INTRODUCTION. 



19 



35. 



Constable's 



his school, it became, as it were, a centre of thought, an 

 embodiment of a circle of modern ideas in this country, 

 whence it was reimported into France nearly a generation 

 after its first appearance. Something similar happened 

 to a once neglected but now renowned English landscape- 

 painter. Constable, whose pictures when exhibited in 

 France in 1824 created a profound sensation, and had pjance^^'"^ 

 such an influence on the artists of that country that they 

 are said to mark an era in landscape-painting there.-^ 



Such journeys of discovery in the realm of thought and 

 ideas have now become almost impossible. In the course 

 of our century Science at least has become international : se. 



Science be- 



isolated and secluded centres of thought have become comeinter- 



" national. 



more and more rare. Intercourse, periodicals, and learned 

 societies with their meetings and reports, proclaim to the 

 whole world the minutest discoveries and the most recent 

 developments. ISTational peculiarities still exist, but are 

 mainly to be sought in those remoter and more hidden 

 recesses of thought, where the finer shades, the untrans- 

 latable idioms, of language suggest, rather than clearly 

 express, a struggling but undefined idea. Thought has its 

 dawn and twilight, its chiaroscuro as well as its open day ; 

 but the daylight has grown wider and clearer and more dif- 



^ See Walter Armstroug in the 

 ' Xiueteenth Century ' for April 

 1887; Julius Meyer, ' Geschichte 

 der modernen franzosischen Mal- 

 erei,' Leipzig, 1867, Book 7, chap. 

 2 ; A. Rosenberg, ' Geschichte der 

 modernen Kunst,' vol. i. p. 63. 

 Rosenberg thinks the influence of 

 Constable on French Art is exagger- 

 ated, and mentions Paul Huet, 

 whose early pictures date from 

 1822. But an Englishman, Bon- 

 iugton, who, however, is claimed as 



of the French School, was even 

 before Huet and Constable. See 

 also what Delacroix wrote to Th. 

 Sylvestre in 1858: " Constable est 

 une des gloires anglaises. C'est un 

 veritable reformateur, sorti de I'or- 

 niere des paj^sagistes anciens. Notre 

 ecole a grandement protite de ses 

 examples et Gericault etait revenu 

 tout etourdi de I'un des grands pay- 

 sages qu'il nous avait envoyes " 

 (quoted by Emile Michel in 'Grande 

 Encyclopedic,' art. "Constable"). 



