The Hay Wain

The wagon has driven into the river not for picturesque effect but for maintenance. Iron tyres rimmed wooden cartwheels by friction-fit; in hot dry weather the wood shrank and the tyres loosened. Soaking swelled the wood and re-tightened the iron. Constable grew up on his father's Suffolk farms; the action was utterly ordinary to him. Exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1824 where it astonished French painters and launched the line that runs to Impressionism. Now at The National Gallery, London @nationalgallery