My friend Bonner has just set off to Charlotte Street to pack your picture (an old painting) and forward it; it is a beautiful representation of a su… - John Constable

On the death of these great men <nowiki>[</nowiki>Rembrandt, Ruysdael and Cuyp<nowiki>]</nowiki> Landscape rapidly declined; and during almost the whole of the succeeding century, little was produced.. .From this degraded and fallen state it is delightful to say that landscape painting revived in our own country [England], in all its purity, simplicity, and grandeur, in the works of Wilson, Gainsborough, Cozens, and Girtin.

But the sound of water escaping from mill-dams, &c., willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork, I love such things. Shakespeare could make everything poetical; he tells us of poor Tom's haunts among "sheep cotes and mills." As long as I do paint, I shall never cease to paint such places. They have always been my delight.

The sky is the 'source of light' in nature, and governs every thing. Even our common observations on the weather of every day, are suggested by them, but it does not occur to us. Their difficulty in painting both as to composition and execution is very great, because, with all their brilliancy and consequence, they ought not to come forward, or be hardly thought about in a picture... I know very well what I am about, and that my skies have not been neglected, though they have often failed in execution, no doubt, from an over-anxiety about them, which will alone destroy that easy appearance which nature always has in all her movements.