John Constable was born in East Bergholt near the river Stour. He was destined for his father's business of milling and grain-shipping. But he was was a dogged fighter: he persuaded his family that he should become an artist; he continued to paint landscapes, although history paintings and portraits were the fashion; he was determined to paint the rural scenes of his childhood over and over again, and took little notice of those who urged him to broaden his scope through travel (even when his work won French medals, he refused invitations to go to France). His imagination was always engaged by East Anglia, although he had to work in a London studio. He was 53 before he was made a full member of the Royal Academy. And he wooed Maria Bicknell for 16 years, in the teeth of opposition from her formidable grandfather. After his marriage in 1816, he had 7 children before Maria (his 'dearest life') died of TB at the age of 40. Sometimes sour and sarcastic, and often depressed, Constable in fact had a gift for intimate friendships, as revealed in his letters to his local friend John Dunthorne and his patron John Fisher to whom he wrote: 'I have a kingdom of my own, both fertile and populous - my landscape and my children'.