"Fashion always had and will have its day - but Truth (in all things) only will last.", this is a sentence taken from one of John Constable's letters to his friend John Dunthorne. Constable is one of the most respected landscape painters in England and I didn't have the slightest idea he had exited at all until the day Mr. Ray (a customer from my coffee shop) talked to me about him.
I went to a couple of museums to see his works and one of his portraits that can be found at the National Portrait Gallery, there you'll find him close to William Blake and J. M. W. Turner (a terrible portrait by the way, I'm not sure if he really looked like an angry eagle or if the painter did the job with his left foot). John look so attractive that when you see his wife's portrait at the Tate you just go like 'love is a funny thing', and she wasn't just not attractive, she was very annoying and took her almost a decade to accept to marry him just because he was penny less and his best friend was the local plumber.
When I finished reading 'Constable In Love' (by Martin Gayford) I felt jealousy running in my veins mixing with my blood, this man wasn't a believer he was a knower, he was cocksure that his love was worth fighting for and that his art was meant to last forever. There are a massive amount of people that have delusions of grandeur, but he wasn't delusional he was right.
If you are up to reading a non-fictional Jane Austin like book go for that one, the author tells you not just Constable's story he puts everything in its context giving you a bigger picture of the society this charming man lived in, and that's what makes this book so enjoyable.
The only downside is that reading about someone like him made me realize that I haven't been sure about anything for far more then a while, for me sureness is something I only know now in theory and it made me wonder if I will ever be blessed again with this form of lunacy.
B x
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