RICHARD PARKES BONINGTON
(1802-1828)
 

L’Institut, Paris

1828

pencil, chalk and bodycolour on grey paper

35.1 x 26.7 cm

P.582

Painted in the last few months of his life when suffering from tuberculosis, Bonington probably drew this while sitting in a carriage.

Considered to be one of his finest topographical drawings, this is borne out by the comparatively high price it fetched in 1829 (£26). It was evidently the study from which the pendant watercolour was made, now in the British Museum (Salting Bequest). An anomaly of both compositions is the absence of the Pont des Arts, the first iron bridge to be built over the Seine which had been virtually completed by 1818. Bonington must have considered it compositionally disruptive.

Bonington spent much of his short life in France as his family moved in 1817-8 to Calais, where the boy studied with FRANCIA and later in Paris with Baron Gros (1771-1835). There he also became friends with Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), who influenced his costume pictures. Delacroix wrote in 1856 that Bonington had ‘ a sense of mastery, sureness of touch going hand in hand with clear ideas’. Bonington’s brilliant watercolours attracted a host of admirers and imitators in both France and England.

EJ

PROVENANCE: Bonington sale 1829, lot 51, as View of the Ecole des Arts, Paris, in pencil and chalk, very spirited, bought Colnaghi; E. Martin; Fine Art Society, 1968, from whom purchased by Gallery with a Treasury Grant, May 1968.

EXHIBITIONS: Richard Parkes Bonington ‘On the Pleasure of Painting’, New Haven, Yale Center for British Art and Paris, Petit Palais, 1991-2, no.161.

REFERENCES: P. Noon, Richard Parkes Bonington: ‘On the Pleasure of Painting’, 1991, p.300-1, no.161.

Copyright © Trustees of Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford.

Extract taken from Watercolours and Drawings, Cecil Higgins Art Gallery by Evelyn Joll.