The Hay Wain: Walking Constable’s Landscape review – a masterpiece for the climate crisis age

Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich While Britain boils in a heatwave, a new exhibition built around the much-reproduced canvas reminds us of the beauty of the natural world – and what we could lose I first saw John Constable’s 1821 painting The Hay Wain as a postcard with cruise missiles brutally stacked in the wooden cart and pointing at the sky. Peter Kennard’s anti-nuke photomontage is just one of the many parodies and travesties this image of a seemingly eternal rustic Britain keeps provoking...

By Jonathan Jones