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| John Constable |
John Constable exhibited for the first time in 1802. In those days there was little respect for landscape painters, thus leading him to be a rather unsuccesful artist. During his lifetime, Constable only sold 20 paintings.
However, due to his fathers wealth, he did become financially secure after the death of his father in 1816. In the same year, Constable married Maria Bicknell. The couple led a very happy life together and John Constable suffered from a severe depression when his wife died in 1828. Constable tried to capture the effects of changing light and the patterns of clouds moving across the country sky. He loved the countryside, and his best work was of outdoor scenes in his native Suffolk and his London home in Hampstead.
He worked in the open air, though he returned to his studio to finish his paintings. His larger scenes were sketched full-size in oil, and the sketch was then used as a model for the finished painting.