Departure of St. John the Baptist

St. John the Baptist returning to the Desert

Egg tempera on wood, Giovanni di Paolo, 1454  © National Gallery, London

[I fell in love with this painting on my first visit to the National Gallery and always try to see it when I am there.]

A town and country life for Constable

"My wife is at Hampstead, and both she and the infant are doing well.  I am endeavouring to secure a permanent small house there, and have put the upper part of this house into an upholsterer's hands to let, made my painting room warm and comfortable and have become an inhabitant of my parlours.  I am three miles from door to door, and can have a message in an hour.  I shall be more out of the way of idle caller, and above all, see nature, and unite a town and country life, and to all these things I hope to add a plan of economy…"

Letter to John Fisher, from  Charlotte Street,  November 28th 1826


" …This house is to my wife's heart's content; it is situated on an eminence… and our little drawing-room commands a view unsurpassed in Europe, from Westminster Abbey to Gravesend.  The dome of St. Paul's in the air seems to realise Michael Angelo's words on seeing the Pantheon: 'I will build such a thing in the sky.'  We see the woods and lofty grounds of the East Saxons to the north-east.   …I have painted one of my best pictures here."

Letter to John Fisher, from  Well Walk, Hampstead,  Aug 26th 1827

Memoirs of the Life of John Constable  C.R. Leslie

John Painter at Hardwick Hall

"The ceiling and cornice in the Long Gallery were entrusted to another plasterer, John Marker, and the frieze was painted by John Painter -- a name which may have been a convenient substitute for something unpronounceably foreign.  Painter occupied an important position, acting as a sort of general foreman as well as exercising his own craft, for which he had to be supplied with a lot of special material.  For example, four gallons of linseed oil at fourpence the gallon and a runlet to put the oil in.  Two pounds of yellow ochre cost another four pence and two hundredths of painting gold came to twelve shillings.  He also needed a pound of red lead and six pounds of varnish which was bought at Nottingham at sixteen pence the pound, not to mention two pounds of verdigrease [sic] which cost six shillings and eightpence.  Other exotic sounding commodities ordered by John Painter include fernando bark, brasill, blockwood, allorme, fusticke and coppris, but his list ends with a prosaic request for a pound of gum and two pounds of glue costing one and fivepence."

Mistress of Hardwick  Alison Plowden

Nicola da Urbino

"Every touch is sensitive, singing and dancing, charged with a mysterious life of its own."

The Art of the Potter  William Honey