_John Robert Cozens_, "the greatest genius who ever painted a landscape," had been the first to occupy himself with water-colour painting as understood in the modern sense. _Tom Girtin_ had experimented with new methods. _Henry Edridge_ and _Samuel Prout_ had come forward with their picturesque ruins, _Copley Fielding_ and _Samuel Owen_ with sea-pieces, _Luke Clennel_ and _Thomas Heaphy_ with graceful portrayals of country life, _Howitt_ and _Robert Hills_ with their animal pictures. From 1805 there existed a Society of Painters in Water-Colours, and this extensive pursuit of water-colour painting could not fail to have an influence upon oil-painting also. The technique of water-colour accustomed English taste to that brightness of tone which at first seemed so bizarre to the Germans, habituated as they were to the prevalence of brown. Instead of dark, brownish-green tones, the water-colour painters produced bright tones. Direct study of nature, and the completion of a picture in the presence of nature and in the open air, guided their attention to light and atmosphere more quickly than that of the oil-painters. An easier technique, giving more scope for improvisation, of itself suggested the idea that rounded finish with a view to pictorial effect was not the final aim of art, but that it was of the most immediate importance to catch the first freshness of impression, that flower so hard to pluck and so prone to wither. The first who applied these principles to oil-painting was _John Constable_, one of the greatest pioneers in his own province and one of the most powerful individualities of the century. East Bergholt, the pretty little village where Constable's cradle stood, is fourteen miles distant from Sudbury, the birthplace of Gainsborough. Here he was born on 11th June 1776, at the very time when Gainsborough settled in London. His father was a miller, a well-to-do man, who had three windmills in Bergholt. The other famous miller's son in the history of art is Rembrandt. At first a superior career was chosen for him; it was intended that he should become a clergyman. But he felt more at home in the mill than in the schoolroom, and became a miller like his fathers before him. Observation of the changes of the sky is an essential part of a miller's calling, and this occupation of his youth seems to have been not without influence on the future artist; no one before him had observed the sky with the same attention. [Illustration: CONSTABLE. COTTAGE IN A CORNFIELD.]