2 CONSTABLE

After his marriage in 1816, a 40-year-old John Constable left the fields and rivers of his beloved Suffolk and settled more permanently in London. He had been in the habit of painting outdoors in the countryside he’d known all his life. His studio was, for the first time, miles from his subject. He was presented with the challenge of how to paint ambitious Royal Academy-worthy paintings without the wind blowing through the trees in front of his eyes.

He was determined to continue painting landscapes and only his own Dedham Vale would do. He decided to use the many small drawings and oil studies in his studio to create the large-scale compositions he had in mind. In 1821 he wrote to his friend John Fisher, “I do not consider myself at work without I am before a six-foot canvas.”

“For all his nostalgia… Constable was a revolutionary, a rebel in Jane Austen society”