John Constable was born 11 June 1776 in East Bergholt, Suffolk, the fourth of six children of Golding Constable, a wealthy miller and merchant, and his wife Ann (neé Watts). His father owned a substantial house and grounds with views of the Stour Valley in all directions, and this environment would form a prominent feature of his art throughout his life. Though he developed an interest in painting from an early age, Constable reluctantly began training to join his father’s business at the age of sixteen. However, in 1795, he met the distinguished painter and patron Sir George Beaumont, who encouraged him to pursue a career as an artist.
The following year, he was introduced to two professional artists,
John Cranch and J T Smith, who provided the young Constable with practical instruction and further strengthened his desire to become a painter. Nevertheless, it was only in 1799, when his younger brother Abram turned sixteen and took his place as the heir to the family business, that John Constable felt freed from his obligations to his family.
In February 1799, with the grudging approval of his father, John Constable left for London and the following month entered the Royal Academy Schools. At this time, art academies stressed history painting as the most appropriate subject matter for their students and Constable was initially restricted to the antique academy, until he was enrolled as a student in the life academy in February 1800. Though now based in London, John Constable made frequent trips back to his native Suffolk countryside to paint and draw, indulging his enduring passion for the English landscape. Certainly by 1802, the year he refused a post as drawing master at a military academy, Constable’s letters indicate his commitment to the study of nature that would be the foundation of his art. That year, he exhibited at the Royal Academy for the first time and over the next few years made sketching tours to the Peak District, the Kentish coast and the Lake District. Though under pressure from his parents to become financially independent, he remained a student of the life academy until 1808 and also resorted to painting portraits, finding subjects through family and friends.
By 1809, though Constable was regularly exhibiting at the Royal Academy and British Institution, he was still struggling financially and his income was still being supported by his parents. His resolve to succeed as an artist was intensified that year when he began a courtship with Maria Bicknell, whom Constable is likely to have first met a number of years earlier when she was a twelve year old child visiting her grandfather, Durand Rhudde, the rector of East Bergholt. Over the next five years, Constable divided his time between London and Suffolk, continuing to paint portraits to earn a living whilst also striving to earn a reputation and fame as a landscape painter. Throughout this period, Maria Bicknell’s family vigorously resisted their relationship. Though the deaths of Constable’s mother in 1815 and his father the following year were emotionally traumatic for him, they did provide him with an inheritance and the easing of a financial burden that provided him with the means to marry Maria Bicknell, which he did in October 1816.
In December 1817, the first of Constable’s seven children, his son John, was born and, motivated by the need to support his family, he strove for further success and recognition. He began to paint on a large scale, with the Stour scene, The White Horse, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1819, garnering public attention and critical approval and helping to bring about his election as an Associate of the Royal Academy. This success initiated a series of well-received paintings, including Stratford Mill (1819-1820), View on the Stour near Dedham (1822) and The Lock (1824). One of his best-known works, The Hay Wain (1821), earned Constable international success when it was shown in 1824 at the Paris Salon, where it won a gold medal that was awarded by the French king, Charles X. In 1828, his work The Vale of Dedham, secured him election to become a Royal Academician. However that same year Maria, who had exhibited symptoms of tuberculosis since 1819, sadly died, marking the start of a decline in Constable’s mental and physical health from which he did not recover.
From 1829, John Constable remained active in his duties with the Royal Academy. That year he exhibited Hadleigh Castle at the Academy and worked with the engraver David Lucas on a series of mezzotints after his works that were published as a suite of prints entitled English Landscape. In 1836, he submitted his final Royal Academy entry, Cenotaph to the Memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Erected in the Grounds of Coleorton Hall, Leicestershire, by the Late Sir George Beaumont. His health had been worsening over a number of years and on 31 March 1837 he fell ill on his way home from a charitable event and passed away in the early hours of the following morning, at the age of sixty.
