Constable, William
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- Constable, William
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(1721 - 91) of Burton Constable, Yorks, s. of Cuthbert Constable (formerly Tunstall) of Burton Constable; suc. fa. 1747; m. 1775 Catherine Langdale; completed remodelling of Burton Constable 1778; FRS, FSA.
1750, 1765 Naples, Rome
1770 - 1 [dep. Yorks. 22 Nov. 1769] Turin (24 Jun. 1770), Milan (30 Jul.), Florence (9 Aug. - Oct.), Naples (13 Nov. 1770 - 29 Jan. 1771), Rome (2 Feb. - Apr.), Bologna (14 Apr.), Milan (25 Apr.) [Yorks. 5 Jul.]
From an old Yorkshire Catholic family, William Constable was a man of liberal views and considerable learning, both in the fine arts and in natural and experimental philosophy. He was three times in Italy, but little is known of his two earlier visits. A 'Sig. Costable Ingle.Catolico' aged thirty was in Rome in 1750 lodging at the Casa Guarnieri with four other English Catholics ('Agoston' [Sir Thomas Haggerston], 'Flitudd' [W. Fleetwood] a major domo, William 'Squir' [Squire] and Charles 'Vater' [Walter]).1 On 28 September 1766 James Byres wrote to him in Yorkshire concerning sculpture and cameos, and enclosing letters for a Mr Howard (see Edward Howard). The familiarity of the letter suggests that Constable had recently met Byres in Rome2 and he was possibly the 'Constabele' in Capua on 5 January 1765 going from Naples to Rome.3
The tour he made in 1769 - 71 is better documented.4 He travelled with his sister Winefred (c.1731 - 74), who kept a diary in which she recorded the minutest details of her brother's health (which was never good), but very few comments on Italy.5 In Florence Constable was to discuss cures for the gout with Horace Mann who found him 'a very sensible man';6 General James Pattison noticed them both in Florence on 9 October.7 Mann introduced them to William Hamilton, who had received them both in Naples by 27 November.8 By February they were back in Rome where Father Thorpe deplored their lack of Catholic respect: William Constable, he later wrote, 'stifled every sentiment of devotion, omitted every exercise of religion and disregarded the faith'.9 On 10 February Constable wrote that he was following James Byres on a course of antiquities and in an undated letter of that month he described his days:_'the morning till 12 to myself. then Mr Byres & Antiquity & Pictures & Sculpture till four or Later. After Dinner, Dress, Crowds, Conversation, Cards, Concerts. as all alike, equally indifferent, Cold Tedious'; the tedium was slightly relieved when Winifred won '23 pounds' at cards playing with General Shuvalov.(10)
Father Thorpe also noticed that Constable was buying expensively in Rome.(11) He was gathering works of art for Burton Constable, his remodelled Yorkshire home: from Maron the remarkable double portrait of himself and his sister as Cato and Marcia (Burton Constable), eventually dispatched from Civitavecchia in December 1774, and two pictures 'in imitation of the Busts of Brutus and Scipio' (finished May 1771; untraced); from Pichler their carved cameo portraits (Burton Constable); from Philip Wickstead the portrait of the dwarf Baiocho (Burton Constable), and from James Nevay copies from Annibale Carracci and Guido Reni (Burton Constable). Through Byres Constable obtained from Piranesi a flower picture; he also bought the seventeen volumes of works by Piranesi (who dedicated plates in his Vasi, Candelabri, Cippi [1778] to both Constable and his sister), and other engravings by Cunego after Gavin Hamilton.
Constable subsequently maintained a correspondence with Byres (see note 2) concerning these commissions and others, such as those of 1785 for Roman views by Volpato and Ducros, and the portraits by the aged Batoni of his Italian relatives: a copy from the Subleyras portrait of the comtesse Mahony (Lady Anne Clifford), Constable's first cousin (Burton Constable; Clark/Bowron 454) and portraits of her daughter and son-in-law, the Princess and Prince Giustiniani (SNG and priv. coll., Italy; Clark/Bowron 456 - 7).
1. AVR sa, S.Andrea delle Fratte. 2. Byres letters MSS c. 3. ASN cra 1277. 4. See R.B. Ford, Apollo, 99[1974]:408 - 15. I. Hall, William Constable as Patron, exh. cat., Hull, [1970], and CL, 1982: 22 Apr., 1114 - 17; 29 Apr., 1198 - 1202; 6 May, 1278 - 81, and 13 May, 1358 - 61. 5. Notes by Ivan Hall and RBF, inc. itinerary. 6. Wal.Corr., 23:244. 7. Pattison letters MSS (9 Oct. 1770). 8. Eg.2641, f.75 (Mann, 27 Nov. 1770). 9. Thorpe letters MSS (21 Sep. 1774). 10. Bodl., Engl. letters c 229 (note by D. Connell).11. Ibid. (23 Feb. 1771).