Dedham Vale, from East Bergholt: sunset.

1799

Asks his father to let him paint

In 1799 Constable persuaded his father to let him pursue art and received a small allowance. He entered the Royal Academy Schools under the tutelage of Joseph Farington, attending life classes and anatomical dissections and copying old masters.

until 1799

Youth at the mill: sketches that made him a painter

After a short time at a boarding school in Lavenham and then a day school in Dedham he worked in his father’s corn business, though his younger brother Abram eventually ran the mills. As a young man he made amateur sketching trips through Suffolk and Essex; those scenes, he said, “made me a painter”.

until 1799

The collector Beaumont shows him Claude Lorrain

Constable was introduced to the collector George Beaumont, who showed him the pride of his collection, Claude Lorrain’s Landscape with Hagar and the Angel; the picture inspired the young painter.

until 1799

John Thomas Smith: draw, but stay at the mill

While visiting relatives in Middlesex, Constable met the draughtsman and engraver John Thomas Smith, who gave him advice on painting but urged him to stay in the family business rather than take up art.

1802

Turns down a drawing-master post

Constable declined the post of drawing master at Great Marlow Military College, which Benjamin West, then head of the Academy, said would end his career. In a letter to John Dunthorne he admitted he had spent two years seeking the truth at second hand and declared his resolve to become a professional landscape painter.

1802–1803

First exhibitions at the Royal Academy

Constable first showed his work in 1802, and by 1803 he was exhibiting paintings at the Royal Academy.