Gainsborough, Turner & Constable: Inventing Landscape

John Constable,The Leaping Horse, 1825, Royal Academy of Arts, London © Photo: Royal Academy of Arts, London Photographer: Prudence Cuming Associates Limited

2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of the Suffolk-born artist John Constable (1776–1837).

To celebrate, this exhibition explores the emergence of the tradition of landscape painting in Britain through three of its greatest exponents.

Key works include Gainsborough’s idyllic scene, Landscape with Cattle, a Young Man Courting a Milkmaid (early 1770s), which has not been exhibited in the UK since 1952; Turner’s large-scale watercolour, Abergavenny Bridge (1799) which has not been on public display since 1799 at the Royal Academy; and Constable’s dramatic oil sketch, Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (c. 1830s), a variant of his ‘great Salisbury’ painting thought to be a study for the mezzotint developed with David Lucas. The exhibition culminates in John Constable’s magnificent The Leaping Horse from the Royal Academy, in Suffolk for the first time.

Gainsborough’s House will also present temporary exhibitions and new displays of David Dawson (b. 1960) and Kate Giles (b. 1962) inspired by the artwork of Constable and his contemporaries.