‘No Mercenary Views’? Constable’s English Landscape

Abstract

• Constable’s English Landscape 1830–2, a set of twenty-two mezzotints by David Lucas after paintings by the artist, has generally been viewed from art historical and biographical perspectives that connect its irregular production, aesthetic character and commercial failure to the artist’s creative and personal life or the development of Romanticism. This article reveals English Landscape as a less exceptional but more historically revealing artefact by placing it in the wider context of topographical print publishing in the early nineteenth century.