Constable should be on a banknote
In all the recent hoo-ha about banknotes and who or what to put on them, one name has been curiously absent – that of John Constable. Born 250 years ago this year, he was the son of a prosperous Essex miller and merchant who would rise to become probably the greatest proponent of landscape painting in history. Where his contemporary Turner – who got the £20 note, of course – had an expressive style that took landscapes towards ethereal impressionism, Constable took nature itself to his heart and somehow made it even better – not unlike a portrait painter flattering his subject. If we weren’t British, we would probably have a major
