painting.

Early example of Rembrandt’s experiments with illusionist techniques.

The painted frame with the red curtain is Rembrandt’s pictorial contrivance. The frame is an illusionistic object. 

The fire warms and lights Mary and Baby Jesus. The bond is clear. Joseph is chopping wood in the background and is barely noticeable in the dark.

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St John the Baptist Preaching by Rembrandt (1634-5)

Van Hoogstraten (in his book) praised this particular painting of Rembrandt.

The powers of observation, the extraordinary use of light to focus attention, and compelling depiction of emotions in the crowds.

People in various states - hushing the kids, bored, raised eyebrows...

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Landscape with the Rest on the Flight to Egypt Rembrandt (1647)

Beautiful & moving.

I am reminded of Turner.

A wonderful exploration of light.

This nightscape is the Holy Family’s rest on their flight into Egypt.

Rembrandt’s lambent tones of heat and warmth of colours in fire over the canvass (esp. over the lakes untrammelled surface) creates a wonderful effect.

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Young Man Reading with Vanitas Still Life by Hoogstraten (1644)

Classic vanitas still life of the Golden Dutch Age.

The exhibition compares this one to Rembrandt’s The Holy Family with a Curtain (above).

It was probably made in the middle of his apprenticeship with Rembrandt. The illusionistic depiction of the paper, dramatic lighting, and muted colour palette point to the experience Van Hoogstraten gained during this period.

Painting by Van Hoogstraten — perhaps self-portrait or someone he knew?? Identity remains unknown.

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The Adoration of the Shepherds by Hoogstraten (1647)

Charming beautiful painting in which Van Hoogstraten uses a similar palette and light effects to Rembrandt. The light seems to emanate from Jesus.

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Part 2: Illusionistic experiments

The next room in the exhibition focuses on Rembrandt as a master of convincing illusions. 

From 1639 onwards, he increasingly experimented with illusionistic effects which warp the boundary between the pictorial space and the viewer’s space — e.g. including barriers, and window and door openings in the foreground of his paintings, which emphasise the presence of the painted figure. He also creates a convincing sense of depth to an otherwise flat space. 

Rembrandt’s illusionistic skills appear to have had a lasting influence on his Van Hoogstraten’s work. The ambitious pupil emulated his teacher in this area (even aiming to outshine him).

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A Woman in Bed (Sarah Awaiting Tobias) by Rembrandt (1647)

A young woman pulls the curtain to the side and seems to gaze at a scene in front of the picture. Her shoulder seems to protrude.

Supposed to represent the biblical story of Sarah waiting for her bridegroom Tobias, on their wedding night. Though Rembrandt leaves room for other interpretations. 

This must have had a striking effect in a home, by candlelight.

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Old Man at a Window by Hoogstraten (1653)

I really love this. Outstanding painting. 

The old man poking his head out of a window and gazing at us. Seems to have a distant look in his eyes.

Van Hoogstraten meticulously portrays the various materials - his looping wrinkles, fine hairs of his beard, soft fur of his hat, hard limestone that frames the window, the glass’s translucency. 

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Girl in a Picture Frame by Rembrandt (1641)

Wow!

Incredible.

It feels like the boundary between the painted world and our reality vanishes!

This girl - in vivid theatrical costume - leans slightly forwards. Her hands touching the painted frame and casting shadows and reflections on it. 

This effective illusionism of Rembrandt had a lasting influence on Van Hoogstraten - as the exhibition makes clear in comparison with his painting below Young Woman at an Open Half-Door.

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Young Woman at an Open Half-Door by Hoogstraten (1645)

Really wonderful.  This painting was inspired by Rembrandt’s illusionism. (And they were side-by-side)

This young woman - looking suspiciously to her side - seems to lean over an open half-door into the viewers’ space.

Van Hoogstraten seems to emulate Rembrandt's protruding fingers over the artificial frame.

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Girl at a Window, “The Kitchen Maid” by Rembrandt (1645)

Love it.

Incredible painting. The girl’s direct gaze is very captivating & charming.

I've seen this painting by Rembrandt before in London, and it has so much charm. Makes you smile. The subdued colours against the shining subject and the shadowing creates a vibrancy to the illusionism. The red cheeks and the white-reflecting tip of her nose.

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Agatha Bas by Rembrandt (1641)

Another wow. Just incredible.

This lady was Agatha Bas. She and her husband had their portraits painted by Rembrandt, as they lived opposite his workshop.

Really very elegantly dressed and with a keen & penetrating gaze at us. She seems to loom out of the darkness and towards us. (As does her fan and left thumb).

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Feigned Letter-Rack Painting by Van Hoogstraten (1667-8)

Terrific illusionism and depth captured by colour variation.

Van Hoogstraten painted this Dutch tradition. While in England, he painted this deceptive array of realistic everyday objects and personal items fixed together with red leather straps against a black background.

There are 21 objects - including comb, letter, scissors, maps, medallion, etc.

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Trompe l’oeil by Van Hoogstraten (1655)

Wow, again.

Van Hoogstraten's illusionistic depiction of ordinary everyday objects is incredible and powerful. The towel looks like you could reach out to take it off the hook. The painting of the wall panelling is so effective too.

This painting has no frame either. So it enhances the illusionism. 

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EXTRA: Me at the gallery, and the central hall at the Kunsthistorisches.

“Discover Constable and the Hay Wain” exhibition at the National Gallery

Back in January, I went to a small exhibition at the National Gallery celebrating John Constable’s iconic The Hay Wain.

Constable and The Hay Wain was a wonderful exploration of this beloved painting, its influences and its legacy. The shortcoming in the exhibition, I felt, was gallery’s maladroit handling of Constable’s non-political art against the purported exegenices of activism in his day. But, this can probably be written-off as a bit of the usual wokeism. 

Overall score: ★★★★ 4/5

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The Hay Wain by Constable (1821)

Most people reading this may not be aware that John Constable’s wonderful landscape was originally admired in Paris - not England. 

According to the gallery, it sat in a french collection until 1886. It seems that when Constable first exhibited the painting in England, at the Royal Academy of Arts, in 1821, it did not sell. 

The painting was received to great acclaim in the 1824 Paris Salon though, with a gold medal from the king of France, Charles X.

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Part 1 - The Hay Wain as a national icon

1910-20 photo of the house featured in The Hay Wain.

Originally, the house in the painting was the property of a tenant farmer called William Lott. He lived there during Constable’s lifetime. Apparently, he rarely ventured outside his home.

But, by 1925 it had fallen into disrepair. A local MP (Thomas Parkington) then bought the estate and restored the building (as Constable depicted it).

The serene & “prelapsarian” calmness of The Hay Wain has made this picture an enduring cushion to the hurly-burly of modernity. An antidote. A refuge to happier times.

Yet, despite this, I still found myself surprised at just how easily this panorama has become the object of those who wish to agitate and shock us from our supposed apathy, such as:

 

The Hay Wain has been used by Peter Kennard for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (Haywain with Cruise Missiles). In 2022, Quentin Devine recreated this image to warn about the dangers of the climate change.

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Part 2 - Contextualising landscape painting in Britain

Next the exhibition turns to the subject of land as an “issue of politics”. I.e. - who owned land, the right of common access, restrictions on foreign grain imports (“Corn Laws”) following the Napoleonic Wars resulted in food prices rocketing. 

Ms Christine Riding, curator of the exhibition, takes the view that landscape is political. As such, pictures of agriculture and harvest take on a “new significance” in the context of the era. Some artists wanted to create a picturesque image (inspired by the Dutch & Flemish) and some sought to closely reflect the natural world.

For me, I am not sure I accept the premise that the landscape is necessarily political. It may be; or it may not be. I think it is a bit harsh to judge Constable against these standards. Constable represented a departure from previous landscape paintings. They were very classical and stylised methods which did not necessarily reflect life. Constable only worked from life and made very intense and detailed sketches. His inclusion of peasants and farmers was also revolutionary. His work (alongside JMW Turner) inspired the future French Impressionists and he was highly regarded in France. 

Why should Constable have expressly included the social ills suffered by lower classes in Britain? He wasn’t trying to be the rural equivalent of Hogarth. He wanted to paint something beautiful, that he loved.

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Marlingford Grove by John Crome (1815)

John Chrome was used by the National Gallery to illustrate the clear influence of Dutch and Flemish landscape art (light and shade in everyday woodlands) in England’s Norfolk County.

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The Coming Storm, Isle of Wight by George Morland (1789)

Another instance of the gallery showing how the Dutch landscape motif had become a regular among British artists (incl. cottage). 

Apparently, George Morland was a particularly popular artist in the earliest years of Constable’s training in London.

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The Reapers by George Stubbs (1783)

Stubbs is already acclaimed for his paintings of horses. 

This painting’s social commentary is quite clear. The relationship between the reapers, who cut and gather the crops, and a gentleman farmer. This while still a picturesque rural subjects (in the Dutch style).

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Part 3 - Making of the Hay Wain

The exhibition shows how Constable built his finished works from sketches, studies and memories of locations he knew and loved.

The Hay Wan depicts the River Stour and the land alongside Batford Mill (which Constable’s father owned). In order to create it, Constable referred to a series of drawings and sketches he had produced over many years beforehand. He made the final painting in his London studio based on these sketches and his own familiarity. 

Both sketches - from 1816 - show the mill stream by Willy Lott’s house

The dog was added in the the earlier sketches.

The National Gallery notes:

At the time Constable made the later study, villagers in nearby East Bergholt were protesting the fencing-off of common land for private use. There is no sense of unrest in this peaceful scene.

As I said earlier, why should Constable paint “unrest” in the painting, when that wasn’t the object sought.

Unfortunately, and especially since the rise of identity politics, highbrow exhibitions, like this one, are expected to condemn antecedents for the insufficient activism and moral impurity to a modern audience.

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The Mill Stream by Constable (1814-15)

Another picture of Constable’s enduring love with his childhood landscape.

The National Gallery have included this beautiful painting of the Mill Pond - but from a position further along the bank. He included similar characters and details to the Hay Wain.

Wonderful.

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Part 4 - After the Hay Wain

I have been to a small exhibition, at the Tate, which explored Constable’s lifelong investigations of the movement of clouds and the effects of light. It’s very interesting, to me, how his painting techniques, in his later works, became “looser” and more expressive (impressionistic).

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Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Ground by Constable (1823)

A magnificent painting.

The Bishop of Salisbury (and Constable’s friend) commissioned this painting in 1820.

The dark clouds for sense of depth, even crows flying by masts.

Bishop and his wife Dorothea or daughter by the gate.

According to the exhibition:

In his lifetime the artist’s work received mixed responses in Britain. Some viewed his paintings as equal to revered earlier artists, while others felt his approach was unsuccessfully experimental. Following his death, prominent figures such as the art critic and social commentator John Ruskin condemned his style as ‘blundering’ and ‘superficial’. His critical popularity in Britain initially declined as a result. But this changed as his influence on the work of lauded French artists, including Eugène Delacroix and Claude Monet, began to be acknowledged.

Over time Constable came to be viewed as a key figure in British art history. His admirers, collectors and family members helped secure his reputation by ensuring his work entered the collections of major galleries and museums in the UK and beyond.