You know Landscape is my mistress – ‘t is to her that I look for fame – and all that the warmth of the imagination renders dear to Man. Here I am quite alone amongst the Oaks and solitudes of Helmingham Park ( a deer park, the seat of the Earl of Dysart, fh). I have taken quiet possession of the parsonage finding it quite empty. A woman comes up from the farm house ( were I eat) and makes the bed; and I am left at liberty to wander were I please during the day. There are abundance of fine trees of all sort; through the place upon the whole affords good objects [rather] than fine scenery, but I can badly judge yet what I may have to show You. I have made one of two ... drawing that may be useful. I shall not come home yet. I paint by all the daylight we have and that is little enough, less perhaps than you have by much ... imagine to yourself how a purl must look through a burnt glass. How much real delight have I had with the study of landscape this summer! Either I am myself improved in the art of seeing nature, which Sir Joshua call painting, or nature has unveiled her beauties to me less fastidiously. Perhaps there is something of both, so we will divide the compliment. However one’s mind may be elevated, and kept us to what is excellent, by the works of the Great Masters, still Nature is the fountain’s head, the source form whence all originality must spring.
- John Constable
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