Constable’s classic

Back in 2005, BBC Radio 4’s Today programme ran a public poll to find the greatest painting in England. JMW Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire won and, just last year, the image cemented its status as the nation’s favourite when it was imprinted on the back of the new £20 note.

“Constable wanted scenery with human associations: villages, churches and farms”

John Constable’s The Hay Wain came second, continuing a rivalry that dogged the careers of the two founding fathers of English landscape painting, who were born just 14 months apart. For 200 years, Constable’s six-foot-wide masterpiece has struggled to distinguish itself from its rival, and even now hangs just yards from Turner’s more popular Industrial Age