Erastus J. Turner

Transcription

[MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER 1: Here we are in the National Gallery in London and were standing in front of "The Hay Wain" by John Constable. It was painted in 1821. And this painting, in a poll few years back, it was dubbed the number two most-loved painting in Britain. So let's talk about why that might be. SPEAKER 2: Well, I mean it's large. SPEAKER 1: It is very large and very British, in the sense that it shows what was intended to be kind of a quintessential English countryside scene. It's painted in Suffolk, which is an area of the country that's very green, and beautiful, and rural. And Constable, actually, was the artist who's best known for painting these beautiful, pastoral scenes in the English countryside. SPEAKER 2: And something about it is unique because what they're doing is reflecting the landscape back onto Britain. Because before this, everyone was always looking to Italy, looking abroad for that sense of Arcadia, that beautiful paradise that you wanted to go and capture. People were traveling around in Rome and copying people who'd gone before, like Claude, and their ideas of light and color what picturesque, beautiful places would look like. And what Constable is doing is he's turning the lens back on the UK and saying, hey, we have paradise here on our own. Look at our wonderful countryside. SPEAKER 1: And in addition, this is the beginning of the 1820s. The early 19th century was prime Industrial Revolution time in London. And this scene was actually painted not in the countryside, but in Constable's London studio. He did a lot of preparation sketches out in the countryside, but he actually painted this in his studio. He's looking at this Industrial Revolution that's eating up the British countryside. He's sort of holding up this beautiful, green, still, peasant lifestyle as something that's really in reaction to that industrialization. SPEAKER 2: Yes, it's definitely got a homely and very nostalgic feel to it. And that's relevant to Constable, because this land actually was owned by his father. So although it's nostalgic for a sort of an industry before the machination of the Industrial Revolution came along, it's also sort of nostalgic to his own childhood. And, yeah, I think you can see that closeness to the land that he's managed to capture his own passion and his own feeling. SPEAKER 1: There is a sense of fondness about the way this is painted. I mean he's very careful with the brush strokes, to pay a lot of attention-- that dog in front that's standing on the shore looking very attentively at the man in the middle of the pond. And that's the hay wain, by the way, refers to this carriage that's right in the middle. A wain being a carriage carrying hay. SPEAKER 2: And it's interesting because it's focusing on work. They're crossing the river. They've got their horses. The lady in the background there, she seems to be washing some clothes or something in the river. SPEAKER 1: So there is a view of working life going on here, but at the same time, it's very still and quiet. And Constable himself, he was part of this land owning, wealthier class. He was not actually somebody who would be working in this way. So at the same time, there's kind of an idealizing of the peasant workers and also not really showing them at work. This feels much more still than it would if you were actually watching a carriage ford across a stream. SPEAKER 2: Yeah, if you were to listen to this painting, you can imagine the noise of the river, and the racking of the wheels on the carriage, and the dog I'm sure was not standing there quietly. It's probably about to bark at the noise and the other animals going by. SPEAKER 1: So there is a very conscious choice that Constable is making to make this almost like a snapshot of the beautiful English countryside. And that you could just stumble across this, and it could be happening anywhere. This painting itself, this type of painting, and Constable's paintings in general, but this one has been reproduced many, many times and shows up as the prime, number one with a star illustration of this sort of English landscape painting from the beginning of the 19th century. And I think there is the potential to be over-saturated with reproductions and images of "The Hay Wain" so that when you actually stand in front of it you feel like you already know it. SPEAKER 2: And It's interesting that it's so popular now, because when it was first exhibited, it wasn't popular. It wasn't a huge success. And he actually took his paintings to the salons of Paris where he had a little bit more recognition and then came back to the UK. But the British public didn't appreciate this in the first offer. SPEAKER 1: See how far they've come. [MUSIC PLAYING]