Richard Parkes Bonington (Father: Richard Bonington, a drawing master and lace manufacturer; Mother: Eleanor Parkes) (1802–1828) was a brilliantly talented English Romantic painter who, despite dying of tuberculosis a month before his 26th birthday, became one of the most influential artists of his generation. He is widely celebrated for bringing the fluid, luminous techniques of English watercolor to France, profoundly impacting the course of French Romanticism and paving the way for Impressionism.

Born in Nottinghamshire, Bonington moved with his family to Calais, France, at the age of 15. There, he took lessons from the watercolorist François-Louis Thomas Francia, who introduced him to the English topographic watercolor tradition. In 1820, he moved to Paris and entered the École des Beaux-Arts, studying under the prominent neoclassical painter Antoine-Jean Gros. However, Bonington was far more interested in studying the Old Masters at the Louvre and sketching outdoors along the coast of Normandy.

In Paris, he became close friends with the young Eugène Delacroix. The two artists shared a studio for a time, mutually influencing each other; Delacroix was captivated by Bonington’s mastery of light and color, while Bonington absorbed Delacroix’s flair for historical and Orientalist subjects.

Bonington’s landscapes and coastal scenes are characterized by their brilliant atmospheric effects, precise yet effortless brushwork, and an extraordinary sensitivity to the sky and weather. He achieved major success at the Paris Salon of 1824—often called the “English Salon”—where he, along with John Constable and Copley Fielding, was awarded a gold medal.

In 1826, he traveled to Venice, producing some of his most radiant and celebrated oil paintings and watercolors of the city’s architecture and canals. Tragically, his prolific and rapidly ascending career was cut short when he succumbed to consumption (tuberculosis) in 1828. Despite his brief life, his legacy endures as a vital bridge between English landscape traditions and French modernism.

Active in others filds : Lithography (Produced significant lithographs for Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l’ancienne France).