John Constable was born in East Bergholt, Suffolk, England. Constable left in 1799 to study at the Royal Academy, of which he became an associate in 1819 and a full member in 1829. His landscape paintings, which depict chiefly the Suffolk countryside, had a deep influence on his contemporaries, particularly the French. His finished artworks were based on numerous sketches painted outdoors directly from nature. The naturalism and simplicity of Constable's approach to the English landscape have been compared to the poetry of his early Romantic contemporaries, such as Wordsworth.