‘The Keats of painting’
This beautifully serene early morning beach scene, with its sensitive understanding of diaphanous coastal light, is one of two such landscapes with which Bonington chose to make his professional debut as a painter in England. Shown at the British Institution in London in 1826, they caused a sensation among British collectors and resulted in a clamour for commissions. A version of this composition was commissioned by the Marquess of Lansdowne (now in the Royal Collection) and variations on the theme include the famous painting commissioned by the 6th Duke of Bedford (Woburn Abbey Collection). Despite his early death at the age of just twenty-five, Bonington’s influence on both his contemporaries and later generations of artists was profound and it was these beach scenes along the Picardy and Normandy coasts which both established his contemporary fame and secured his posthumous reputation.
Like Turner, Bonington had trained as a watercolourist and it is in works such as this that we see to best effect his virtuoso handling, manipulation of paint and subtle observation of light and atmosphere, learnt in that medium, applied to oil paint. Those effects which inspired the American novelist Edith Wharton to describe Bonington as ‘the Keats of painting’, beside whom John Constable’s magnificent ‘nature painting’ seemed more prose than poetry.1 This painting, which survives in particularly exceptional condition, is a masterpiece by the artist, painted at the height of his career, and is one of the last remaining examples of its kind in private hands.
The view depicts a wide expanse of beach at low tide with the sun rising from a low horizon, its soft rays shimmering off the wet sand and diffusing through the hazy air, still heavy with morning mist. In the foreground the light picks out the figures of two peasant children, crouching to inspect the morning’s catch – two large skate laid out beside a wicker creel. Beyond lie two fishing boats beached on the sands, one with its sails hanging limp in the still dawn air, whilst a driver leads a team of pack animals across the open beach. In the far distance, half-glimpsed through the glare off the distant water, the hazy outline of a small town can be made out, its church tower standing out in blue wash and dashes of white impasto in the ethereal light. It is a timeless scene of calm tranquility, renewal and simple, natural beauty. The quiet dawn of a thousand new days, bathed in nebulous golden light. Virtually all of Bonington’s coastal landscapes depict actual places, however the location of this view has yet to be identified. Though the topography indicates the environs of Calais or Dunkerque, where the artist spent a significant amount of time in the early 1820s.
As Patrick Noon has commented, here, as in many of his most iconic beach scene landscapes, the artist has condensed his foreground staffage, thus creating the ‘classic’ Bonington composition with its low horizon and bright expanse of sky, balanced only by minimal vertical accents of isolated figures or beached vessels (see fig. 1). In a development from his earlier works on a similar theme, he has introduced a method of alternating horizontal bands of distinct light and shade in the foreground; the effect of which is to preserve the radiance of a space saturated with natural sunlight, whilst at the same time more dramatically defining it. Bonington was fond of populating his beach scenes with the coastal fisherfolk he encountered on his travels, evolving over time to focus predominantly on their children as the principal occupants of these natural settings. This is one of the earliest examples of this development, evoking, as they do, the innate innocence of Rosseau’s ‘children of nature’; animated by their contact with the elements and seemingly encouraged to develop according to their natural instincts. In this, Bonington’s image might even be interpreted as a comment upon his philosophy regarding artistic education and development, much as Wright of Derby had in the late 1760s.
The son of a drawing master, in 1816, whilst still in his early teens, Bonington had moved from Nottingham to France with his parents, first to Calais and then Paris. In Calais he met the French born artist Louis Francia, recently returned to his native city from England where, together with Thomas Girtin, Copley Fielding, Samuel Prout and others, he had championed the cause of naturalistic landscape painting in watercolour. It was here that Bonington first developed his affection for the coastline and native people of Northern France. Later, during his time at the École des Beaux Arts, where her studied in the atelier of the most famous history painter in France, Antoine-Jean Gros, he would make frequent sketching trips back to coast of Normandy and Picardy. In 1824 he spent much of the year at Dunkirk, which he described as ‘the happiest year of my life’ and in 1825 he accompanied Eugène Isabey on a sketching tour along the Channel coast.
Having retired from the École des Beaux Arts and renouncing all formal training, Bonington became something of a cult figure amongst contemporary French artists and certain connoisseurs, who found in his work a freedom and naturalism in striking contrast to the academic classicism of their national school (see fig. 2). Camille Corot, recalling a formative encounter in his youth with a Bonington watercolour found in the window of the Parisian dealer Mme. Hulin’s gallery in 1822, reminisced that:
‘It seemed to me,… that this artist had captured for the first time the effects that had always touched me when I discovered them in nature and that were rarely painted. I was astonished by it. This small picture was, for me, a revelation. I discerned its sincerity, and from that day I was firm in my resolve to become a painter.’
Whilst Eugène Delacroix, writing to a critic of his friend’s prodigious early talent declared:
‘He possessed even then all the charm that would later prove his excellence. To my mind, one can find in other modern artists qualities of strength and of precision in rendering that are superior to those in Bonington’s pictures, but no one in this modern school, and perhaps even before, has possessed that lightness of touch which, especially in watercolours, makes his works a type of diamond that flatters and ravishes the eye.’2
Having made his debut at the Paris Salon of 1822 with two watercolour views of Lillebonne and Le Havre, in 1824 Bonington was invited, along with John Constable, Copley Fielding and Sir Thomas Lawrence, to exhibit at the seminal Salon of that year – later to become known as ‘The British Salon’. All three landscape painters were awarded gold medals of the first class, whilst Lawrence was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur. The exhibition was a watershed moment, inspiring a wave of Anglo-mania in French culture and the arts. Whilst the critics were not unanimous in their praise for Bonington and his fellows of the British school, French artists discerned something quite exceptional in the vision of this 22-year-old English prodigy. Bonington’s friend and fellow landscape painter Paul Huet recognized his special talent as the ‘genius de l'aperçu et l'indication’ – that is, an extraordinary ability to show powerful and varied effects of colour and perspective while simultaneously paying due attention to naturalistic details. This virtuosity equally fascinated Delacroix, who later marvelled at how Bonington's pictures were able to express a beauty that was independent of any subject or representational quality – the beauty of what he called ‘the abstract side of painting’. As Noon has discussed, however, technique was not Bonington's exclusive absorption, for his marine views do communicate a subjective response to nature and a genuine affection for his subject matter. This was certainly also the view of his contemporaries, who invariably saw in such works evidence of profound sentiment.3
“To my mind… no one in this modern school, and perhaps even before, has possessed that lightness of touch which… makes his works a type of diamond that flatters and ravishes the eye”
In the summer of 1825, Bonington travelled to London in the company of Delacroix and a group of young French artists, where a host of exhibitions presenting the very best of the contemporary British school were on view; including the annual exhibitions of the Society of Painters in Watercolours; The British Institution; and the Royal Academy, where Turner’s brilliant Harbour of Dieppe (The Frick Collection, New York) was on show. Studying Turner’s work at first-hand was Bonington’s principal objective for the trip. He spent most of his time visiting both public and private collections of the artist’s work, spending considerable time with the Cooke family, Turner’s most important engravers, studying his many watercolours then in their studio.
The rich colour mixing in the sky and water of Picardy Coast with Children – Sunrise, with their striations of ochre, sienna, blue, pink, yellow and deliciously impasted white, as well as the correspondingly tinted wispy cloud formations, demonstrate the clear influence of Turner’s work on Bonington’s style following this first trip to London. Thought they never met, Turner publicly professed admiration for Bonington’s marine paintings and clearly identified him as one of the most promising of his contemporaries. Certainly his poignant Calais Sands, Low Water – Poissards Collecting Bait (Bury Art Gallery, Manchester; fig. 3), with its sinking sun, reflected in the glistening sands as it dips below a watery horizon, painted shortly after Bonington’s premature death, has always been perceived as Turner’s eulogy to his younger colleague.
“These are extraordinary ornaments in the rooms”
In February the following year Bonington chose to launch his own exhibiting career in England with the submission of two oil paintings to the British Institution, the annual exhibition of works by living British artists: no. 256, French Coast with Fisherfolk (Tate Britain, London; fig. 4), a painting he had previously exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1824; and no. 242, the present work. Both paintings caused a sensation, the critic for the Literary Gazette exclaiming just two days after the exhibition opened:
‘Who is R.P. Bonnington? We never saw his name in any catalogue before and yet here are pictures which would grace the foremost name in landscape art. Sunshine, perspective, vigour; a fine sense of beauty in disposing of the colours, whether in masses or in small bits; – these are extraordinary ornaments in the rooms.’4
Two weeks later a second highly flattering appraisal followed:
‘Few pictures have more skilfully expressed the character of open sunny daylight than the one under notice; and we have seldom seen an artist make more of the simple materials which the subject afforded. With a broad unfinished pencil, he has perceived the character of his figures and accessories; also a splendid tone of colour, glowing and transparent.’
Another critic, singling out Bonington’s two landscapes as being ‘amongst the chief ornaments of their class in the gallery’, marvelled that they could have been produced by so young an artist (Bonington was still only 23) and thought that in their composition, colouring and effects of light they ‘would reflect honour upon a veteran in the art’.5
By the close of the exhibition on 20 May 1826 both paintings had sold. French Coast with Fishermen to Amabel, Countess de Grey, the founding sponsor of the exhibition, and Picardy Coast with Children – Sunrise to Sir George Warrender, President of the Board of Control and a Privy Councillor. Moreover, Bonington had firmly attracted the attention of the elite group of connoisseurs who had originally founded the British Institution and represented the leading collectors and patrons of the day. Men like the 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne, a director of the British Institution and later a trustee of both the National Gallery and the British Museum, who commissioned the version of Picardy Coast with Children – Sunrise now in the Royal Collection;6 the 2nd Earl Grosvenor, another director of the Institution, who swiftly purchased Coast of Picardy with Fisherfolk – Sunset, a picture which, but for the slight discrepancy in size, could almost be taken as a pendant for the present lot; and the 6th Duke of Bedford, a collector of considerable acumen and another staunch advocate of contemporary British artists. The latter acquired two significant oil paintings from Bonington: On the Cote d’Opale – Picardy (fig. 5), which is one of Bonington’s most monumental and ambitions coastal views and remains in the collection at Woburn Abbey; and On the Coast of Picardy, now in The Wallace Collection, London.
“They recall to me in their finesse, in their delicate precision of touch, the marines of Cuyp”
Richard Parkes Bonington died on 23 September 1828, aged just 25. After a period working in his friend Delacroix’s studio and a trip through northern Italy in 1826, which included a month in Venice, Bonington spent the last two years of his tragically short life focused on introducing the splendours of Venetian art and architecture to his French and British audience and on mastering historical and literary illustration. However, he never abandoned his passion for the culture and beauties of the Channel coast. Despite the popularity of his efforts in all these different genres and media, it was his marine paintings, of which perhaps twenty are known today, that had the most profound and lasting influence on French and British sensibilities. When examples of his beach scenes were featured in an exhibition at a commercial gallery in the Boulevard des Italiens in 1860, Edouard Manet’s prescient advocate, the critic Zacherie Astruc, waxed enthusiastically:
‘Bonington’s marines have a limpidity that many painters tried to imitate, but without success, in particular M. Isabey – They recall to me in their finesse, in their delicate precision of touch, the marines of Cuyp – This firm, just manner in comprehending nature when he addressed it directly, this very visible love of pure truth in the best moments of his romantic improvisations, indicated a gifted spirit, wise, studiously persevering, replete of good sense – Still young he spoke with an authority that was respected, he founded a school.’
Also writing on the history of British art in the middle of the century, the art critic Théophile Thoré, who fully understood the formative influence of the British school on the evolution of landscape painting in France, observed that while Bonington offered less majesty than Gainsborough, less solidity and splendour than Constable, and less audacity than Turner, ‘which of these masters’, he asked, ‘is more refined, more delicate in touch, more harmonious and more distinguished in his use of colour than Bonington?’. Picardy Coast with Children-Sunrise is a consummate affirmation of that assessment.
Note on Provenance
Having been bought directly from the artist at the British Institution exhibition of 1826 by Sir George Warrender, this painting was later acquired, following the sale of Warrender’s collection in 1837, by Nicholas Joseph Maison, 1st Marquis Maison, a Marshal of France and Minister of War. Maison had been an officer in Napoleon’s Grande Armée and served at both the battles of Austerlitz and Leipzig, where he was wounded. Following his death in 1840, the painting was purchased from his collection by Henry McConnell, a successful industrialist and textile manufacturer, who owned the Cressbrook Mill complex on the river Wye in Derbyshire (which had first been established by Richard Arkwright). He was also a noted collector and patron of modern British art, who’s collection included a number of celebrated works. As well as the present lot, he owned works by Sir Charles Lock Eastlake and John Everett Millais; two works by Constable, including Helmingham Dell (The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City); views of Ghent and the Gulf of Salerno by Augustus Wall Callcott; and Edwin Landseer’s Hawking in the Old Time (The Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood House, London). He also owned four major oil paintings by J.M.W. Turner, including Campo Santo, Venice, exhibited at the R.A. in 1842 (Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio) and Rockets and Blue Lights, of 1840 (The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts; fig. 7).
By 1891 the picture belonged to Sir Charles Tennant, the Scottish businessman, industrialist and Liberal politician, who was also a major art collector. In addition to his many business enterprises, Tennant was a Trustee of the National Gallery and, in 1853, acquired The Glen estate in Peeblsshire, extensively remodeling the grounds and employing David Bryce to build a new, large mansion in the Scottish Baronial style. Like McConnel, the focus of Tennant’s taste was British art and his collection also included a number of significant works by Reynolds and Romney, as well as Turner’s Van Tromp’s Shallop at the Entrance of the Scheldt (Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut) and his ethereal 1844 masterpiece Approach to Venice (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). Tennant’s great-grandson, Colin, 3rd Baron Glenconner, to whom this painting descended, famously purchase the island of Mustique in the Caribbean in 1958, where he hosted lavish society parties.
1 Noon 2008, p. 7.
2 Translation of a letter to Théophile Thoré, 30 November 1861. Correspondence générale d’Eugène Delacroix, vol. IV, André Joubin (ed.), Paris 1935–38, p. 286.
3 Noon 2008.
4 Quoted in Noon 2008, p. 199.
5 Quoted in Noon 2008, p. 224.
6 Noon 2008, cat. no. 204.