JOHN CONSTABLE, arguably England’s most popular painter, was a slow man. He was twenty-five before he devoted himself to art, thirty before he fell in love with his future wife, thirty-seven before he married her, thirty-eight before he sold a picture to a stranger, and fifty-three before he was elected to the Royal Academy. Yet his life and art were characterised by all the virtues of the true countryman. These are the virtues which characterise William Wordsworth, John Clare, William Cobbett and, in our own day, Wendell Berry: an unhurried serenity, honesty, simplicity, truth.
Constable never ...
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