There is room enough for a natural painture. The great vice of the present day is bravura, an attempt to do something beyond the truth. In endeavouring to do something better than well, they do what in reality is good for nothing. Fashion always had, & will have, its day — but truth (in all things) only will last, and can only have just claims on posterity.

Letter to John Dunthorne (29 May 1802), from John Constable's Correspondence, part 2, pp. 31-32 - from Letters