 Christiaan Johannes Lanooy Three Vessels 1920 glazed earthenware Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, Netherlands |
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| Anonymous German Potter Tile with Crucifixion Scene ca. 1560-1600 lead-glazed earthenware stove tile Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Florentine Imitator of Giovanni della Robbia Judith and Holofernes ca. 1800-1850 maiolica Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Giovanni della Robbia Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist and St Jerome ca. 1525 glazed terracotta Bode Museum, Berlin |
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| Staffordshire Potteries Dessert Dish ca. 1755-65 lead-glazed earthenware Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Anonymous Potter working in Delft Birdcage ca. 1700-1730 tin-glazed earthenware Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Staffordshire Potteries Medici Venus ca. 1815-20 lead-glazed earthenware figurine Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne the Younger Portrait of Louis XV ca. 1745 lead-glazed earthenware (faience) Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts |
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| Brislington Pottery (near Bristol) Posset Pot 1699 tin-glazed earthenware Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Bow Porcelain Manufactory (London) Youth as Personification of Autumn ca. 1765-70 porcelain Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Patanazzi Family (Urbino) Inkstand with River God ca. 1575-1605 maiolica Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| attributed to Domenico da Venezia Pharmacy Jar ca. 1560-70 maiolica Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| attributed to Domenico da Venezia Pharmacy Jar ca. 1560-70 maiolica Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Brislington Pottery (near Bristol) Wash-Basin as Scallop-Shell 1683 tin-glazed earthenware Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Anonymous British Potter Game Board 1723 tin-glazed earthenware Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Anonymous Japanese Potter Hare 18th century porcelain Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
When old Fuseli made the famous remark that Constable's landscapes made him call for his greatcoat and umbrella, he showed he understood the kind of truth the master was aiming at. Not the dry but the humid, not the linear but the atmospheric, not the lasting but the transient. As Constable himself said in the preface to his published landscapes, to give "one brief moment caught from fleeting time a lasting and sober existence." Lasting and sober. We do well to remember these beautiful honest words before we rashly fall in with the view that Constable's finished paintings are less interesting, less artistic than his sketches.
The source of this preference is clear. We prefer suggestions to representations, we have adjusted our expectations to enjoy the very act of guessing, of projecting. And we rationalize this preference by fancying that the sketch must be nearer to what the artist saw and to what he felt than the finished work. I do not deny that artists are human and sometimes spoil their works. But I consider it a heresy to think that any painting as such records a sense impression or a feeling. All human communication is through symbols, through the medium of a language, and the more articulate that language the greater the chance for the message to get through.
– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960)