Constable: Paintings, Drawings and Watercolours by Basil Taylor; John Constable's Sketch-Books of 1813 and 1814: Reproduced in facsimile: Introductory volume. 3 vols. by GrahamReynoldsReview by: T. S. R. BOASEJournal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 122, No. 5215 (JUNE 1974), pp. 463-464Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and CommerceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41371274 .

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JUNE I974 NOTES ON BOOKS

nephews was Alexander Pope, whose father may have had a hand in the mural inscription to Cooper and his wife in Old St. Paneras Church.

Cooper did a splendid portrait of Oliver Cromwell, referred to by David Piper as 'one of the most moving, one of the greatest of English portraits'. He did equal justice to Charles II, who was as good a subject for an artist as could have been found. Incidentally, Cromwell was doubly lucky - Cooper to do his likeness, and Thomas Simon (to whose name Mrs. Foskett adds a mysterious final 's'), to engrave his coins and medals. Both contemporaries were unsur- passed in their differing ways, and a collector fortunate enough to possess a Dunbar medal and a miniature by Cooper would do well to look to his security arrangements, for the objects will give him far too much pleasure for him to bear the thought of consigning them to the vaults of a bank.

Mrs. Foskett' s work, limited in scope as it has necessarily to be, is of value not only as assem- bling, conveniently and concisely, such few facts as are known about Cooper, and adding at least something to what was already in print about him, but as a pictorial record of his skill. She remarks on many wrong attributions, both in respect of artist and sitters, and these even extend to the public collections, to the confusion - and consequent vexation - of the student.

What is pre-eminently useful in this spec- ialist and attractive work is the Appendix on Cooper's Tainting Materials and Methods' con- tributed by V. J. Murrell of the Victoria and Albert Museum. It would be impossible to find a more expert and detailed account of the tech- nique of the seventeenth-century miniaturist. Mr. Murrell is severe about the work of Dr. G. C. Williamson, an earlier authority on Cooper, whose article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica has now given place to one by Graham Reynolds.

OLIVER WARNER

Constable: Paintings, Drawings and Watercolours By Basil Taylor London , Phaidon Press , 1973. £ 7. SO John Constable's Sketch-Books of 1813 and 1814 Reproduced in facsimile: Introductory volume by Graham Reynolds . 3 vols . London , Her Majesty's Stationery Office , 1973. £10.00 Mr. Taylor defines the purpose of his book as providing 'a large anthology of Constable's pic- tures and of his verbal observations upon art and nature'. This aim is faithfully carried out, but needless to say there is much more. Mr. Taylor fortunately at times allows some space to his own interpretation of the works, and gives us the benefit of his own mature consideration of them. Constable's comments, however, provide the main theme, and, though the text here is com-

paratively short, the whole relationship between his art and his personal life has never been so clearly set out. It is a unique document of the creative process. In his correspondence, Con- stable wrote not for public statement, but, like all good letter writers, for the relief of his own mind. Anxieties verging on irrationability often come through. It is easy to understand that many found him difficult and that he did not always show to advantage. But his married life is a moving love story, all the more for the constant clash between artistic absorption and family affection. Mr. Taylor, in the close contacts he has had with him through his writings and paintings, has obviously more and more found him congenial as a man. He finds, as do most people to-day, the sketches more readily ap- proachable than the finished works, but it is clear that this is not a view with which Con- stable would have concurred. 'In a sketch', he wrote, 'there is nothing but one state of mind, that which you were in at the time.' Vasari long ago had said of sketches that they were 'born in a moment of the fury of art', and it is this im- mediacy that makes their effect so arresting. The finished works have other qualities of clarity, charm of detail and depth of vista. They are a final statement and as such demand careful and unhurried inspection. But Constable's was not a wide-ranging mind. Pondering did not always enrich the first impulse, and could sometimes deaden the impact. Some twenty-five years ago, Lord Clark wrote that in the finished pictures Constable could be boring. I doubt if he thinks that now, and I am sure that, for all their prob- lems, appreciation of the completed versions of The Cornfield and The Haywain is essential to any full understanding of this major artist. Mr. Taylor's account of the various stages of Had- leigh Castle is a most enlightening commentary on Constable's process of work. It also illustrates a main thesis of the book, the change in Con- stable's art after his wife's death in 1828. 'At this time of despair, he would not select a cherished spot in the Stour valley or near his Hampstead house or in Fisher's part of Dorset, anywhere indeed associated with the joys of his childhood, courtship and marriage, places of which he was hardly ever to paint a dark inter- pretation. He wanted, presumably, a remote sub- ject which would not through fond memory aggravate an emotional wound, but could never- theless symbolise his sense of desolation.' This is hypothesis, an attempt to reach through the painting to the private tensions that created it, but such attempts, if backed by Mr. Taylor's experience, can be very illuminating.

He has something to tell us of Constable's technique, of his cloud studies, of his impact in France. He also has some kind words for some of the other landscape painters of the time, who showed in oil or watercolour something of the keen observation which has sometimes been too uniquely attributed to Constable. Much has

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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS JUNE I974

been written about this artist, but Mr. Taylor has found much that is new and stimulating to tell of him. There are 177 plates, of which 30 are in colour.

The publication in facsimile by the Victoria and Albert Museum of the two sketch-books of 1 8 13 and 1814 provides a further stage of inti- macy. Their very pocket size brings a sense of contact. Mr. Graham Reynolds provocatively opens his short introduction with a quotation where Wordsworth rebukes Scott for carrying a note book on his walks and entering in it what he saw, instead of 'leaving his pencil at home' and after some days had passed 'interrogating his memory as to the scene*. Scott was always ready, as perhaps Constable was in his later works, to find in nature a response to the emo- tions of his characters, but his marvellous des- criptions of landscape have something of the particularity of Constable. 'The moon shone broad and bright upon the placid face of the Solway Firth, and showed a slight ripple upon the stakes, the tops of which were just visible above the waves, and on the dark-coloured buoys which marked the upper edge of the en- closure of nets. At a much greater distance the line of the English coast was seen on the verge of the water, resembling one of those fog-banks on which mariners are said to gaze, uncertain whether it be land or atmospherical delusion.' This is close observation of nature, and a true parallel in works to Constable's brush, or to his pencil, for these small note-book sketches have a completeness of record in their own right. They are very different, as Mr. Reynolds stresses, from Turner's almost shorthand notes, which convey little of the locality, though when the sketch is compared on the ground with the view it represents these scanty outlines gain a new meaning. The Museum's provision of these facsimiles shows a very sound responsibility to- wards their treasures, and will give lasting plea- sure to all who possess them. A catalogue identi- fies the sketches and relates them to finished works.

T. S. R. BOASE*

Wedgwood: The Portrait Medallions By Robin Reilly and George Savage London3 Barrie & Jenkins, 1973. £17.50 Wedgwood Portrait Medallions : An Introduction By Robin Reilly London , Barrie & Jenkins, 1973. £ 1.7s . In 1774, the Secretary of our Society, Samuel More, urged Josiah Wedgwood and his partner Thomas Bentley to keep a private collection of all their 'Bass reliefs, Cameos and Intaglios'. The authors of the book under review would have blessed the memory of Samuel More if his ♦This review was contributed shortly before the author's death; see p. 458 above.

464

advice had been followed for it would have made their task a comparatively simple one.

The task was the compilation of a comprehen- sive illustrated catalogue of Wedgwood's portrait medallions, specifically those included in Josiah Wedgwood's catalogue of ornamental wares, of which six editions were published between 1773 and 1787. The catalogues were divided into 'Classes' of ware, Classes X and XI containing 'Heads of illustrious Moderns' and 'Princes and Statesmen' respectively. It is to the identifica- tion of these medallions that the book is devoted, although there are a few stray portraits from other Classes and post- 1787 additions. Great as is the wealth of the Wedgwood factory archives, no complete record of medallions exists. A num- ber of old moulds and models are in the factory museum but, even so, identification of the portraits is not infallible because sometimes the wrong names were inscribed on the moulds. Furthermore, many erroneous atrributions have been made and uncritically repeated in the past, and our authors therefore wisely decided to start from scratch; all their identifications are based on original research, involving the tracing of sources of portraits from paintings, engravings, coins, medals, etc. The fruits of their long labour are now before us, and at £17.50 a time one is entitled to know what to expect apart from 379 pages, format 12 X 8 i in., weighing 4 lb.

It begins with a 22-page introduction by George Savage on the general history of Wedg- wood, the man and his work. Mr. Savage is particularly illuminating when setting Wedg- wood's achievements in a European context: it is not generally realized what shattering impact, if that is the right word, Wedgwood's improved, tableware made on the Continental potteries. One or two things invite comment.

The enamelling studio opened by Wedgwood in Chelsea in 1769 was moved to the new large establishment in Greek Street, Soho, in 1774; it did not continue in Chelsea until after 1777 as here implied. When Wedgwood was perfecting his famous 'jasper' body between 1773 and 1775 he was working on an entirely new ceramic material of his own invention, with the specific purpose of producing something in imitation of the gems of antiquity. Mr. Savage says that there can be no doubt that he was seeking to make porcelain when he started experimenting with jasper, but it appears to me that here a confusion may exist between the ornamental ware body of jasper (which was indeed later described by Wedgwood in his 1787 catalogue as 'a white porcelain biscuit of exquisite beauty and delicacy') and a new white body which he was at the same time developing for his useful tableware. His partner Bentley was urging him to make a porcelain body, but this he never did commercially, in spite of taking his experiments in this direction to the point of making trial pieces for decoration.

Mr. Savage's piece is followed by a crisp

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