Customer Reviews

John Constable: The Man and His Art

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
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I found this book to be a very insightful look into the work of John Constable. Ronald Parkinson, the author, shows remarkable restraint by resisting the urge to transform Constable into a mythic misunderstood genius from the glorious history of English painting. The book reads like a good biography. It tells us what Constable was up to, what artists he was looking at, and the images of what he was painting at that time. What more could you ask for.

My only qualm with the book was its lack of information on Constable's contemporaries. A few hints at what Turner was painting was not enough. I would have liked to have seen more examples of English painters dealing with the landscape even if it meant details from the backgrounds of uninspired portraits.

All in all this was a wonderful book, even if you have little interest in English landscape paintings.

The Parkinson is a nice, standard biography, by no means definitive. I only rate it at 4 stars because the plates are mostly half-page rather than full. Constable is an artist for whom you want to see LARGE plates. There are also a number of nice, small drawings. It's not the only Constable book to have, but worth finding for an overview of his work.