1806-1826
The water-colour of A Bridge on the Stour (apparently that above Flatford Lock) indicates that Constable had assimilated the grand manner of Girtin as thoroughly as the science of Ruysdael. The same influence is evident in several fine drawings of Bergholt Church, which also belong to the summer of 1806, though they have an air of movement and freshness that already marks a difference between the older master and the modern. How fast the gulf widened may be seen from the sketches made during a tour in the Lake District later in the year. Most of those at Kensington represent the scenery at the south end of Derwentwater—Lodore, Watendlath, Castlehead, Grange, the crags and fells of Borrowdale, with occasional glimpses of Thirlmere, and the Valley of St. John. In the solemn View at Borrowdale, here reproduced, it is easy to trace how Constable hankered after the freshness and glitter of his native water-meadows amid the heavy grandeur of the Cumberland hills. It was among these mountain solitudes that the real Constable first revealed himself. His studies show how great an impression this northern scenery made upon him, though its character was too stern, too remote from the gentler charms of his beloved Suffolk, to retain any lasting place in his affection.
During the next two years he exhibited several of his Cumberland drawings, yet he never seems to have completed any considerable picture from them. Most of the oil-sketches made on this tour are thinly and directly painted in fresh natural colour, without any reference to Dutch traditions of brown glazes and conventional arrangements of lines and masses. The largest work of this kind with which I am acquainted is the Mountain Scene, in the possession of Mr. Lionel Phillips, which measures
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