Brighton john constable biography wikipedia

Constable was born at East Bergholt, Suffolk, the son of a corn and coal merchant and farmer. He devoted much of his life to painting the local landscape, the scenes of his 'careless boyhood' which, he said, 'made me a painter' (in R.B. Beckett, ed., John Constable's Correspondence, VI, Ipswich 1968, p.78). He went to work for his father in the family business about 1792. In 1794 he made a sketching tour of Norfolk. He made his first etchings in 1797. In 1799 Constable was introduced to Joseph Farington, RA, and entered the Royal Academy Schools. He visited Staffordshire and Derbyshire in 1801. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1802. He received a commission in 1805 to paint an altarpiece for the church at Brantham. He toured the Lake District in 1806. In 1810 he began work for an altarpiece for Nayland Church.

Constable began to see his future wife, Maria Bicknell (see Maria Bicknell, Mrs John Constable, 1816 Tate Gallery N02655) regularly from 1809, although they had met some years earlier. They married in 1816, despite opposition from her family, and eventually had seven children. They moved to Keppel Street, Bloomsbury, London in 1817. From 1819, because of his wife's ill health, Constable rented a house for his family at Hampstead, making abo

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