This richly illustrated book offers a detailed exploration of the close connection between Constable’s work and the old Dutch masters. His realistic depictions of the landscape show a clear connection with how old masters like Rembrandt and Ruisdael rendered the Dutch landscape. No artist before him had sketched and painted outdoors as often as he did, producing oil sketches of the land, sky and clouds. Constable’s choice of subjects as well as the broad and rapid brushstrokes characterising his painting, were a great influence on later generations of artists, from the Barbizon School of painters and the Impressionists, to artists like Lucian Freud.