by Nikolaus Pevsner
6-Constable and the Pursuit of Nature
Constable claimed that landscape painting is a branch of natural philosophy. Dr. Pevsner finds in this remark another instance of the English genius for rational observation. But now observation is directed upon nature, not upon man. Thomas Girtin, Crome, and Constable in their landscape painting ' led Europe away from man towards atmosphere '—their searching naturalism is into sky and air.
The psychological setting for their work is the passion, developed in the eighteenth century, of the English gentleman for the English landscape garden, which Dr. Pevsner holds to be ' the most influential of all English innovations in art.'