Miskatonic University PressI saw artist John Constable quoted in the TLS recently, and the quote is all over the web but without a citation. It may be in a biography, but I tracked it down to “Lectures on Landscape” in John Constable’s Discourses, compiled and annotated by R.B. Beckett (Ipswich, Suffolk: Suffolk Records Society, 1970). The book is for sale from the Society; I think there are two copies in the whole province of Ontario.
This is from the finish of the fourth and final Thursday afternoon lecture, delivered at the Royal Institution on 16 June 1836:
Painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature. Why, then, may not landscape be considered as a branch of natural philosophy, of which pictures are but the experiments?
After quoting a remark from a friend that now his lecture is over he will “be instructed in his turn by other men,” Constable’s last line is:
In such an age as this, painting should be understood, not looked on with blind wonder, nor considered only as a poetic aspiration, but as a pursuit, legitimate, scientific, and mechanical.
Here is a scan of the top of page 69:
