Rain, Steam, and Speed - painting by Turner, 1844

The UK is famous for its painting, literature, theatre, and architecture.

John Constable (1776-1837) is ranked with Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) as one of the greatest British landscape artists. Constable painted traditional rural scenes in oils. Part of the Suffolk countryside alongside the River Stour is known as Constable country because it is so closely associated with his paintings.

One of the UK’s most well-known contemporary artists is Chris Ofili, who is notorious for putting lumps of elephant dung in his paintings. His paintings use colour, resin, and glitter, as well as icons of modern policitical and musical black celebrities. The origin of his method derives from the ancient cave paintings of the Matopos Hills in Zimbabwe, which Ofili discovered while studying there. In one of Chris' paintings, "Two Doo Voodoo", you can see the heads of Nelson Mandela, Snoop Doggy Dog, Mike Tyson and Tupac Shakur blooming out of the flowers of a plant motif. Chris won the 1998 Turner Prize.

The Eisteddfodau are traditional Welsh festivals, which originally featured a contest involving poetry and music, but are now a general celebration of Welsh arts and culture. Welsh lovespoons are carved from wood and have intricate handles. In the 17th century they were carved by village men to give to the women they had fallen in love with.

Born in Stratford upon Avon in 1564, William Shakespeare is arguably the most well-known writer in the English language. The Royal Shakespeare Company is based in Stratford upon Avon, and tours the country staging plays by Shakespeare and other writers. The Reduced Shakespeare Company is a group of actors who perform all 37 plays in 97 minutes.

Television soap operas are very popular in the UK. Two well-known soaps include EastEnders, which is filmed in the East End of London, and Coronation Street, which is set in a street in Manchester. The radio is also popular, and the longest running show, called Desert Island Discs, features a celebrity who chooses their favourite music and talks about what they would do if they were stranded on a deserted island.

john constable

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.

Images supplied by Mark Harden

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