Study Room resource: Constable

Prints and drawings, including fashion illustrations, architectural drawings, design drawings, watercolours, posters and much more, not on display in the galleries, can be seen in the Prints & Drawings Study Room. To make it easier for teachers and lecturers to access the most popular material with groups, we have developed themed Study Room resources which contain original prints and drawings. These resources contain samples of John Constable's sketches and paintings. Ranked with Turner as one of the greatest British landscape artists, Constable was a major influence on Romantics such as Delacroix, on the painters of the Barbizon School, and ultimately on the Impressionists.

John Constable was born 11 June, 1776, in East Bergholt, Suffolk. He spent several years in the family business before deciding to study painting full-time. He joined the Royal Academy schools in London in 1799 and was finally made a full Academician in 1829. He was strongly influenced by the Old Master landscapes, including those by Ruisdael and other Dutch painters.

After spending some years working in this tradition of landscape, Constable developed his own original treatment, rendering scenery more directly and realistically. He tried to capture informally the effects of changing light and the patterns of clouds moving across the country sky. Constable's finest works are of the places he knew and loved best, particularly his home village. He gradually extended the range of his subject matter. His visits, in particular, to Salisbury, where his friend Fisher lived, and to Brighton, where he took Maria for the sake of her health, provided him with much new material. But it was Hampstead that became the main focus of his later work. The Constables first took a house there, in addition to their London home, in 1819. Thereafter they rented a house at Hampstead for part of each year, except 1824, finally acquiring a more permanent home there in 1827. The death of his beloved wife, Maria, in 1828 affected Constable profoundly. His work became darker and more brooding, infused directly or indirectly with a sense of mourning.