How John Constable got masterpiece after masterpiece out of a tiny corner of rural Suffolk

Martin Gayford | The Spectator | 6th June 2020

The critic Robert Hughes said Constable was “the great example of the Englishness of English art”. Unlike his contemporary, Turner, Constable was a “stay-at-home”, painting local, seemingly unexceptional landscapes. He filled them with the familiar – “willows, old rotten planks, brickwork”. Like Monet with his water lilies, Constable found “how much interest the art, when in perfection, can give to the most ordinary subjects.’