John Constable: An English Romantic Painter

The British Romantic painter John Constable was born on 11th June 1776 to Golding and Ann Constable, in East Bergholt, Suffolk. Known for his landscape paintings in oil on canvas and his immortalisation of the area surrounding his home through the painting "Dedham Vale" (1802), Constable's love of the rustic and naturalistic response to nature places him with his contemporary and romantic poet William Wordsworth.

John Constable attended a boarding school 15 miles from East Bergholt, then at Lavenham and finally at Dedham Grammar School. Though he had to join his father's business, he ultimately succeeded in persuading him to let him pursue a career in art and in 1799, John Constable attended the Royal Academy in London. Here he was deeply influenced by the paintings of Claude Lorrain, Annibale Carracci, Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob van Ruisdael and Thomas Gainsborough.

Constable used to earn money by copying old landscapes, but he was keen to employ his own style of painting and used strong colour, texture and light that made contemporaries and art historians classify him as an Impressionist. The landscapes he painted were in oil on canvas. He usually worked in open air and completed the finishing touches inside his studio. In 1803, he began exhibiting his paintings in the Royal Academy.

Constable, in his youth, used to make sketching trips to the countryside in Suffolk. Many of his best works are of outdoor scenes of his native countryside and London home in Hampstead. However the stark reality was that there weren't enough takers for landscape paintings at that time in England, and Constable only managed to sell 20 paintings in his lifetime. However, in France Constable's works generated immense interest and later influenced French artists such as Delacroix.

'The Dedham Vale' (1802) and 'The Hay Wain' (1821) are the most famous and representative works of Constable. 'The White Horse', his first canvas, was sold in 1819. It consequently led him to paint a series of large scale paintings called "six footers". In the same year, he was elected as an Associate of the Royal Academy. At the Academy exhibition in 1821, he exhibited 'The Hay Wain' that portrayed a view from Flatford Mill.

On 2nd October, 1816, John Constable married Maria Bicknell, his childhood friend. They had seven children. Following the birth of their youngest child, Maria was diagnosed with tuberculosis and passed away in 1828. This was a huge blow to Constable, and sunk him into melancholy. In 1831, at the age of 52, he was appointed Visitor at the Royal Academy. John Constable died on 31st March, 1837, and was buried next to his wife, Maria, at St John's Church, Hampstead, London.