In 1832 Constable, in sending a parcel of prints to a kinsman, writes respecting the open-letter proofs on India-paper and the ordinary prints, of which he sends a selection, that they are both "equally good, for all are printed by ourselves." Lucas had a printing-press fitted up in his own house. We commend this opinion of the artist to connoisseurs who are learnedly obscure concerning Constable's states, and evidently see more in them than did the artist; it is the old story of the Browning Society over again.
In all, this little series of twenty-one mezzotints, done by Lucas under the artistic supervision of Constable, stands as a monument to the memory of the artist who caught the fleeting glory of the Suffolk lowlands. The prints are all delectable—the vale of Dedham, the winding Stour, Helmingham Park, Stoke-by-Neyland, or the silvery stretches of the Orwell. The son of a miller, he learned to interpret the message of the wind. The flying packs of clouds stretched across the sky and the sparkle of the sunlit trees, with deft brush he transferred to his canvases. He complained that artists drew windmills that would not turn round. He says "a miller could tell not only what they were doing inside, but the direction and force of the wind blowing at that time by the shapes of the vanes and the sails." His Mill near Brighton is a splendid mezzotint sparkling with light and suggestive of the breezy downs, and his Yarmouth brings him and his engraver into touch with Nature in her transitory radiance.
