-Liechtenstein-Museum-Vienna.jpg) |
| Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur Flower Still Life with Black Grapes 1838 porcelain plaque Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
-Liechtenstein-Museum-Vienna.jpg) |
| Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur Flower Still Life with White Grapes 1838 porcelain plaque Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
 |
| Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur Cup and Saucer with Shell Design 1813 porcelain Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
 |
| Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur Cup and Saucer with Pompeian Design 1798 porcelain Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
 |
| Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur Cup and Saucer with Amethyst Design ca. 1804 porcelain Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
 |
| Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur Cup and Saucer with Floral Design ca. 1804 porcelain Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
-Liechtenstein-Museum-Vienna.jpg) |
| Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur Representation of the Gemma Augustae 1813 porcelain (after Roman cameo) Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
-Liechtenstein-Museum-Vienna.jpg) |
| Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur Hydria ca. 1790 porcelain (after Grecian urn) Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
 |
| Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur Design for Covered Bowl 1815 watercolor and gouache on paper Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna |
 |
| Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur Design for Medallions of Ancient Figures ca. 1800 watercolor and gouache on paper Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna |
 |
| Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur Design with Antique Sculpture of Warrior ca. 1800 gouache on paper Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna |
 |
| Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur Design with Emperor Rudolf I ca. 1820 gouache on paper Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna |
 |
| Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur Design for Marbled Pattern ca. 1800 gouache on paper Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna |
 |
| Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur Design for Decorative Border ca. 1800 gouache on paper Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna |
 |
| Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur Design for Decorative Border ca. 1800 gouache on paper Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna |
 |
| Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur Design for Apple Blossom Motif ca. 1800-1825 gouache on paper Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna |
But if this is ture, are we not led into what philosophers call an infinite regress, the explanation of one thing in terms of an earlier which again needs the same type of explanation? If Constable saw the English landscape in terms of Gainsborough's paintings, what about Gainsborough himself? We can answer this. Gainsborough saw the lowland scenery of East Anglia in terms of Dutch paintings which he arduously studied and copied. We have his drawing after Ruisdael, and we know that it was this vocabulary that he applied to the rendering of his own idyllic woodland scenes. And where did the Dutch artist get his vocabulary? The answer to this type of question is precisely what is known as the "history of art." All paintings, as Wölfflin said, owe more to other paintings than they owe to direct observation.
That the artist can learn from tradition how to render nature it never entered Constable's mind to doubt. Ruskin having repeated the legend of Constable's unwillingness to learn from others, Leslie reminded the readers of his Handbook for Young Painters that "Constable's first-known attempts in Art were pen-and-ink copies of the prints from Raphael's Cartoons; his next, copies of the etchings of Ruysdael; and that, later in life he made careful copies of Wilson, of Ruysdael, Rubens, Teniers, and Claude. His walls also were covered with pictures, drawings and prints, of the great landscape and other painters." We have seen him copying the drawing-book of Alexander Cozens, and even toward the end of his life he wrote to the father of a young painter-friend who had recently died. "If you can lend me two or three of poor John's studies of the ashes in the town meadow . . . I will take great care of them. I am about an ash or two now." In the same period, we find him writing about the collection of Ham House: "There is a truly sublime Cuyp, still and tranquil, the town of Dort is seen with its towers and windmills under the insidious gleam of a feint watery sun, while a horrid rent in the sky almost frightens one, and the lightning descends to the earth over some poor cottages with a glide that is so much like nature that I wish I had seen it before I sent away my 'Salisbury'."
Constable was convinced Cuyp had made a valid discovery. He had examined Cuyp's rendering of lightning and found it like nature. Not a transcript, of course – who could transcribe a flash of lightning, and that in oil paint? – but a configuration which, in the context, became the valid cryptogram for that unpaintable glare. On that point, then, there was no need to examine any more. For I think we may now be a little better equipped to appreciate Constable's description of landscape painting as experiments in what he calls "natural philosophy," that is, in science. He thought, and rightly, that only experimentation can show the artist a way out of the prison of style toward a greater truth. Only through trying out new effects never seen before could he learn about nature.
– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960)