Growing up with Constable
When we were growing up, “The Hay Wain” took pride of place above the fireplace in our front room. My mother had saved up her Green Shield stamps to send for the print. My dad made the frame with dowelling and stained it a posh mahogany. This wasn’t the only grand artwork in our house; we had the Mona Lisa in the kitchen. (What a disappointment it was when I saw the original in the Louvre many years later, ours was so much bigger!). Having lived all her life in the smoky town, my mother held a romantic vision of the countryside – the rural idyll – hence Constable in the front room.
Arcadia was a mythical rural realm ruled by the god Pan, an imaginary place full of romance which formed the context for much Renaissance pastoral poetry and painting. Many artists drew on these themes, including Poussin and Watteau. Poussin’s work reflected 16th-century Venetian art, showing his appreciation of the work of Titian and Raphael. He sketched in the countryside outside Rome, recreating ancient myth and history in his idyllic landscapes.
Poussin Rembrandt
This romantic, arcadian view of the landscape and its trees is evident in Poussin’s “Landscape of a Man Washing his Feet at a Fountain.” Dutch artists in the 1600’s such as Rembrandt were also involved in the Arcadian theme, as he painted his wife Saskia in Arcadian dress.
Constable (1776 - 1837) was a landscape painter in the romantic tradition, influenced by Dutch artists such as Rubens. He revolutionised the genre of landscape painting with his paintings of the area around his Suffolk home, where he felt a deep emotional connection. Unlike many of his contemporaries he painted outdoors; to listen to, to smell and to feel the landscape. His scenes of ordinary everyday life were quite unfashionable in the age of romantic rural visions yet his work was to prove to be a source of romantic rural landscape inspiration long after his death.
The Hay Wain by Constable
Moving forward to the 19th century, I am moved by the work of northern painter Thomas Mostyn (1864 – 1930). His early works depicted the poverty of the northern working classes in a realist style. He was influenced by the anti “Victorian Materialist” sentiment in an attempt to raise social consciousness.
The Dreamers by Thomas Mostyn
Mostyn’s style of painting changed in a huge way after World War One. In 1918 he moved to Devon and left realism behind him, changed by war. He began to paint dream-like landscapes, idealising nature and creating a romantic world.
Sunshine by Thomas Mostyn Peace by Thomas Mostyn
Writing for the exhibition “From Trees to Trenches” (BBC Arts, Tate Britain 2016) Anita Sethi likened Mostyn’s “Peace” painting to the Japanese practice of Shinrin Yoku, or Forest Bathing.
“Looking at these paintings, I’m powerfully reminded of the “deep time” collected within trees: the fact that they exist for hundreds of years, that many will be here long after we are gone. Many of these paintings immortalising trees will outlast the trees themselves, showing just what a potent combination is that of trees and art . . . Appreciating arboreal art is a great reminder of the importance of valuing and protecting trees themselves – the “lungs” of our world – which in turn protect and sustain us.”
The beauty of trees – a world away from the trenches of the battlefield.
Finding Wilfred Owen – and Paul Nash
1967 was a very good year. It was the year of my introduction to clay as I began an “O” Level Pottery course at Burnley College which was taught by the great Derek Thornton. In the Art Department, I also found a boyfriend who wore an ex-army great coat and smoked French cigarettes.
My “A” Level English course introduced me to the poems of Wilfred Owen, fifty years on from when my great-uncle Jimmy died in the mud and hell that was Passchendaele.
As Owen brought the horror of war to the printed page, artist Paul Nash shared that fierce sense of mission – to portray the futility of war. Nash had a deep love of nature; his early works were inspired by the Chiltern woods and meadows – “I tried to paint trees as though they were human beings.”
Berkshire Downs 1922 Wood on the Downs 1929
Contrast the quiet beauty of these trees with those in what is arguably the greatest artwork of World War One, as seen below.
Paul Nash: We Are Making a New World, 1918
From “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Paul Nash: Wire, 1918
Finding Jimmy
A few years ago my cousin and I decided to go to the battlefields of the Western Front in order to find the grave of our great-uncle Jimmy. Armed with the grave number from the War Graves Commission we set off for Belgium. The cemetery where he was buried was named The Perth China Wall Cemetery, so named because the trenches there were so extensive they were likened to the Great wall of China.
We visited Sanctuary Wood close to Ypres, where soldiers rested up on the night before the following day’s battle. I have never felt an atmosphere like it in my life. The shell holes and the dugouts still there, but the trees – Nash had captured the devastation completely.
Sanctuary Wood near Ypres.
Found him! Uncle Jimmy’s grave, Perth China Wall Cemetery, Ypres.
Jimmy’s widow Margaret and their children were awarded two payments on his death, the first £2 3s 6d and a second of £12 10 shillings. They received his medals, the Victory Medal and the British War Medal. In post-war years many Victory Medals were sold during hard times as they were made from solid silver.
This blog started out as a look at trees in art from Constable to Nash but has become quite a personal account of significant times in my own life and a reminder of the futility of war.
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