***FORTHCOMING***

Paperback – 210 x 297 mm – 52 pages

Twenty-five illustrations in colour

ISBN 9781843683032

From 1829 until his death, Constable devoted an increasing amount of time, energy and his own money to the production of prints after his work. Intended as the epitome of his naturalistic art, English Landscape brought together twenty-two images from the whole span of his career, reimagined with all the drama and delicacy possible with mezzotint.

In David Lucas, Constable found a collaborator capable of responding to his work with an unprecedented range of tonal expression, and an endlessly patient colleague who could cope with Constable’s extreme anxiety and mood swings.

The result, though not a commercial success at the time, is widely acknowledged as one of the summits of English landscape art, and of the art of the mezzotint.

This edition includes Constable’s introduction, his most sustained explanation of his aims as a painter and the revolution he effected in landscape art.

John Constable RA was born in 1776 in East Bergholt, Suffolk. The landscape of East Anglia remained the touchstone of his art, and even in his lifetime the area around Dedham Vale was known as ‘Constable country’. Nevertheless, his career had been slow to take off and the importance of his art was not recognised in England until late in his life. In France, however, his naturalism and forceful painting style were key influences on Romanticism and later on Impressionism. A devoted family man, Constable travelled very little beyond his familiar haunts. He lived much of his life in London, where he died in 1837.

David Lucas was born in 1802 in Northamptonshire and received his early training from Samuel William Reynolds. He worked with Constable on English Landscape from 1830 to 1832 and continued to make prints after Constable’s work following the painter’s death. He later fell into poverty and died in a workhouse in 1881.