The effect upon a temperament so artistic as Constable's was as permanent as it was quickly apparent. In less than a year we find his father reluctantly converted to his son's views in the choice of a career, and consenting to his sojourn in London, to learn the principles and technicalities of his profession, which he soon strove to forget and subsequently set at defiance. Two years of studio work was sufficient to convince him that his school was the open air; and in his own country, amid the scenes of his boyhood, he could shake off the chains of fashion, which bound the landscape-painter of that day, and go straight to nature for his inspiration. Concerning this he writes: "For the last two years I have been running after pictures, and seeing truth at second-hand. I have not endeavoured to represent nature with the same elevation of mind with which I set out, but have rather tried to make my performances look like the work of other men; I shall return to Bergholt, where I shall get a pure and unaffected manner of representing the scenes which may employ me--there is room for a _natural_ painter;" a prediction which was hardly fulfilled in his lifetime, for, with the majority of even intelligent lovers of art, his works were rarely understood and never popular, though the appreciative sympathy of an enlightened few kept him from despair. But, appreciated or not, he had found his life's work, and henceforth his mission was to depict the scenes around his old home, and to express the love he felt so keenly for "every stile and stump, and every lane in dear Bergholt."
"Painting," he writes, "is with me but another word for feeling, and I associate my careless boyhood with all that lies on the banks of the Stour--those scenes made me a painter, and I am grateful."
How lovingly he repaid this debt of gratitude to his native valley will be seen by the tender care he bestowed in depicting its beauties; indeed, the strongest impression produced after visiting Constable's country and again turning to a study of his works, is the marvellous sense of locality he has embodied in them. You seem to breathe the very air of Suffolk and hear again the "sound of water escaping from mill-dams," and see once more "the willows, the old rotten planks, the slimy posts, and brickwork," he delighted in. In spite of the fifty years which have elapsed since he laid aside his brush for ever, with all the accidents of time and season, the subjects he painted are still to be easily found, and clearly distinguished by anyone at all acquainted with his works. The only exception is in the original of the famous _Cornfield_, now in the National Gallery. Here the enemy has been busy, and by the aid of his children Growth and Decay, has succeeded in transforming the subject out of all recognition, tearing down the trees on the left, enlarging the group on the right, shutting out the view of Stratford Church, and choking up the brook from which the boy is drinking. Nor has Time been idle with this same boy, who six years ago, was carried to his last resting-place in Bergholt Churchyard, aged sixty-five....