Constable as a Voyage of Discovery

Abstract

C. R. Leslie’s influential biography of John Constable highlighted that his friend’s artistic strengths stemmed from his unprecedented geographical “confinement.” The unpublished draft preface, however, compared Constable with a “voyage of discovery.” Attending to Leslie’s conflicting images of confinement and remoteness enriches our understanding of how Constable’s rhetorical preoccupation with the local was a response to his place within expanding global artistic, social, and economic networks. His conception of the English landscape was constructed against a background of exploration, colonization, and international commercial expansion, the negotiation of these realities animating his paintings, prints, and public theorizing.