Richard Parkes Bonington
Bonington, Richard Parkes
Born Oct. 25, 1801 or 1802, near Nottingham; died Sept. 23, 1828, in London. English painter and graphic artist.
Bonington studied in France under A. Gros and was associated with E. Delacroix and other French romanticists. In 1826 he visited Italy. Bonington’s subtle lyrical landscapes (Boats by the Shore; Hermitage, Leningrad) by their intimate quality and pleinairist searchings blazed trails for 19th-century European landscape painting, including the Barbizon School. Bonington’s small paintings in the historical genre (Henry IV and the Spanish Ambassador; Wallace Collection, London) are romantic and are executed with great artistic freedom. Bonington was a great master of landscape watercolor painting and lithography.