Stour Valley and Dedham Church, painting by John Constable, 1814

John Constable was born in 1776 at East Bergholt in Suffolk and was the son of a miller. As a young man he worked for his father in the family business but he devoted much of his life to painting the local landscape where he grew up. Constable painted traditional rural scenes in oils, and part of the Suffolk countryside alongside the River Stour is known as "Constable Country" because it is so closely associated with his paintings.

Constable married Maria Bicknell in 1816, despite opposition from her family, and the couple had seven children. They moved to London but Maria became ill and she eventually died of tuberculosis in 1828. Constable himself died in London in 1837, and was buried in the churchyard of St John's, Hampstead.

Constable exhibited regularly at the leading UK art galleries, including the British Institution, the Liverpool Academy, and the Birmingham Society of Arts. He was made an associate of the Royal Academy of Art in 1819, and a Royal Academician in 1829. Constable worked in the open-air, drawing and sketching in oils, but his finished pictures were produced in the studio. For his most ambitious works - 'six footers' as he called them - he followed the unusual technical procedure of making a full-size oil sketch. In the 20th century there has been a tendency to praise these even more highly than the finished works because of their freedom and freshness of brushwork. Painted in 1820-1, The Hay-Wain is perhaps Constable’s most famous painting. The full-size sketch for The Hay-Wain is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, which has the finest collection of Constable's work. He is considered to be one of the greatest British landscape artists.

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Image supplied by Mark Harden