Background
Richard Bonington was born on October 25, 1802 in Arnold, Nottingham, United Kingdom. He was the only son of a Nottingham drawing master and stationer. His family settled in Calais for business reasons when he was 15.
Richard Bonington was born on October 25, 1802 in Arnold, Nottingham, United Kingdom. He was the only son of a Nottingham drawing master and stationer. His family settled in Calais for business reasons when he was 15.
Richard was taught watercolor technique by Louis Francia, who had trained under Thomas Girtin. Parental opposition to his choice of profession forced Bonington to flee to Paris, where he became a friend of the artist Eugene Delacroix. He studied briefly in the École des Beaux Arts, then left to travel in Normandy.
Richard began landscape sketching tours in the suburbs and countryside around Paris, recording genre scenes of fishmarkets and architectural ruins, and selling the paintings to Parisian art dealers. He first exhibited two paintings at the Paris Salon of 1822. By 1823 he was working closely with Francia (then in Paris) to prepare his own lithographic series on architectural ruins, "Restes et Fragmens"; but he also contributed to other architectural publications, studied medieval armor and dress for historical and costume paintings, began painting in oils, and toured northern France with an extended stay in Dunkurque. After the famous Salon of 1824, where he received a gold medal along with John Constable and Anthony Copley Fielding, demand for his work increased significantly.
Almost immediately from the moment, his pictures were publicly exhibited in 1822, Bonington was hailed as a leading talent among the new generation of painters who reacted to the strictures of academic painting that derived from the severe, classicizing style of Jacques-Louis David, the leading artist of the French Revolutionary era. Against that style, which was limited to parables from Plutarch, stiff aristocratic portraits and postcards from the Roman countryside, the new generation favored genre paintings of fishmarkets, fields and local laborers painted with emotion and the "atmosphere" of natural effects of light and weather.
Bonington traveled to London in 1825 where he studied historical costumes in Westminster, met important artists, publishers, and art dealers, and toured along the northern coast with Eugène Isabey and Delacroix before returning to Paris to take up lodgings with Delacroix. In 1826 Bonington made a two month trip through Switzerland and northern Italy with a fellow painter, Charles Rivet, composing many drawings and oil sketches but fewer watercolors. In 1827 he made a second trip to London and continued to exhibit and to appear in lithographic publications, and was working strenuously on his various commissions. He made a third trip to London in 1828 and received notice for paintings exhibited at the British Institution for the Promotion of Fine Arts, but collapsed during a sketching tour of the Seine that summer, apparently sick with tuberculosis. His health began to deteriorate rapidly, and he was taken to London by his parents for treatment but died two weeks after his arrival.
The Doge's Palace, Venice
Landscape near Quilleboeuf
River Scene in France
Sunset in the Pays de Caux
Piazza San Marco, Venice
Vessels in a Choppy Sea
Henri III and Don Juan of Austria
The Rialto, Venice
Green fields at the boards of Rio das Velhas
Francis I and Marguerite de Navarre
Corso Sant'Anastasia, Verona, with the Palace of Prince Maffei
Seascape
Les Salinieres by Trouville
Francis I and the Duchess of Etampes
The Undercliff
Venice. The Grand Canal.
Abbey of St. Berlin, near St. Omer
Paris. Quai du Louvre.
Rouen
French River Scene with Fishing Boats
Shipping Off the Coast of Kent
Entrance into the harbour of Rio de Janeiro
A Cutter and other Ships in a Strong Breeze
View of Venice
The Adriatic coast
Venice Grand Canal, Sunset
Charles V visits Francis I after the Battle of Pavia
Boulogne Sands
Boats by the Normandy Shore
Lake Brientz and Interlaken
A Venetian Scene
St. Mark's Column in Venice
Beach in Normandy
The Norman coast
On the Coast of Picardy
Parlerre d'eau a Versailles
Landscape with Harvesters at Sunset
Lake Lugano
Scene in Normandy
Front view of the Cathedral
At the English Coast
A Boat Beached in a Port at Low Tide
Quotes from others about the person
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.