Constable’s Great Landscape
The Six-Foot Paintings
National Gallery of Art,
October 1-December 31, 2006
The Huntington Library,
February 3-April 29, 2007

Last year, when the BBC asked listeners to vote on the greatest painting in Britain, the winner was Joseph Mallord William Turner’s “The Fighting Temeraire,” followed closely by John Constable’s “The Haywain.” These results came as no surprise since these two artists, rivals born within a year of each other, were linked together in their lifetimes and ever since. Turner’s bravura creations in oils or watercolors are showstoppers wherever they are displayed, while Constable’s quiet idyllic scenes of the countryside have come to typify all that is best about England for the English.