John Constable
Constable painted many full-scale preliminary sketches of his landscapes in order to test the composition in advance of finished pictures. These large sketches, with their free and vigorous brushwork, were revolutionary at the time. The sketches for The Leaping Horse and The Hay Wain study convey a vigour missing from his finished oil paintings of the same subjects. Compare the composition of this preliminary study with the finished painting: The Hay Wain final. Possibly more than any other aspect of Constable's work, the oil sketches reveal him to be an avant-garde painter, one who showed that landscape painting could be taken in a totally new direction.