Curator-driven ambitions mar this Constable show at the V&A

The V&A has an unparalleled collection of hundreds of works by John Constable (1776–1837), but hardly anyone seems to know about them. This is perhaps because they’re usually kept on an upper floor of the Henry Cole Wing, rather off the beaten track for most visitors.

This new exhibition gives us the chance to examine the V&A’s treasures, but because it has been installed in the extensive suite of galleries usually reserved for big survey shows, such as Art Deco or Modernism, a great deal of other material is also required to fill the space. So, instead of an exhibition devoted to the genius of Constable, we have an intensely art-historical display intended to demonstrate how much he owed to the masters of the past. This was an approach tried by the Tate in an ill-fated exhibition called Turner and the Masters in 2009. It didn’t work then, and it doesn’t really work now.

The problem with exhibitions dealing with the various influences on an artist is that they fall between surveys of a period and monographic shows that concentrate on one subject. Falling between, they satisfy the requirements of neither, and are usually exercises driven by the academic ambitions of curators. They are often fascinating — as indeed is this one — but they tend not to be particularly viewer-friendly, juxtaposing the lead name and public attraction with other artists of a similar (and sometimes difficult to distinguish) type. Thus people come to see Constable, and find themselves also looking at Ruisdael, Turner, John Linnell, Thomas Jones, William Mulready, and so on. The effect can be confusing.

That said, this exhibition is in other ways a pleasure to walk through, not least because there is so much space around the pictures.