Beneath vast, shifting vistas of fleecy clouds, the softly rolling land is marvelously fat and fertile, husbanded by generations of farmers to support plump cattle and rich green wheat. It is the Stour River Valley, a place of running streams and slow canals northeast of London, and almost from the moment he was born in 1776 John Constable cherished it with an early and sure instinct. "The sound of water escaping from milldams, etc., willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts and brickwork—I love such things," he wrote. "I had often thought of...
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