Barges on a River
Richard Parkes Bonington
1826
It seems likely that this painting was a studio composition rather than a view, because Richard Parkes Bonington incorporates, with great facility, a number of familiar English and Dutch motifs: Turnerian trees on the left, for example, and the angular, rather geometrical stumps and blocky foreground barge, all joined by a windmill plucked from Rembrandt. This may not be entirely fair, though, since we know Bonington sketched windmills near Mantes in about 1825.
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven · Image: Yale Center for British Art, Public domain · Text: Yale Center for British Art, CC0