sell it without giving him a chance to try once more to raise the
money to buy it. He wrote that the picture would become of greater
value to his children if the artist left it hanging upon the walls of
the Academy, "till you join the society of Ruysdael, Wilson, and
Claude. As praise and money will then be of no value to you, the world
will liberally bestow both."

Later a Frenchman wished to buy it for exhibition purposes, and when
Constable wrote to Fisher of this, his friend replied that he had
better sell it to the Frenchman "for the sake of the _eclat_ it may
give you. The stupid English public, which has no judgment of its own,
will begin to think there is something in it if the French make your
works national property. You have long lain under a mistake; men do
not purchase pictures because they admire them, but because others
covet them."

Finally, the "Hay Wain" was sold to the French dealer for oe250, and
Constable threw in a picture of Yarmouth for good measure. Later a
friend declared that he had created a good deal of argument about
landscape painting, and that there had come to be two divisions, for
he had practically founded a new school. He received a gold medal for
the "Hay Wain," and the French nation tried to buy it. In the Louvre
are "The Cottage," "Weymouth Bay," and "The Glebe Farm." Elsewhere are
"Hampstead Heath," "Salisbury Cathedral," "The Lock on the Stour,"
"Dedham Mill," "The Valley Farm," "Gillingham Mill," "The Cornfield,"
"Boat-Building," "Flatford Mill on the River Stour," besides many
others.