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Constable painted this one almost entirely outdoors, which was still unusual in 1815. Most landscape painters made quick sketches in the field and finished the picture back in the studio. He set up instead at a working dry-dock on the River Stour that belonged to his father, and painted the barge as it was actually being built. His friend and biographer Leslie said you could feel the heat in it, the air near the ground seeming to shimmer. The scene is his own family's business, on the Suffolk border where he grew up. The whole thing grew out of a single small pencil drawing in one of his sketchbooks, which the same museum still keeps.