New York Review of Books
Christopher Benfey reviews three books about John Constable: John Constable: A Portrait by James Hamilton, Constable’s White Horse by William Kentridge and Aimee Ng, and Late Constable by Anne Lyles, Matthew Hargraves, and others. Benfrey reviews each book while considering the question "What do John Constable’s seductive paintings—those cunningly constructed scenes of English rural life
New York Review of Books
Christopher Benfey reviews The Mysterious Landscapes of Hercules Segers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on view through May 21, 2017. Benfey writes: "An air of unreality hangs over the astonishing exhibition of seventeenth-century Dutch artist Hercules Segers ... More than once, I found myself wondering whether this extraordinary etcher and painter—the creator
Slate Arts
Slate's Christopher Benfey considers Constable's cloud paintings and the artist's possible motivations for painting them. Benfey writes: "They seem, in fact, to register quite distinct aesthetic programs, as though what Constable is classifying isn't clouds at all, but rather whole schools of painting, along with their dominant moods. The best analogy may be Chopin's Etudes,