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‘I love every stile and stump and lane … as long as I am able to hold a brush I shall never cease to paint them.’

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. 

Constable is possibly the best-loved British artist. He was born in 1776 (one year after Turner) in East Bergholt in Suffolk, the son of a prosperous corn merchant, but though he went on to work in the family business his real desire was to be an artist. In 1799 his father finally agreed for him to study painting full time at the Royal Academy and his art blossomed. He and Turner were in fact at the Academy together, but never became friends. 

Many of his most famous works immortalise the landscape of gentle hills and valleys sprinkled with streams, picturesque cottages and churches that was his home, and which remain almost unchanged today. In fact you can still spot the places where the artist stood or sat to paint his famous pictures, although this is sometimes rendered difficult by his readiness to shift, say, Dedham Church a half a mile or so if it suited his composition! The long-distance Essex Way winds through many places associated with Constable, including Dedham where he went to school, and which appears in many of his landscapes, and Langham Church and Glebe Farm where he painted some of his most famous works. You can also walk along the towpath from East Bergholt to Flatford Mill, where he was born, and Willy Lotts Cottage, which featured in the Hay-Wain (now a Field Studies Centre) and visit the Constable exhibition at Bridge Cottage. Constable also went on to paint Salisbury Cathedral, as well as scenes in the Lake District, Brighton, Southend and Hampstead.