Constable A Country Rebel

The Haywain by John Constable is such a comfortingly familiar image of rural Britain that it is difficult to believe it was ever regarded as a revolutionary painting but in this film made in conjunction with a landmark exhibition at the VA Alastair Sooke discovers that Constable was painting in a way that was completely new and groundbreaking at the time Through experimentation and innovation he managed to make a sublime art from humble things and though he struggled in his own country during his lifetime his genius was surprisingly widely admired in France