Joseph Mallord William Turner was the son of a barber, born in Maiden Lane, London, in 1775. He studied in the Royal Academy schools beginning in 1789, and by 1807 had become Professor of Perspective; his career at the Academy peaked in 1845 with his election as its Deputy President. Turners innovations in landscape painting, notably his use of coloristic effects verging on the abstract, did not meet with universal approval, but he remained professionally successful throughout his career. At his death in 1851, he left a sizeable estate to found a charity for Decayed Artists, though the scheme was confounded due to a faulty will.

Norham Castle, Sunrise was painted in 1844. Measuring 91 x 122 cm, in oil on canvas, the painting hangs today in the Tate Gallery in London, the main repository of the artist’s works.

John Constable was born in 1776, in East Bergholt, Suffolk. Son of an established mill-owner, Constable described later in life how his rural upbringing prompted his interest in landscape painting. After early studies with a local amateur painter, Constable became a student at the Royal Academy in 1799, eventually a full member in 1829. Constables stylistic innovations were given enthusiastic reception in France, where Eugene Delacroix claimed Constable as a model in his resistance to academic conventions. Constable led a notably felicitous life, marred only occasionally by bouts of depression. He died in 1837, still in the prime of his working life.

Constable painted Hampstead Heath with a Rainbow in 1836, a year before his death. In oil on canvas, measuring 755 x 1010 mm, the painting was bequeathed to the Tate Gallery in London in 1888 by the artist’s daughter Isabel.