16/05/2026
💻 Join me for this month's 'pay-what-you-can' online art history talk, celebrating the 250th birthday of English landscape painter John Constable!
Thursday 28th May, 7pm BST
Book via link in bio!
Born in Suffolk in 1776, Constable would go on to immortalise his particular patch of rural England in some of the most innovatively direct and honest landscape painting of the nineteenth century. Despite his acclaim today he was often rejected in England during his lifetime, even refused official recognition by the Royal Academy until late in his career. In this talk we will examine his origins in East Anglia and the times of change in which he lived. Britain was only at the beginning of its long love affair with landscape whilst at the same time seeing it transformed forever by the Industrial Revolution. To understand what today might look like peaceful, settled landscapes, one must look deep to discover the powerful emotional and political charge lying under the surface.
Today, Constable’s reputation, along with Turner, as one of the two key figures of the British landscape tradition is secure, and his influence can be seen reaching beyond our borders to any artist who meaningfully engages with nature and the natural world, but it wasn’t always so easy for the man who would become on of Britain’s favourite painters…
