John Constable

John Constable was born June 11, 1776, in East Bergholt, Suffolk. His father was a wealthy corn merchant. Constable was educated at Dedham Grammar School, and after he left school he worked in his father's business. His heart was not in it, however, and in 1799 he induced his father to send him to the Royal Academy in London to study art.

A fellow student at the Royal Academy School was JMW Turner, but the two men never became friends. Constable exhibited his first painting in 1802, but unlike Turner, success eluded him. He sold only 20 paintings in his lifetime, and was never recognized in his homeland while he was alive.

In 1816 Constable became financially secure with money left to him when his father died. He married Maria Bicknell despite the opposition of her family. The couple were happy together, and Constable was plunged into depression on her death in 1828.

In France Constable found the success that eluded him in England. His 1821 master work The Haywain was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1824.

It was not until 1829 that Constable was reluctantly awarded full membership in the Royal Academy (and then by a majority of only one vote). He continued to struggle for commercial success, and was forced to take on some portrait work to make ends meet.

John Constable died on March 31, 1837, and was buried in St. John's church, London.

Thomas Gainsborough was born in 1727, the son of John Gainsborough, a cloth merchant living in Sudbury, Suffolk.

For the next 8 years Gainsborough studied in London under the engraver Gravelot.

In 1746 Gainsborough married Margaret Burr. Before he returned to Sudbury in 1748, Gainsborough produced his first well-known work, The Charterhouse.

Two years later he moved to Ipswich, where he had his first commercial success as a painter, completing many small portraits and two larger landscapes commissioned by the Duke of Bedford.

During his stay in London, Gainsborough painted the King George III and Queen Charlotte. Before his death in 1788, he turned from portraiture to pictorial compositions, producing in all some 200 landscapes in addition to his prolific output of about 800 portraits of the English aristocracy.

Some of Gainsborough's most popular paintings include "The Blue Boy", "The Market Cart" (Tate Gallery, London), "The Wood Gatherers", and "Robert Andrews and Mary, His Wife" (National Gallery, London).

Major works by Gainsborough in Britain can be seen at Waddesdon Manor (Buckinghamshire), The Tate Gallery and National Gallery (London), and the National Gallery of Scotland (Edinburgh).