How influential is John Constable 250 years after his birth?

Paul Bailey, 53, originally grew up in Brentwood in Essex with family ties to Suffolk and other links to Norfolk.

Working as an abstract landscape artist, he says Constable is still “very influential” to many people today.

“He is probably the most famous landscape painter out of the UK,” he adds.

Bailey also believes Constable’s work, especially The Hay Wain, is “quintessentially English” which has captured people’s imaginations across the world.

The simplicity in the landscape in many of Constable’s works has also drawn people in, he notes.

“It’s capturing the light; the light is very special.

“East Anglia, because it’s relatively flat you don’t get enclosed by mountains and stuff like that, so the sky plays such an important part and as you’re painting a very kind of potentially uninteresting landscape, capturing the light is so important and the drama of the sky as well.”