Discover constable and the hay wain

So close was Jean-François Millet to the humble peasants he painted that he wore clogs and coarse clothing. He was steeped in nostalgia, yet inspired avant-garde artists from van Gogh to Salvador Dalí, finds Mary Miers

The Yellow Boy by Joshua Reynolds saw multiple peregrinations, passing even through (Romanian) royal hands for a time, before returning to London in 1981. It now headlines a selling exhibition of magnificent 18th to 20th-century works

Built on the wealth of the wool industry, picture-perfect Lavenham in Suffolk is lined with colourful timbered buildings and has a close-knit community at its heart

Ancient rural skills in a modern world

Documentary photographer Richard Cross rises above the shortbread tin romanticism that colours so much of our outdoor heritage, with the perspective provided by drone photography applied to land use issues of our day

Simplifying makes a chosen subject more digestible and allows you to capture it in a form that communicates something about it. But it’s a profound challenge when painting in an impressionist way and