This month, artist, educator and presenter Grace Adam offers a very timely appreciation of Suffolk-born artist John Constable, born 250 years ago today
As I write this, it’s almost 250 years to the day that the English Romantic painter was born. I’m guessing you know that Constable hailed from Suffolk. The son of Golding Constable, a wealthy farmer, mill owner and merchant, he was the fourth of six children. His mother Ann Watts Constable managed the large estate at East Bergholt and supported her son’s painting career. Abram, his youngest brother stepped up to run the business, freeing John to move to London and pursue his art career.
Constable was a revolutionary. I know that feels like a stretch these days when we look at his lyrical romanticised versions of rural life. Paving the way for the French Impressionists, he treated the depiction of the landscape and the people who worked in it as worthy of modern, monumental energetic paintings. French audiences loved his work when it was shown in Paris. Smooth surfaces and mellow Italian paint tones didn’t interest him. There were no Greek gods. There were no moralising lessons, but there was a sense of nostalgia. A paradox: Revolutionary techniques for a disappearing world.
Constable was a keen student. He read, he learned, he attended lectures and kept abreast of new ideas and theories. He researched the physics of light, human anatomy, vision, geology and botany. He studied poetry and read the novels of the day. During his career, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Jane Eyre’s Pride and Prejudice were published. He met Keats and Coleridge, and William Wordsworth, who was ‘pompous’. He could count a couple of prime ministers amongst his circle; Sir Robert Peel and The Duke of Wellington. He and Micheal Faraday were friends, each respecting the other’s investigations of the world.
As a young man in Suffolk, Constable was mentored by Elizabeth Cobbold, a wealthy brewery matriarch. Not only a celebrated poet and playwright; she was a pioneering geologist. The artist attended her salon evenings in Ipswich and was introduced to radical thinkers. His intellectual curiosity was up and running and would feed his painting for decades to come. Despite all this, his artist peers didn’t warm to him.
The Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition is just about to open. The show has been a tradition since 1769, and Constable regularly submitted work for the annual extravaganza, and was regularly disappointed. There were the outright rejections by the committee and then there were the nasty snubs. The exhibition is famous for what’s called an ‘Academy Hang’ – floor to ceiling paintings. Getting your work in is one thing, having it ‘skyed’ is another; hung high up in a dark corner. The Haywain made it in, but it wasn’t well-received and no one bought it.
At 52, after 20 years of trying, Constable achieved his goal of becoming a full Academician. Despite his hard-won membership of the club, he was never fully accepted. As the President of the RA was more than happy to point out, landscape painting was not considered as elevated or important as history or mythological painting, and he was lucky he’d scraped through. Another mark against him was his personality. Constable was tough with a sharp tongue and withering turn of phrase. He wasn’t popular amongst his fellow academicians. He and his contemporary JMW Turner famously disliked each other. Constable despised Turner, but that’s another story.
As a newly elected Royal Academician, Constable had to donate a work to the RA Collection, and this is his Diploma piece. Visible in the distance under a stormy sky is Dedham Church. The red waistcoated, bare-footed boatman struggles with the lock while his boat is tied up. His black and white dog strolls away.
“Painting is a science and should be pursued as an enquiry into the laws of nature.”
These days Constable is sometimes thought of as a bit ‘chocolate box’ but just look at this cloud study – sublime. In the 1820s, the artist became fascinated with the ground-breaking work of meteorologist Luke Howard. Howard created the first system for naming clouds (cumulus, stratus, cirrus). As a miller’s son, maybe Constable was attuned to observing and understanding weather conditions. After all, he was meant to have been running his father’s business which included his windmills.
They say familiarity breeds contempt, and perhaps we think we already know Constable’s work. Why not take an afternoon on this 250th anniversary to spend some time with him? He manages to occupy a contradictory position. A radical painter of seemingly trouble-free, beautiful landscapes.
Happy Birthday John Constable, King of Clouds.
Grace Adam is the Artist in Residence at Walpole Old Chapel. As part of Suffolk Open Studios, see the artist at work and some of her work from her residency in the Chapel on Saturday 13th and Sunday 14th June 2026 (11am – 5pm). There will be a Drawing workshop on Saturday 13th June (12–2pm). Materials will be
provided but feel free to bring your own too. Workshops are £10 payable by cash or card on the door. For more information visit walpoleoldchapel.co.uk.
Featured image of Grace Adam – supplied
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