Ruskin 's general overall assessment of the achievement of John Constable now appears as a major misjudgment in his art criticism and even forms a general contrast to the growing appreciation of the artist's work at the time of the publication of the second edition of Modern Painters I. Fleming - Williams and Parris, The Discovery of Constable speculate on the matter in detail, pointing to Ruskin's possible lack of familiarity with Constable's work at first hand. They also point to Leslie's A Hand-Book for Young Painters (1855) in which he suggests that Ruskin could have formed his opinions on Constable, not from original works, but from the many forgeries in circulation. Although Constable's painting The Cornfield, had been on show in the National Gallery from 1837, and therefore must have been seen by Ruskin, Fleming - Williams & Parris believe that 'Ruskin's view of Constable appears to have been based on remarkably little knowledge of his works... It is difficult not to feel that Ruskin formed an unfavourable idea of Constable from a hasty look at the Life [ Leslie, Memorials of the Life of John Constable Esq. R. A, ], especially the plates, and then closed his mind to the subject' ( see Fleming - Williams and Parris, The Discovery of Constable, p. 51). Ruskin was also probably unaware of Constable's cloud studies in which he 'painted developments and processes of the weather in their unique individuality and yet on each occasion sufficiently generalised for a meteorologist to classify the general condition of which they are a particular example'. ( Badt, John Constable' s Cloud Studies, p. 46)