Near Quillebeuf
Richard Parkes Bonington
between 1824 and 1825
Unlike J.M.W. Turner, whose coasts carry the weight of high drama, Richard Parkes Bonington’s shore profiles are often almost completely flat, the horizon line kept daringly low, and the composition shorn of extraneous detail. There are some hints here of the influence of John Constable, whose success in Paris coincided exactly with the younger Bonington’s gold medal at the Salon of 1824, but the overall effect is one of calm—a fusion of personal observation of the French coast and Dutch masters of the seventeenth century.
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven · Image: Yale Center for British Art, Public domain · Text: Yale Center for British Art, CC0