Lowell Libson & Jonny Yarker Ltd

John Cranch
1751–1821
Interior of a Dovecote
Oil on panel
11 ½ x 10 ⅛ inches; 290 x 257 mm
Signed, lower right

We are very much looking forward to the opening of Constable: the Making of a Master at the V&A later this week. Constable’s relationships with other artists – particularly old masters – has been overlooked in much modern scholarship; this show, with Mark Evans’s excellent accompanying publication, will redress this balance.

One of Constable’s earliest influences was a little known painter, John Cranch (1751-1821) who the young Constable was introduced to by J.T. Smith in 1796. Cranch specialised in rustic scenes of everyday life, usually painted on panel in an engaging, slightly naïve manner. Cranch’s importance to the young Constable is demonstrated by the survival of a remarkable document, a memorandum entitled: ‘Painter’s Reading, and hint or two respecting study.’ This engaging list of publications was prepared by Cranch for the young Constable in September 1796 and includes an amusing survey of literature for the aspiring painter. Cranch notes that Reynolds’s Discourses should be read with caution, as ‘they go’ he explains: ‘to establish an aristocracy in painting:  they betray, and I believe have betrayed, many students into a contempt of everything but grandeur and Michael Angelo: the force, and the splendid eloquence, with which the precepts are inculcated, makes us forget, that the truth of Teniers, and the wit and moral purpose of Hogarth, have been, and will for ever be at least as useful, and diffuse at least much pleasure, as the mere sublimities of Julio and Raphael.’ (eds. Leslie Parish, Conal Shields and Ian Fleming-Williams, John Constable: Further Documents & Correspondence, London, 1975, pp.199-201.) For Cranch Reynolds’s hierarchy of painting was too restrictive, so he advises the young Constable to study: ‘the general habitudes of men and things; or Nature, as she is more and less perverted by the social institutions.’ This cry for naturalism was one that Constable would echo throughout his career and seek to emulate.

We are busy putting together our 2015 catalogue which will include a number of significant masterpieces (including works by Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Lawrence, Samuel Palmer, William Blake and J.M.W. Turner) as well as a few more unusual works. One of these is a rare panel by Cranch depicting a Dovecote. The lamp lit interior shows Cranch’s interest in Dutch painters, such as Teniers and his fascination in the activities of rural life (‘the habitudes of men and things’). Cranch’s naturalism and interest in subjects beyond the normal range of academic history painting had an important early impact on Constable and in this panel we see the kind of simple approach to a rustic scene which Constable would bring to landscape painting throughout his life.