1776 -1837 · Suffolk, Stour Valley, Salisbury, Brighton and Hampstead

Studied clouds, lively touch and attachment to Suffolk make John Constable the great romantic renovator of the English landscape.

John Constable was born in East Bergholt, Suffolk in 1776, the son of a successful grain merchant who owned mills on the Stour. The landscape of his childhood - river, locks, meadows, willows, barges and paths - became the sustainable center of his art. Entering the Royal Academy schools in 1799, he studied the old masters, notably Ruisdael, Rubens and Claude Lorrain, but refused to reduce nature to a formula. He regularly worked outside, in pencil or oil, observing humidity, wind, tree growth and changing clouds. He then worked outside regularly, in pencil or oil, observing humidity, wind, tree growth and changing clouds. These studies were then used for large exhibition paintings produced in the workshop. The Hay Cart belongs to the group of “six-footers”, monumental landscapes of the Stour presented between 1819 and 1825. Boat construction near Flatford Mill shows rural work as a concrete activity integrated into the site. Salisbury Cathedral from Lower Marsh Close combines architecture, storm and light, while A boat passing a lock transforms the mechanics of water into a drama of movement. Constable married Maria Bicknell in 1816 after long family opposition; his illness took the couple to Brighton, whose coast renewed its touch. Elected academician only in 1829, he enjoyed greater success in France, where his paintings presented at the Salon of 1824 influenced Delacroix and the future landscape designers from Barbizon. Died in Hampstead in 1837, Constable left a modern method: painting a beloved place with enough accuracy for the landscape to become feeling, meteorology and memory. The "John Constable" selection notably compares The Hay Cart and Boat Building near Flatford Mill. His reading favors composition.

Constable does not seek ideal nature: he returns to the same river until humidity, work, cloud and memory become inseparable.