Brighton Museum was celebrating the fact that the great English landscape painter John Constable had lived and painted there during 1824–28. He had moved to Brighton for the benefit of his wife’s health. He would often walk along the coast and into the nearby countryside, carrying his paints in a satchel. During these outings when the sky or landscape inspired him he would pause, resting a piece of board on a fence post, (he carried no easel), and make rapidly executed sketches, mainly in watercolour. Clearly these were done spontaneously when the light and weather was at its most dramatic. The resultant works, now mostly held in the V&A, are little known.