Excerpt from Gainsborough Constable
For the biographical information contained in the following pages 1 am almost entirely indebted to the works of Messrs. Fulcher and C. ft. Leslie. These books, though admirable in many respects, are not very rich sources of information. In Gainsborough's case this is not surprising. In Ipswich, where he had lived for many years, Constable was unable, in 1797, "to learn anything of consequence respecting him," and, with the exception of Thicknesse's contemptible pamphlet, no biographical notice of the artist appeared until the year 1829. In that year Allan Cunningham devoted twenty-eight pages of his "Lives of the Painters" to Gainsborough. Fulcher's labours were interrupted by death, and had to be completed by his son.
Probably, apart from his professional labours, his life was somewhat uneventful, and from the year 1745 onwards might well be summed up in the familiar phrase, "he married and lived happily ever afterwards." The anecdotes recorded in his biography seem to me for the most part singularly uninteresting, and I have quoted two or three only.
Leslie's life of Constable is a charming work, but is for the most part made up of the artist's letters, as the title states. It gives one a delightful insight into the inner life of the artist; but the reader who seeks to collect many facts respecting the events of Constable's life will find that it was not the author's chief aim to supply them. I have also consulted with much pleasure and benefit Messrs Redgraves' Century of Painters; Wornum's Epochs of Painting; Dr. Waagen's Art Treasures in Great Britain; and an admirable essay in the Quarterly Review, February, 1809.
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