Turner and Constable: The Inhabited Landscape

Turner and Constable: The Inhabited Landscape features more than fifty landscapes by J. M. W. Turner and John Constable, artists who elevated the status of landscape painting in the nineteenth century. The exhibition includes oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints that explore the importance of the built landscape and the human figure within it. Constable and Turner lived and worked during a period of great political, social, and industrial change for Great Britain. They were aware of modernizing farming practices, improvements in nautical safety, the rise of European tourism, and the urbanization of England. In this exhibition, Turner’s and Constable’s works are explored to reveal social, cultural, political, and personal significance of the subjects depicted.

Turner and Constable celebrates the Manton Collection of British Art, created by Sir Edwin and Lady Manton and given to the Clark in 2007, by highlighting the works from that collection—such as Constable’s The Wheat Field (1816). Works collected by Sterling and Francine Clark, such as Turner’s Rockets and Blue Lights Close at Hand to Warn Steam Boats of Shoal Water (1840), acquired in 1932, are also included in the exhibition, as are targeted loans from other New England institutions.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

John Constable, The Wheat Field, 1816. Oil on canvas Gift of the Manton Art Foundation in memory of Sir Edwin and Lady Manton, 2007, Clark Art Institute