Richard Parkes Bonington

The English painter Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-1828), a fresh and vivid artist in his own right, also served as the connection between French and English painting at a particularly important juncture in the history of art.

Richard Bonington was born on Dec. 25, 1802, at Arnold, near Nottingham, where his father, who was an amateur painter, was governor of Nottingham city jail. In 1817 or 1818 his father set up a lace factory in Calais, France, and trained Richard as a lace designer.

In Calais, Bonington took lessons from Louis Francia, who had been a close friend and associate of the English watercolorist Thomas Girtin; Francia passed on to Bonington the tradition of English watercolor painting at its peak. When his father sought to make him stop taking lessons from Francia, Bonington ran away to Paris. Francia had given him a letter of introduction to Eugène Delacroix, who mentioned in a letter the "tall youth in a short coat who was silently making watercolor studies in the Louvre." Bonington worked on his own and also studied for a time with Baron Gros.

Bonington's work was quickly appreciated in France; indeed, Camille Corot maintained that it was the sight of a watercolor by Bonington in the window of an art dealer which determined his vocation. Every summer Bonington took off on a sketching tour, and lithographs from his drawings appeared in Baron Taylor's Voyages pittoresques dans l'ancienne France. In the famous Salon of 1824, the starting point of the Barbizon school, Bonington and his compatriots John Constable and Copley Fielding received gold medals. By this time Bonington was a close friend of Théodore Géricault and Eugène Isabey, as well as of Delacroix, with whom he shared a studio and who felt there was a great deal to be learned from the young man.

In 1825 Bonington accompanied Delacroix to England, where they made many studies of armor, and in 1826 he traveled with Delacroix's friend Baron Rivet to Venice, where his work took on a new splendor and poignancy. There he made some of his finest paintings, such as View of the Grand Canal. By this time Bonington was probably already suffering from tuberculosis, the "white plague" of the 19th century. He returned to England in 1827 and died in London on Sept. 28, 1828, at the age of 26, leaving a large body of work.

Impact on French Art

Although Bonington's art had certainly benefited from the example of his brilliant French friends, his influence on French painting was incomparably greater. He introduced into France a new quality of light and color in the treatment of the sea, the sky, and the landscape, as in Normandy Coast; he placed his medieval towns and the undulating French farmlands in the ever-shifting light of day. Under the influence of Delacroix, Bonington painted groups of figures in interiors, particularly Shakespearean subjects. He read Sir Walter Scott, as everyone then did, and the medieval chronicler Froissart, whose language had a powerful charm for him. Bonington drenched his history pictures in local color, and he had a joyful sense of the past, exemplified in Henry IV and the Spanish Ambassador, with no interest in the dark and melancholy side of the romantic vision.

It was Bonington's ambition to blend the skill of the Dutch with the vigor of the Venetians and the light and atmosphere of the English; not altogether successful in the first two categories, he completely succeeded in rendering and passing on the extraordinary English magic. He brought the spontaneity and brilliant coloring of British landscape painting, particularly watercolor, to Delacroix, Géricault, and Isabey and hence to the Barbizon school, which in turn led to the impressionists.

Further Reading

The most authoritative account of Bonington is in Martin Hardie, Water Colour Painting in Britain, vol. 2: The Romantic Period (1967). Andrew Shirley, Bonington (1940), is well reasoned and extremely well written. Hugh Stokes, Girtin and Bonington (1922), contains some striking insights. The basic account is in Allan Cunningham, The Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, vol. 2 (1879).

Additional Sources

Ingamells, John, Richard Parkes Bonington, London: Trustees of the Wallace Collection, 1979.

Peacock, Carlos, Richard Parkes Bonington, New York: Taplinger Pub. Co., 1980. □

Bonington, Richard Parkes (b Arnold, nr. Nottingham, 25 Oct. 1802; d London, 23 Sept. 1828). English painter, active mainly in France (his family settled in Calais for business reasons when he was 15). In 1818 he moved to Paris, where he studied with Gros and became a friend of Delacroix. Their Romanticism is reflected in his fondness for historical ‘costume’ pictures, but it was as a landscapist that he established his reputation, particularly with works he exhibited at the ‘English’ Salon of 1824, at which his own paintings (which won him a gold medal) and those of Constable were the star attractions. Bonington travelled a good deal in France in search of subjects. He also spent time with Delacroix in England in 1825, and in 1826 he visited Italy, producing some of his finest work in Venice. He was overloaded with work and his delicate health suffered; he died of consumption a month before his 26th birthday. Although his career was so brief, he was highly influential, the freshness and spontaneity of his fluid style in both oil and watercolours attracting many imitators. Delacroix wrote of him: ‘Other artists were perhaps more powerful or more accurate than Bonington, but no one in the modern school, perhaps no earlier artist, possessed the lightness of execution which makes his works, in a certain sense, diamonds, by which the eye is enticed and charmed independently of the subject or of imitative appeal.’ Most of his work is on a small scale and the qualities Delacroix admired are particularly evident in his pochades (oil sketches done rapidly on the spot as records of transitory effects in nature); with Constable and Turner he was instrumental in establishing a fashion for such sketches. The best collection of Bonington's work is in the Wallace Collection, London, and he is also well represented in the City Museum and Art Gallery, Nottingham.

Bonington, Richard Parkes (1802–28). English painter, active mainly in France (his family settled in Calais for business reasons when he was 15). In 1818 he moved to Paris, where he studied with Gros and became a friend of Delacroix. Their Romanticism is reflected in his fondness for historical ‘costume’ pictures, but it was as a landscapist that he established his reputation, particularly with works he exhibited at the ‘English’ Salon of 1824, at which his own paintings (which won him a gold medal) and those of Constable were the star attractions. Bonington travelled a good deal in France in search of subjects. He also spent time with Delacroix in England in 1825, and in 1826 he visited Italy, producing some of his finest work in Venice. He was overloaded with work and his delicate health suffered; he died of consumption in London a month before his 26th birthday. Although his career was so brief, he was highly influential, the freshness and spontaneity of his fluid style in both oil and watercolours attracting many imitators. Delacroix wrote of him: ‘Other artists were perhaps more powerful or more accurate than Bonington, but no one in the modern school, perhaps no earlier artist, possessed the lightness of execution which makes his works, in a certain sense, diamonds, by which the eye is enticed and charmed independently of the subject or of imitative appeal.’ Most of his work is on a small scale and the qualities Delacroix admired are particularly evident in his pochades (oil sketches done rapidly on the spot as records of transitory effects in nature); with Constable and Turner he was instrumental in establishing a fashion for such sketches. The best collection of Bonington's work is in the Wallace Collection, London, and he is also well represented in the City Museum and Art Gallery at Nottingham, his home town.

Richard Parkes Bonington , 1802-28, English painter. Moving to Calais at the age of 15, his first art study was with Louis Francia, who taught him watercolor and lithography. Bonington studied in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts and in 1820 entered the studio of Gros. At that time he formed a close friendship with Delacroix, with whom he traveled to England. He won early recognition from the Salon, but died of tuberculosis at a young age. Best known for his sparkling watercolors painted rapidly, directly from nature, Bonington also brought to his oil painting an immediacy and dexterity unusual in his day. Bonington was the embodiment of the close link between the English landscape painters Constable and Turner and the budding school of French landscape painters. He was a masterly lithographer as well. Represented in the Louvre and in most important British galleries, Bonington's work is best seen in the Wallace Collection, London.

Bibliography: See study by R. P. Dubuisson (tr. 1924).