The Hay Wain The Hay Wain The Hay Wain is a painting by John Constable, finished in 1821, which depicts a rural scene on the River Stour between the English counties of Suffolk and Essex. It hangs in the National Gallery in London and is regarded as "Constable's most famous image" and one of the greatest and most popular English paintings. Painted in oils on canvas, the work depicts as its central feature three horses pulling what in fact appears to be a wood wain or large farm cart across the river. Willy Lott's Cottage, also the subject of an eponymous painting by
John Wain Down", in 1953: a comic picaresque story about an unsettled university graduate who rejects the standards of conventional society. Other notable novels include "Strike the Father Dead" (1962), a tale of a jazzman's rebellion against his conventional father, and "Young Shoulders" (1982), winner of the Whitbread Prize, the tale of a young boy dealing with the death of loved ones. Wain was also a prolific poet and critic, with critical works on fellow Midland writers Arnold Bennett, Samuel Johnson (for which he was awarded the 1974 James Tait Black Memorial Prize), and William Shakespeare. Among the other writers about whom