A gently sloping field, waiting for its crops to emerge. A worn cottage. A grey, battered coastline. The British landscape can be forgiven for being unremarkable at first glance, but look a little deeper and there is a myriad of intimate stories to tell.
Re-defining the British Landscape - A Comparison of the Art of John Constable Kyffin Williams
Everyone leaves their mark on their home, and two artists who capture this spirit of British landscape for me are John Constable and Kyffin Williams. You’ve doubtless heard of one of them, but probably not the other. These two painters found a way to translate their deep connection to the rural landscapes, fields and farms they called home, to elevate them to epic tales, admirations of rural life, and perhaps a yearning for simpler times. Through their paintings, Constable and Williams invite us to witness the intimate stories woven into the fabric of the landscapes they so passionately rendered.
John Constable - "Mundane, Unelevated Objects" Reimagined
John Constable was an English Romantic landscape painter of the 19th century, born in Suffolk. He sketched and painted cloud studies, and meticulously drew trees and fence posts, stumps and wagons for use in his studio paintings. He sought comfort in the familiar landscapes around Hampstead Heath with its gnarled trees and pastoral homilies, finding more sublime and picturesque landscapes such as the Lake District missing this spiritual connection when he visited. Constable carved out a distinctive niche of honest Realism, away from the classical styles of Dutch landscapes that were still very much at the heart of British landscape painting at the time. But to call Constable’s subjects “trivial” with “unelevated objects” is an insult to the care and dedication with which he studied them.
A plough at Bewdley Copyright: Photo (c) Victoria and Albert Museum
Look at his paintings of fir trees, which became known as “Constable’s Firs”, or the sweeping stretch of moody skies, and it’s clear to see where Constable’s heart lay. His emphasis on the changing light, particularly during the unpredictable months and short daylight hours of winter, places his paintings firmly in a time, and place. These are not recollections or renders, they are still images from the frame of his rural homeland.
A View on Hampstead Heath, Early Morning, 1821
Trees at Hampstead, 1829
Copyright: Photo (c) Tate
Branch Hill Pond, Hampstead Heath, with a Boy Sitting on a Bank, 1825 Copyright: Photo (c) Tate
Kyffin Williams - Getting To The Heart Of The Rural Landscape
Further west and over a century later, Welsh artist Kyffin Williams found his muse in his rugged sprawl of North Wales. Born in Anglesey in 1918, Williams’ art reflects the agricultural life of the region with its cattle farms, earthy tones and brow-creased farmers hunched over their daily work, as well as his brooding obsession with Snowdon and the Welsh peaks. This at a time when British artists were still reeling from the horrors of war (from which Williams was exempt due to epilepsy). Landscape art was a nostalgic, sombre view of a (mostly) unchanged world where one could escape.
While in Constable’s paintings, as the viewer we often sit high upon the landscape overlooking wide vistas and gathering clouds - surely a staple of the British landscape - in Williams’ art we’re nestled deeper into the landscape, perched on the rubble walls looking up into the grim, grey hills or wandering along the dirt paths.
Allt Corn Yd, Llanddona Copyright: Photo (c) Oriel Môn
Hillside with sheep Farmer and dog © Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / The National Library of Wales. Photo credit: Bangor University
Constable is preoccupied with the skies and clouds, but Williams’s skies are often obscured by the craggy mountains that dominate many of his canvases. His pathways too lead from the outer frame of the canvas, inviting the viewer in, if only to leave us somewhat stranded on a high, exposed plateau, where the occasional labourer or farmer can be seen, toiling away, back breaking, legs aching. Perhaps Kyffin saw something in common with the labouring men trudging through the mud and the soldiers who bravely battled through the trenches, an onlooker to both.
The Path From The Shore © Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / The National Library of Wales. Photo credit: Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / The National Library of Wales
I believe that the stories these two artists captured in their landscapes are often missed at first. What first appears as a simple painting of a horse and plough becomes deconstructed, peeling back layers to reveal a complex design process, carefully studied and positioned elements to balance and strengthen a composition, and a rejection of many of the classical notions of “sublime” which landscape artists of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries were bound to. Constable’s images are so carefully composed they could almost appear staged. Yet, his use of vectors, scale, and positioning feels natural, as though the scene unfolded in front of him as a completed painting. Kyffin Williams’ oils, on the other hand, appear to be draughted in a great hurry, as though he was chasing an idea, an emotion, or perhaps setting out to beat the unpredictable weather on the Welsh slopes. Through their very different approaches, both these artists have skillfully woven the intimate stories of rural Britain into the canvas, at very different times in the islands’ history.