John Bicknell solicitor to the Admiralty and the Prince Regent, became father-in-law to John Constable. His eldest daughter Maria Elizabeth Bicknell married Constable in 1816. John Bicknell John Bicknell, the elder (baptised 1746 – 1787) was an English barrister and writer. He was co-author with Thomas Day of the abolitionist poem "The Dying Negro" from 1773. Bicknell has also been credited with "Musical Travels through England", a pseudonymous satire on Charles Burney. The second son of Robert Bicknell of the Inner Temple, he was admitted to the Middle Temple in 1761. He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1769.
Flatford Mill (Scene on a Navigable River) at East Bergholt, and the last in which the artist painted directly from the scenery of his Suffolk childhood. Constable began the picture a few months before his marriage to Maria Bicknell, writing to her on 12 September 1816: Constable made several drawings and oil sketches of the subject from various angles. Although the final painting was executed largely on the spot, various details were added in the studio later: the boy and the horse; the timberwork in the foreground; the mooring-post on the left. It is known from later x-rays that Constable painted out a horse on the tow-path,