52. Richard Parkes Bonington

Arnold, Nottinghamshire 1802 – 1828 London

Desenzano, Lake Garda, 1826

Despite his untimely death from tuberculosis a month short of his twenty-sixth birthday, Bonington produced a remarkable body of work and became one of the most influential landscape painters of the Romantic period. His family migrated to Calais in 1817, where he took lessons from Louis Francia (1772–1839), a friend of Thomas Girtin (1775–1802), who stimulated his interest in the English watercolour tradition. In Paris, he enrolled in the atelier of Baron Gros, and befriended Delacroix and Isabey. He travelled extensively along the northern coast of France, producing oils and watercolours which earned him a gold medal alongside Constable at the famous ‘Salon des Anglais’ of 1824. This plein air study of Lake Garda at Desenzano was executed during his trip through northern Italy in 1826. Brilliantly atmospheric, it combines the lightness of touch and luminous qualities of watercolour with the fluidity of oil paint. The water is rendered in long strokes of thinly applied paint, which barely cover the surface of the millboard. The subtle merging of the mountains, mist and clouds in the background are evidence of his virtuoso handling of paint. Corot famously credited his decision to become a painter to the fortuitous encounter with a Bonington watercolour in the window of a Paris gallery.