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Landscapes that inspired our most famous painters
Though Britain is a relatively small country, it contains an infinite variety of scenery. The constantly changing face of the countryside has had a great effect on British artists and is reflected in the enormous range of styles and subjects of our greatest landscape paintings.
So spoke John Constable of the countryside and villages of his native Stour Valley on the Essex/Suffolk border. The area is a magnet for visitors the world over who know it from his paintings. In fact, it was known as 'Constable Country' even during the artist's lifetime. See his bucolic masterpieces The Hay Wain in the National Gallery and Dedham Vale at the V&A Museum then visit the glorious landscapes that inspired him.
Born in 1727 in the market town of Sudbury in Suffolk's Stour Valley, Gainsborough absorbed from boyhood the natural beauty around him. His early landscape Cornard Wood typically echoes the Sudbury countryside that he was to make his own. Mr and Mrs Andrews, now in the National Gallery, shows a couple against a ravishing harvest scene reminiscent of Sudbury's fields and hills.
Gainsborough's House, the artist's birthplace in Sudbury, displays many of his paintings and the 'quietness and ease' of footpath and bridleway make Suffolk ideal walking and horse-riding terrain. Boating on the River Stour is also popular.
Sir Edwin Henry Landseer was an English painter, born in London, most famous for his stirring and romantic depictions of the Scottish Highlands. Visit Scotland to see the landscape that moved him to create masterpieces like the Monarch of the Glen which now hangs in the National Galleries of Scotland.
Landseer was a member of the Royal Academy, a favourite of Queen Victoria and had become famous for his paintings and drawings of animals. His later works include the sculptures of the lions at the foot of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square.