John Constable RA (1776–1837) transformed landscape painting in the nineteenth century.
He grew up in East Bergholt, the son of a wealthy miller and corn merchant operating on the river Stour at Flatford. In 1799, Constable enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools in London. The R.A. chiefly advocated history painting, but like his predecessor Gainsborough, Constable was far more interested in painting the natural landscape, ‘pure and unaffected’.
He mainly painted the countryside around the villages of East Bergholt, Flatford, Dedham, Stratford St Mary and Langham, but is also famous for his depictions of Salisbury and Hampstead. They were places of great personal significance to him. Between 1819 and 1825 Constable exhibited several ‘six-footer’ landscapes, most famously The Haywain (The National Gallery, London) and The Leaping Horse (The Royal Academy of Arts, London). It was not only their scale which broke with convention, but also the rough, impressionistic way in which they were painted and the depiction of commercial activity on the Stour.
