Influential People

I was reading a book about painting, and the author was saying how Thomas Gainsborough's landscapes served as a model for John Constable, who said in a letter from Ipswich, "I fancy I see Gainsborough in every hedge and hollow tree."

I went and looked that up, because I liked it. Then I saw that not long after, he wrote that he spent his evenings drawing and reading, and hoped by the former to clear his rent. "If I can I shall be very happy," he writes. "Our friend Smith has offered to take any of my paintings into his shop for sale. He is pleased to find I am reasonable in my prices."

He doesn't sound like a big famous artist, does he? He sounds like a guy trying to get by in the world. But he would go on to be famous, and we think of English countrysides the way we do in part because of his paintings. I can just about see him—a lone figure in a landscape, sitting by an easel, painting all day, taking advantage of every daylight hour, just painting and painting and painting, because he thought the countryside was beautiful and he wanted other people to see it that way too, the hedges, the hollow trees, everything.

I just checked—there's a famous Constable at the National Gallery down in Washington, and I think I'll go see it some day soon.