He painted things exactly as he saw them, and was not a popular
artist. Most of all, he loved to paint the scenes that he had known so
well in his youth, and he did them over and over again, as if the
subject was one in which he wished to reach perfection.

When he died he left a picture, "Arundel Castle and Mill," standing
with its paint wet upon his easel for he passed away very suddenly, on
April 1st, leaving behind him many unsold paintings.

He was a sensitive chap, and throughout his youth was greatly
distressed by the differences of opinion between himself and his
father. He was torn asunder between a sense of duty and his own wish
to be an artist; and his greatest consolation in this situation was in
the friendship he had formed for a plumber, who, like himself, dearly
loved art. The plumber's name was John Dunthorne, and the two men
wandered about the country, when not employed at their regular work,
and together, by streams and in fields, painted the same scenes. At
one time they hired a little room in the neighbouring village which
they made into a studio. Constable was a handsome fellow in his youth
and was known to all as the "handsome miller." His father, the yeoman
farmer with the windmills, was also a miller.

In London he became acquainted with one John Smith, known as
"Antiquity Smith," who taught him something of etching. After he was
recalled to his father's business, his mother wrote to "Antiquity
Smith," that she hoped John "would now attend to business, by which he
will please me and his father, and ensure his own respectability and
comfort"--a complete expression of the middle-class British mind. Her
satisfaction was short-lived, for her son soon returned to London.