Chain Pier, Brighton, by John Constable. 1826 to 1827. The eighteenth century had seen the invention of the seaside resort. And by Constable's day, the southern coastline had become not only the first line of defence, but also a favourite playground for Londoners. By the 1830s Brighton was the most popular seaside resort in Britain, with around two thousand visitors a week. Constable commented that 'the magnificence of the sea, and its everlasting voice, is drowned in the din - and the beach is only Piccadilly by the seaside.'

David Dimbleby/Richard Humphreys/Christine Riding

DD: We plunged into Brighton by going on one of the two piers that's still there and we had a serious kiss me quick experience with hen nights and girls dressed as nurses with funny wigs on and people selling erotically shaped, sculpted piece of rock and all sorts of stuff and it was terrific fun. And the interesting thing is that you experts all say that the foreground is meant to be Brighton and as Constable like it and the background is to do with that fishing village being destroyed. I suppose the houses along the cliff top but maybe he was just painting a view Dick...

RH: Well it looks to me like he does foreground the old economy of Brighton with the fishermen and so on...

CR: And in fact by the 1880s genre scenes of fisher-folk and peasants were the two most popular genre scenes shown in the Royal Academy, so there is a way of seeing the coast that's developing at this point, that's very urban lead

RH: And then in the background you have this rather odd shimmering hazy image of the 'new' Brighton. But I agree at one level of course, people probably over-interpret this picture, when in fact he was trying to paint a big picture for the Academy. Constable struggled to make these big pictures for the Academy and he writes about this awful almost torture he has to go through every year or so. I mean this one is obviously dominated by the sky, which is really I think, in some ways really the main subject of the picture, you know that he called it 'the chief organ and sentiment' of the painting, you know the sky the thing that absolutely set the tone for the whole thing.