Richard Parkes Bonington

He also painted small historical cabinet paintings in a freely-handled version of the troubadour style. He painted in oils and watercolour, but in oils his style remains "the extension of the techniques and genius of a master painter in watercolour".[2]

Richard Parkes Bonington studied at Beaux-Arts de Paris. Training under François Louis Thomas Francia is recorded. Louis Godefroy Jadin is recorded as having studied under Richard Parkes Bonington. The recorded working language is English. Work by Richard Parkes Bonington is recorded in the collections of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and Auckland Art Gallery.

• Name — Richard Parkes Bonington • Born — 25 October 1802 • Birthplace — Arnold, Nottinghamshire, England • Died — 23 September 1828 • Place of death — London, England • Education — École des Beaux-Arts, Paris • Movement — Orientalist, Romanticism

• Illustration — François I and Marguerite de Navarre (45.7 by 34.5 cm), based on the discovery of a scratched inscription on a window at the Château de Chambord Richard Parkes Bonington was born in the town of Arnold, four miles from Nottingham.[3] 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 François Louis Thomas Francia,[4] who, having recently returned from England, where he had been deeply influenced by the work of Thomas Girtin,[5] 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 Eugène Delacroix. He worked for a time producing copies of Dutch and Flemish landscapes in the Louvre. In 1820, he started attending the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he studied under Antoine-Jean, Baron Gros. 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 of 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 of 1824 along with John Constable and Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding, and spent most of the year painting coastal views in Dunkirk. 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. His French Coast with Fisherman was one of the works he exhibited at the British Institution in February 1826 which established his reputation in his native England where he had previously been largely unknown.[6] In 1826 he visited northern Italy,[7] staying in Venice for a month,[8] 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 25. He was buried in the graveyard of St James's Chapel Pentonville and in 1837 his remains were transferred to Kensal Green Cemetery to be re-interred with his parents.

• Illustration — Normandy, c. 1823 • Illustration — A Fishmarket near Boulogne, 1824 • Illustration — A Distant View of St-Omer, 1824 • Illustration — French Coast with Fisherman, 1824 • Illustration — Ruins of the Abbey Saint Bertin, 1824 • Illustration — On the Seine near Mantes, 1825 • Illustration — Rouen, 1825 • Illustration — Beached Vessels and a Wagon, near Trouville, 1825 • Illustration — The Château of the Duchess of Berry, 1825 • Illustration — The Pont des Arts, Paris, 1826 • Illustration — On the Adriatic, 1826 • Illustration — The Doge's Palace, Venice, 1826 • Illustration — View on the Grounds of a Villa near Florence, 1826 • Illustration — On the Coast of Picardy, 1826 • Illustration — Barges on a River, 1826 • Illustration — Venice, Grand Canal, 1826 • Illustration — The Giudecca in Venice, 1826 • Illustration — View of the Lagoon Near Venice, 1827. Louvre • Illustration — View of the Piazzetta near the Square of St Mark, Venice, 1827 • Illustration — Charles V visits Francis I after the Battle of Pavia, c. 1827 • Illustration — Henry IV and the Spanish Ambassador, 1827 • Illustration — Henri III and the English Ambassador, 1827 • Illustration — Venice, Ducal Palace with a Religious Procession, 1828 • Illustration — Quentin Durward at Liège, 1828 • Illustration — Corso Sant'Anastasia, Verona, 1828

Recognition and collections.