Richard Parkes Bonington

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Portrait of Richard Parkes Bonington by Alexandre-Marie Colin

Richard Parkes Bonington (25 October 1802[1] 23 September 1828) was an

English Romantic landscape painter, who moved to France at the age of 14 and can also
be considered as a French artist, and an intermediary bringing aspects of English style to
France.[2] Becoming after his very early death one of the most influential British artists of
his time, the facility of his style was inspired by the old masters, yet was entirely modern
in its application. His landscapes were mostly of coastal scenes, with a low horizon and
large sky, showing a brilliant handling of light and atmosphere. He also painted small
historical cabinet paintings in a freely-handled version of the troubadour style.
Contents
[hide]

1Life and work

2Reputation

3Gallery

4References and sources

5Further reading

6External links

Life and work[edit]

Franois I and Marguerite de Navarre(45.7 by 34.5 cm), based on the discovery of a scratched
inscription on a window at the Chteau de Chambord

Richard Parkes Bonington was born in the town of Arnold, four miles from Nottingham.
[1]
His father also known as Richard was successively a gaoler, a drawing master and
lace-maker, and his mother a teacher. Bonington learned watercolour painting from his
father and exhibited paintings at the Liverpool Academy at the age of eleven.
In 1817, Bonington's family moved to Calais, France, where his father had set up a lace
factory. At this time, Bonington started taking lessons from the painter Franois Louis
Thomas Francia,[3] who, having recently returned from England, where he had been
deeply influenced by the work of Thomas Girtin,[4] taught him the English watercolour
technique. In 1818, the Bonington family moved to Paris to open a lace shop. There he
met and became friends with Eugne Delacroix. He worked for a time producing copies
of Dutch and Flemish landscapes in the Louvre. In 1820, he started attending the cole
des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he studied under Antoine-Jean, Baron Gros.[3]
It was around this time that Bonington started going on sketching tours in the suburbs of
Paris and the surrounding countryside. His first paintings were exhibited at the Paris
Salon in 1822. He also began to work in oils and lithography, illustrating Baron
Taylor's Voyages pittoresques dans l'ancienne France and his own architectural
series Restes et Fragmens. In 1824, he won a gold medal at the Paris Salon along
with John Constable and Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding, and spent most of the year
painting coastal views in Dunkirk.[3]

In 1825 he met Delacroix on a visit with Alexandre-Marie Colin to London, and they
sketched together there, and shared a studio for some months in Paris on their return;
Delacroix influenced him in turning to historical painting. He also developed a technique
mixing watercolour with gouache and gum, achieving an effect close to oil painting. In
1826 he visited northern Italy,[5] staying in Venice for a month,[6] and London again in
1827-8. In late 1828 his tuberculosis worsened and his parents sent him back to London
for treatment. Bonington died of tuberculosis on 23 September 1828 at 29 Tottenham
Street in London, aged 26.[5]

Reputation[edit]

Landscape near Quilleboeuf, c. 18241825. Yale Center for British Art

Delacroix paid tribute to Bonington's work in a letter to Thophile Thor in 1861. It reads,
in part:
When I met him for the first time, I too was very young and was making studies in the
Louvre: this was around 1816 or 1817... Already in this genre (watercolor), which was an
English novelty at that time, he had an astonishing ability... To my mind, one can find in
other modern artists qualities of strength and of precision in rendering that are superior to
those in Bonington's pictures, but no one in this modern school, and perhaps even
before, has possessed that lightness of touch which, especially in watercolours, makes
his works a type of diamond which flatters and ravishes the eye, independently of any
subject and any imitation.[7]
To Laurence Binyon however, "Bonington's extraordinary technical gift was also his
enemy. There is none of the interest of struggle in his painting." [6]
Bonington had a number of close followers, such as Roqueplan and Isabey in France,
and Thomas Shotter Boys, James Holland, William Callow and John Scarlett Davis in
England. In addition, there were many copies and forgeries of his work made in the
period immediately after his death.[8]
A statue to him was erected outside the Nottingham School of Art by Watson Fothergill,
and a theatre[9] and primary school in his home town of Arnold are named after him. In
addition, the house in which he was born (79 High Street, Arnold) is now named

Bonington House and is Grade II listed.[10] The Wallace Collection has an especially large
group of 35 works, representing both his landscapes and history paintings.

Gallery[edit]

Rouen

Normandy, c. 1823

View of the Lagoon Near Venice, 1827. Louvre

Venice, Grand Canal.

Charles V. visits Franois Ier after the Battle of Pavia, c. 1827

References and sources[edit]

References
1.

^ Jump up to:a b "Arnold" in Chambers's Encyclopdia. London: George Newnes,

1961, Vol. 1, p. 633.

2.

Jump up^ Novotny, 171

3.

^ Jump up to:a b c Ingamells, 19

4.

Jump up^ Binyon, pp.166 7

5.

^ Jump up to:a b Ingamells, 19-20

6.

^ Jump up to:a b Binyon, pp.169

7.

Jump up^ Noon, Patrick: Richard Parkes Bonington "On the Pleasure of
Painting", page 12. Yale University Press, 1991.

8.

Jump up^ Reynolds, Graham (1998) [1971 (as A Concise History of

Watercolour))]. Watercolours. World of Art. London: Thames and Hudson. p. 108.

9.

Jump up^ "Arnold". Gedling Borough Council website. Gedling Borough Council.
Retrieved 21 May 2014.

10.

Jump up^ Gedling Borough Council Planning and Environment Department

Local Plans Section (6 December 2005). "Listed Buildings" (PDF). Gedling Borough
Council. Retrieved 21 May 2014.

Sources

Binyon, Laurence (1933). English Watercolours. London: A&C Black.

Cambridge, M (2002). Richard Parkes Bonington: Young and

Romantic. Nottingham: Nottingham Castle ISBN 0-905634-58-6 (Catalogue of
exhibition at Nottingham Castle Museum in 2002; contains an account of the life and
works that includes many references.)

Ingamells, John, The Wallace Collection, Catalogue of Pictures, Vol I, British,

German, Italian, Spanish, Wallace Collection, 1985, ISBN 0-900785-16-0

Novotny, Fritz (1971). Painting and Sculpture in Europe, 1780-1880. Pelican

History of Art (2nd ed.). Yale University Press. ISBN 0-14-056120-X.