John Constable

Yesterday, my wife and I got out of the heat and headed to Williamstown, MA. We made our annual pilgrimage to the Clark Art Museum, located in the Berkshires. We have not found many world class art museums set in a rural environment such as this. 

On the drive over I noticed how important it was to have large, mature trees in our life. The environmental benefits provided by the shade and lush greenery made it a more enjoyable day. The cultural landscape of our every day experiences at home consist of treeless parking lots and the proliferation of scrawny fruit trees. In general, there is a mindset that trees are too much trouble with all the raking and pruning etc. However, to experience a tree that is allowed to grow in a heathy setting for decades and even centuries, truly is beneficial to our species.

Enough with my rant. My wife and I made sure our beloved paintings were still hanging on the walls of the Clark Art Museum. There is a masterful Thomas Gainsborough double portrait which we admire in addition to many John Singer Sargent paintings. There are too many other great painters from the past with their works on display to include here.

However, this classic John Constable(1776-1837) painting titled The Wheat Field, I associate with the very first time I visited the museum which was decades ago and certainly prior to to the museum's recent expansion. Constable, an Englishman, painted this oil on canvas in 1816. 

The write-up by the painting at the Clark Art Museum succinctly states that traditional farming practices were disappearing as a revolution in agricultural techniques swept across the British countryside. This nostalgia Constable felt was a result of a rapidly changing way of life. There are parallels to the times we live in, certainly full of technological advances whether for the advancement or regression of society. Regardless, I love the color of the wheat field and regrettably, acknowledge how greater connected to the natural world our ancestors were.