Members' Tour: Constable at 250

Join V&A Guide Tony Mollett to explore the life and work of John Constable, the son of a Suffolk landowner and merchant who left the family firm to become a painter in London. Joining the Royal Academy school in 1799 it took him another 30 years before he became a Royal Academician, some 27 years after his “Rival” JMW Turner, born in 1775. Constable, unlike Turner, never felt the need to leave England in his pursuit of inspiration…the English countryside and landscape. Tony will examine Constable’s techniques, subjects and his legacy while looking at some of the V&A’s collection of his works, the largest in the world. Tony will argue that despite his lack of success selling his works during his lifetime he has become regarded, together with Turner, as one of Britain’s greatest landscape artists and a radical innovator.