Skirting the River Stour, which divides the counties of Essex and Suffolk, lies lush countryside that was made famous the world over by John Constable. Perhaps the greatest-ever English landscape artist, he was born in Suffolk, and this quintessential English rural idyll that he painted is of course known as ‘Constable Country’. Once voted Britain’s favourite painting, The Hay Wain depicts a now much changed but still recognisable rural landscape. However, it is a lesser-known work that has particular resonance for me. It shows a river scene of tranquil pastures meeting a distant verdant tree line and onwards to a seemingly endless East Anglian sky; it is here that I stepped out in pursuit of deer in the dark, awaiting the arrival of a spring morning.
“Much has changed since Constable surveyed this scene”
As I
