After years of wartime stand-off, the period of high Romanticism (1820–1840) was one of fervent cultural exchange between France and Britain. In the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo, British artists contributed regularly to Paris Salons, shared studios with French colleagues, collaborated with Parisian print publishers, and served as drawing masters to the French aristocracy. Tourists from both countries criss-crossed the channel. Watercolour painting, in which the British excelled, caught the imagination of French painters and collectors for the first time, and France was swept by enthusiasm for British literature: the publication of Scott's historical romance Ivanhoe in 1819 caused as much a sensation in Paris as the exhibition of Géricault's painting The Raft of the Medusa did in London the following year.

Although some British influence on French painters is generally acknowledged, its full extent has never been the subject of a major exhibition. Conceived by Patrick Noon, Constable to Delacroix brings together works by such major figures as Constable, Corot, Delacroix, Géricault, Lawrence, Ingres, Bonington, Turner, Venet and Wilkie. These icons of Romanticism both reflected contemporary cultural exchanges and helped set the agenda of modernism for later generations. This fully illustrated catalogue is authored by Patrick Noon with Stephen Bann, David Blayney Brown, Rachel Meredith, Christine Riding and Marie Watteau.