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Image: Study of the trunk of an elm tree, 1821 Artist: John Constable |
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| From left to right: Portrait of a Girl Standing by Lucian Freud; Brighton Beach with a Fishing Boat and Crew (detail) by John Constable |
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This major exhibition set out to confirm John Constable as one of the great masters of European painting. It was selected by one of Europe’s greatest living artists, Lucian Freud, whose work was the subject of a major retrospective at Tate Britain. The exhibition was organised by the British Council, the Réunion des Musées Nationaux de la France and the Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Freud had never before agreed to curate an exhibition and this unique event showed both artists in a new light. Freud’s choice of Constable emphasises the urgent and radical qualities of his work. Not for him the studies of skies, but rather the integration of skies with buildings, fields, machinery and people – the whole business of a complex and passionate life.
A significant number of portraits are included in the show, among them The Bridges Family, representing the sturdy yeomanry of Suffolk; Rear-Admiral Thomas Western (Constable’s own son went to sea as a midshipman); and the redoubtable trio of Mrs Pulham, Mrs Edwards and Mrs Tuder, as handsomely bedecked and beribboned as any matron in Jane Austen, with whom of course they are contemporary.
Other works in Freud’s generous, inclusive selection (194 paintings, oil studies and works on paper) include The Haywain (National Gallery), which has only rarely been exhibited outside Britain. This iconic painting was shown at the Paris Salon of 1824, together with View on the Stour, now at the Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California and also in the exhibition. Together they created a sensation and inspired Delacroix to re-paint part of The Massacre of Chios as a result.
Constable’s sketchbooks from the Louvre will be on show, as will his six-footer, Waterloo Bridge, from Anglesey Abbey (where the panelling of the room in which it hangs is made from parts of old Waterloo Bridge); and his altarpiece, The Ascension, commissioned for St Michael’s Church, Manningtree, and recently restored by the Constable Trust.
The exhibition was accompanied by a full-colour catalogue in French only, published by the Réunion des Musées Nationaux and written by the art historian, Dr John Gage, and Anne Lyles, Curator of the Constable Collection at Tate Britain. The catalogue included a substantial interview with Lucian Freud by William Feaver, curator of the Freud exhibition at Tate Britain and lead curator of the Constable exhibition, together with the French art historian and curator at the Louvre, Oliver Meslay. The catalogue completely sold out during the exhibition.
Grand Palais, Paris:
10 October 2002 - 13 January 2003
For further information please contact Katie Boot |
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