Other than William Hogarth, is there a more English artist than the 19th-century landscape painter, and lifelong Tory, John Constable? Yet, and here’s an irony, his genius was first recognised ...

John Constable’s “The Hay Wain” (1821), the Romantic artist’s best known landscape, revered in his native England as an authentic image of its rural countryside, was among the works ...

Take John Constable’s The Hay Wain. His depiction of idyllic rural Suffolk is one of the most adored, recognised and copied paintings ever. The National Gallery should be thrilled to have it.

John Constable, The Hay Wain (1821), top, and the scene on the river Stour in Suffolk today with Willy Lott's house to the left Constable: The National Gallery, London.

But in 1821, visitors to the Royal Academy barely noticed John Constable’s The Hay Wain, one of 127 paintings crammed into a small room of the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition.

The painting was a "very carefully constructed work", which Constable painted in London, Mr Rumberg said. "The Hay Wain, when it was first shown in 1821, wasn't really well received at all, and it ...

The Hay Wain is one of Constable’s six footers, big canvases which give us the big picture and cause the viewer to feel part of the landscape he looks at.

Not boasting or anything but I grew up with Constable. My grandmother had a copy of The Hay Wain in her sitting room and I rather think there was a copy of The Cornfield as well. So whenever I come ...

Not boasting or anything but I grew up with Constable. My grandmother had a copy of The Hay Wain in her sitting room and I rather think there was a copy of The Cornfield as well. So whenever I ...