Seapiece: Off the French Coast
Richard Parkes Bonington·c. 1823/1824
Historical Context
Bonington's Seapiece: Off the French Coast from around 1823-24 is an early marine work painted along the Channel coast that established his reputation as a marine painter alongside Constable and Turner. His marine scenes were technically allied to his landscape work — the same atmospheric directness, the same confident handling of wet-in-wet watercolor techniques translated into oil — but the Channel coast's specific quality of light and the working fishing vessels provided distinct subject matter. His early marine paintings were exhibited at the Paris Salon, where they attracted immediate attention from French painters who had not previously seen atmospheric English oil sketching techniques applied to marine subjects.
Technical Analysis
Bonington's oil on canvas captures the movement of sea and sky with fresh, transparent brushwork and a luminous silvery palette, rendering waves and cloud formations with the spontaneous fluency that characterizes his best work.
Provenance
Baron Henri de Rothschild. John, 1st Baron Astor of Hever [1866-1971], Hever Castle, Kent, by 1951;[1] by descent, through his wife, Lady Violet Nairne [d. 1965], to George, 8th Marquess of Lansdowne [b. 1912];[2] sold 1979 to (Thomas Agnew & Sons, London); purchased February 1980 by Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia; gift 1982 to NGA. [1] Possibly inherited from his grandmother, Charlotte [1824-1899], who owned a number of Boningtons, according to letter from the Rothschild Archive dated 30 July 1998 in NGA curatorial files. The painting is listed in _The First Hundred Years of the Royal Academy 1769-1868_, Royal Academy, (London, 1951-1952), 94, no. 208, as "Lent by Colonel the Hon. J.J. Astor". [2] Son of the Lady Violet, Baroness Astor of Hever, by her first marriage to Lord Charles George Francis Mercer Nairne (killed in World War I), according to Townsend, Peter, ed., _Burke's Peerage and Baronetage_, 104th ed. (London, 1967), 122, 1446.
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