Por Luciano Migliaccio
Como se sabe, a vista da catedral de Salisbury, na pintura A Catedral de Salisbury Vista do Jardim do Bispo, constituiu ao longo de sua vida um dos temas de eleição de Constable. Sua amizade com o Dr. John Fischer, bispo de Salisbury, e sua família, em cuja casa hospeda-se com freqüência, leva-o a pintar a catedral tal como é vista daquele preciso ângulo. Em todas as versões, comparece o bispo com sua esposa, indicando com a bengala “sua” catedral. O exemplo mais comumente citado desta paisagem é o conservado no Victoria and Albert Museum, de 1823, encomendado pelo bispo, exposto na Royal Academy naquele mesmo ano e retocado a pedido do próprio bispo no ano seguinte. Uma segunda versão, assinada e datada de 1826 (mas a data pode referir-se a uma retomada da obra dois ou três anos após sua primeira execução) encontra-se na Frick Collection de Nova York, tendo pertencido à filha de John Fischer. Constable retorna sobre as duas telas a pedido de seus amigos de Salisbury, que desejam uma composição com o céu menos oculto pelo arvoredo, como efetivamente se vê em ambas as versões. O fato de a versão do Masp, reproduzida em 1948 e em 1950 nas capas das revistas Connoisseur e Apollo, ocultar mais o céu entre as ramagens parece confirmar, na opinião de Bardi (carta à editora Rizzoli de 5/9/1978), uma datação anterior da obra, hipótese já formulada por Andrew Shirley em uma longa expertise (Masp, 31/8/1954), realizada quando houve a exposição da obra do Masp na Tate Gallery em 1954. Esta expertise, aqui transcrita na íntegra, posiciona muito favoravelmente a versão em questão na série a que pertence: “Of all the documented variants on this theme, this has the most of the original freshness of the universally accepted sketch in the T. W. Bacon Collection, which has the liquid flash of a Rubens decoration (Shirley: Leslie’s Life of Constable, pl. 81). It follows the solution achieved in the sketch of the painter’s central problem – how to soften the uncompromising yet lovely line of the spire, of which Constable wrote with affection that “it darted up into the sky like a needle.” Here, perhaps most perfectly, he interprets the contrast between the severity of human architecture and the sinuosity of the trees, whose graceful arabesques break across the firm lines of the stone. This beauty is absent from the versions in the Victoria and Albert Museum and (formerly) in the Mirehouse Collection, which were painted for that kind but literal-minded man, Bishop Fischer. But it recurs in the Frick Collection picture of 1826. From this date one may judge that Constable preferred his first approach to the subject. These differences prompt another question. It used to be assumed that the sketc for an Academy picture immediately preceded the finished picture. I have become increasingly convinced that this was not the way in which Constable’s mind worked. He was a dreamer, but a practical dreamer, who drew from the drawers of his memory. If this personal opinion is right, this picture and the Bacon sketch anticipate the Victoria and Albert Museum picture (exhibited at the Academy in 1823) by at least two years. Both are nearer to The Haywain (1821) in handling than to The Lock (1824). This picture, then, become capital in Constable’s development. It implies that Constable’s preoccupation with Rubens suffered a shorter eclipse than we had thought after his second attempt to master Rubens’s technical principles in 1815. Since the whole of the Constable-Delacroix-Bonington movement was based on Rubens, a fact of this sort has a solid place in the history of Nineteenth-Century painting”.

— Luciano Migliaccio, 1998

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