Wivenhoe Park, Essex radiates clarity. It is easy to imagine oneself on this quiet summer afternoon, under the shady tree just out of sight of the painting’s foreground, where the painter may have set up his easel. All is placid and in place—contented cows graze or snooze, fishermen drag their nets in the pond, and a kitchen garden and domestic animals occupy the space beyond the trees on the right—features typical of the self-sustaining nature of such a country estate.

Moving up the slope in the far left distance is Mary Rebow, daughter of the estate’s owner, Major-General Francis Slater Rebow, driving a donkey cart with a friend, having just crossed the stone dam from the main house perched at the top center of the canvas and bathed in sunlight. The pattern of puffy clouds in the sky is the most active aspect of the picture, the weather producing an occasional breeze to set the flock of birds into flight and rustling the leaves of trees dotting the scene. Constable believed that it was through depictions of light and sky that the painter expressed emotions, capturing what he termed the “chiaroscuro of nature,” evanescent effects of light and dark experienced outdoors. Later in the century, the impressionist painters were to take up this goal as well.

By 1816, Constable had achieved enough stability in his professional life to enable him to marry his longtime fiancée, Maria Bicknell, with whom he had seven children and a happy marriage. (Constable’s voluminous writings have left an extensive account of all the details of his life.) Initially the family lived in London and then Hampstead, a small village outside the city.  An artistic breakthrough occurred around 1820, when Constable was well into his 40s, with several six-foot wide pictures that he painted with the express purpose of garnering the approval of the academy—accustomed to monumental pictures—without sacrificing his own aims. The works started receiving notice in the press, and he was elected an associate academician around this time, which conferred hanging privileges in exhibitions. He finally achieved the rank of full academician at the Royal Academy in 1829, at age 54, recognized as one of the best landscape painters of his age. But the success was bittersweet for Constable, who had lost his beloved Maria the previous year and never fully recovered. After losing some of the function of his right hand following an illness in 1833, he began making drawings and watercolors, which were less physically demanding. He died in 1837 at 60. The first major exhibition devoted to Constable’s work took place in 1899; by then he had become a hero to numerous landscape artists of intervening generations and was directly responsible for elevating the status of the landscape genre in the 19th century.