Andrew Graham-Dixon sets out to reveal the untold personal stories of three great artists in this new series.
Constable in Love. His pictures are seen as the embodiment of rural English cosiness, but John Constable 's paintings belie a forbidden private passion. He first met Maria Bicknell when he was 24 and she was just 12. Years of family disapproval and on-off courtship ensued before they finally married, but Maria tragically died at just 40. Andrew Graham -Dixon argues that it was his devotion to his love that proved the catalyst for Constable to revolutionise landscape art. Director Roger Parsons ; Executive producer Basil Comely Danny Kelly on our obsession with art: page 13