Low-ranking British police officer. In medieval Europe, a constable was an officer of the king, originally responsible for army stores and stabling, and later responsible for the army in the king's absence. In England the constable subsequently became an official at a sheriff's court of law, leading to the title's current meaning.

(1776-1837) English artist. He was one of the greatest landscape painters of the 19th century. He painted scenes of his native Suffolk, including The Haywain 1821 (National Gallery, London), as well as castles, cathedrals, landscapes, and coastal scenes in other parts of Britain. Constable inherited the Dutch tradition of somber Realism, in particular the style of Jacob Ruisdael. He aimed to capture the momentary changes of the weather as well as to create monumental images of British scenery, as in The White Horse 1819 (Frick Collection, New York) and Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Grounds 1827 (Victoria and Albert Museum, London).
Constable’s paintings are remarkable for their atmospheric effects and were admired by many French painters including Eugčne Delacroix. Notable are The Leaping Horse 1825 (Royal Academy of Arts, London), The Cornfield 1826 (National Gallery, London), and Dedham Vale 1828 (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh). His many oil sketches are often considered among his best work.
Employed as a youth in the family mill, he developed slowly as an artist, being 23 before he began to study at the Royal Academy Schools, and 35 when he painted Dedham Vale 1811. In this long formative period two main factors can be found: firstly the study and assimilation of what had been achieved in landscape painting by Claude, Ruisdael, Rubens, Gainsborough and Girtin (the collection of Sir George Beaumont, who encouraged him, being a great stimulus); and secondly a love of nature as represented by the unobstructed cloud panorama, the flat lands, streams, water meadows and cornfields of his native East Anglia and especially the part of the Stour valley near his home now known as the “Constable country”. His subjects were not confined to Suffolk, though when settled in London he went there nearly every year. He painted memorable works at Salisbury, Hampstead and Brighton also, but was essentially an artist of the lowlands and scenes of a modestly rural kind, and a visit to the Lake District 1806 did not i
ncline him to the mountain scenery delightful to the Romantic mind. The self-imposed limitation distinguishes him from his contemporary (of nearly the same age) Turner; Constable is typical of the Romantic period, in which he lived only in the Wordsworthian return to nature and the study of natural phenomena after the stresses of revolution and war.
He married 1816 after a lengthy period of waiting, and was made an Associate of the Royal Academy 1819. In that year he was relieved of money anxieties by a timely legacy, and now devoted all his powers to a succession of great works, among which may be cited the Haywain (originally Landscape, Noon), painted in 1821 and exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1824, where it made a deep impression (National Gallery), the Leaping Horse, 1825, perhaps his masterpiece (Royal Academy), The Cornfield, 1827 (National Gallery), Hadleigh Castle, 1829 (National Gallery), Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, 1831, The Valley Farm, 1835 (Tate Gallery).
His finished works were preceded by large preparatory paintings in which his freshness of handling, technical freedom and audacity in the use of broken color are more apparent. These again are to be distinguished from the small sketches made from nature which give incomparably the vividness of direct impression. His watercolors are subsidiary, mainly preparatory studies for oils, though including so dramatic an example as the Stonehenge in the Victoria and Albert Museum. In England his immediate influence was practically nil; in France, on the other hand, his influence was felt by the Barbizon School, and later by the Impressionists.