Constable's Year

I’ll be keeping this marvellous book, whose roots are deep, whose take on Constable’s history, art and life is so enlightening and whose landscapes are as alive and fresh as ever, close to me through all the seasons * Ali Smith *
In this extraordinary book Susan Owens draws a multidimensional portrait of Constable, bringing him alive not only biographically but also meteorologically and geographically in his love of the skies above and the work-a-day East Anglian landscape * Martin Gayford, author of Constable in Love *
It is rare for an art historian to be so intimate with a painter’s every work, and with the degree to which a single sketched idea could be taken up and developed into a painting years or even decades later. Constable’s Year is the result of the author’s own years spent affectionately immersed in Constable’s drawings and oil sketches … The result is a biography which enables the reader to come very close to a romantic artist who could write with sincerity that “painting is with me but another word for feeling” * Literary Review *
You really need Susan Owens’s delightful journey through Constable’s Year to appreciate how intensely he registered what was going on around him * Ferdinand Mount, TLS *
On the 250th anniversary of his birth, Constable is brought to vivid life * Apollo *
Glorious * The Field *
An insightful new book celebrating 250 years since John Constable’s birth * Galerie *
Owens’ close consideration of Constable’s paintings in the context of his life and times - and nature’s mutable seasons - is a gift to readers… Owens’ book is a testament to the emotional power and timelessness of great art * The Christian Science Monitor *
A delightful romp through the life and work of the painter… By the end of the book, Constable emerges as an idiosyncratic visionary and the true father of modern landscape * The New Criterion *
Revelatory… Constable’s Year walks the painter’s territory in extraordinary, felicitous detail, giving a profound reckoning of how one romantic artist was formed by one provincial river valley… an education in how to see one Romantic artist, and thus how to approach all the Romantic arts with fresh eyes * Peter Davidson, PN Review *
Exquisitely illustrated… A fresh and engaging approach to the renowned 19th-century painter and his work, encouraging us to reconsider his life and landscapes… Convincingly argues that Constable’s deep connection to the land doesn’t just set him apart from his peers; it also keeps his work relevant today… Particularly enriching is Owens’s focus on weather phenomena of the time, which Constable watched with a keen and quasi-scientific eye * Hyperallergic *

Dr Susan Owens is an expert on British landscape art and a leading critical voice in the field. Her publications include The Story of Drawing: An Alternative History (2024), which was Apollo magazine’s 2024 Book of the Year, Imagining England’s Past: Inspiration, Enchantment, Obsession (2023) and Spirit of Place: Artists, Writers and the British Landscape (2020). She was Curator of Paintings at the V&A until 2013, and was involved in the major V&A exhibition and catalogue ‘Constable: The Making of a Master’ (2014).

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