Constable In Love

About the book

Art critic Martin Gayford, author of The Yellow House, brings the Regency period to life in Constable in Love: Love, Landscape and the Making of a Great Painter his account of the life of English Romantic painter John Constable.

Love, not landscape, was the making of Constable. . .

John Constable and Maria Bicknell might have been in love but their marriage was a most unlikely prospect. Constable was a penniless painter who would not sacrifice his art for anything, while Maria's family frowned on such a penurious union. For seven long years the couple were forced to correspond and meet clandestinely.

But it was during this period of longing that Constable developed as a painter. And by the time they'd overcome all obstacles to their marriage, he was on the verge of being recognised as a genius.

Martin Gayford brings alive the time of Jane Austen in telling the tremendous story of Constable's formative years, as well as this love affair's tragic conclusion which haunted the artist's final paintings.

'Delightful...a small drama of love, frustration and despair played itself out with massive repercussions for the history of painting' Financial Times

'Gayford's nuanced narrative throws much-needed fresh light, as well as real understanding, on both Constable's painting and his love life' Sunday Telegraph

'A scrupulously observed tragical-comical tale' Evening Standard

Martin Gayford is a celebrated art critic and journalist who has written for the Spectator and the Sunday Telegraph and is the current Chief European Art Critic for Bloomberg. In his other book The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles Gayford depicts the period in which artistic geniuses van Gogh and Gauguin shared a house in the small French town of Arles.