Constable: A Portrait James Hamilton (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £25)
CONSTABLE’S CHARACTER HAS always presented a problem to his biographers. On the one hand we know he was kind, compassionate, sensitive and loving, yet we also know he could be spiteful, sarcastic, bitter and rude. The problem has been to bring these two sides of his character together to give a sense of a whole personality.
It is not an easy job. James Hamilton’s approach is different; he doesn’t try to explain the diverse faces of Constable: he shows them to his readers and lets us make up our own minds. Instead of trying to excavate a nugget of pure Constable, he goes in the opposite direction and shows us the world
