Biography

Richard Parkes Bonington Biography: Introduction

Richard Parkes Bonington belonged to Britain by birth and to France by upbringing, training and much of his working life. That double formation was not a decorative detail added to his reputation after his death. It shaped where he travelled, whom he worked beside, how his pictures circulated and the unusual ease with which he moved between British watercolour practice and the Paris art world. His career lasted barely a decade, yet it took him from Nottinghamshire to Calais, Paris, the Channel coast, London, Switzerland and northern Italy. The fullest view of Bonington and his art therefore begins with movement: not a straight journey towards one national school, but repeated crossings through which subjects, materials and professional relationships changed.

At a Glance

• BornArnold, near Nottingham, England, in 1802.^[1][2]
• Moved to FranceHis family settled in Calais in 1817 and moved to Paris the following year.^[2][3]
• TrainingHe learned from Louis Francia, copied Dutch paintings in the Louvre and entered the studio of Baron Antoine-Jean Gros.^[3][4][5]
• Public breakthroughFive marine and coastal oils at the Paris Salon of 1824 brought him a gold medal.^[4]
• ItalyHe travelled through Switzerland and northern Italy with Charles Rivet from April to June 1826.^[4][5]
• DiedHe died from tuberculosis in London in 1828, aged 25.^[5][8]

Richard Parkes Bonington in context

Movements1780–1860 Artists1750–1875 Key works1823–1828

Movement context

17801800182018401860

Romanticism

c. 1790–1850

British Romanticism

c. 1790–1840

French Romanticism

c. 1815–1850

Bonington's working career

1817–1828

Lifetimes

175017751800182518501875

Antoine-Jean Gros

1771–1835

J. M. W. Turner

1775–1851

John Constable

1776–1837

Eugène Delacroix

1798–1863

Richard Parkes Bonington

1802–1828

Paul Huet

1803–1869

Works

182318241825182618271828

Seapiece: Off the French Coast

c. 1823–24

An Estuary in Northern France

c. 1825–27

View near Rouen

c. 1825

Roadside Halt

1826

The Doge's Palace, Venice

1826

On the Coast of Picardy

1826

Henri III

1828

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Childhood in Nottinghamshire
3. Calais, Francia and a New Coast
4. Paris, the Louvre and Gros
5. Watercolour, Lithography and the Printed Image
6. Normandy, Picardy and Exhibiting from 1822
7. The Paris Salon of 1824
8. London in 1825 and Artistic Friendships
9. Switzerland and Northern Italy, 1826
10. Commissions and Widening Subjects, 1827–28

Childhood in Nottinghamshire

Bonington was born in Arnold, near Nottingham, on 25 October 1802. He was the only child of Richard Bonington and Eleanor Parkes. His father worked as an artist, drawing teacher and dealer in prints, while his mother ran a school. These details matter because images were present in the household before formal instruction began. Patrick Noon records that Bonington's father owned a substantial collection of old-master and modern prints, including Rembrandt etchings, which served as teaching models for his son and for other pupils.^[2][4]

The surviving evidence does not, however, support the familiar story of an infant genius. Noon notes that very little is securely recorded about Bonington's childhood and rejects later tales of polished drawings made at the age of three as inventions. A few early works were remembered or listed by the family, but they are now untraced. They indicate copying, illustration and an encounter with reproduced art, not the miraculous mastery described by nineteenth-century legend.^[4] This distinction is useful: Bonington developed quickly, but his fluency emerged within an environment of instruction, prints and sustained practice.

Nor should Arnold be treated merely as the place he left behind. The print culture available through his father gave the young artist access to compositions far beyond Nottinghamshire. Engravings could compress a famous painting into a portable black-and-white lesson in structure, tone and gesture. That experience of learning through translated images would remain relevant in a career involving watercolours, lithographs and works designed for reproduction. The first stage of his education was already connected to circulation.

Calais, Francia and a New Coast

In 1817 the Bonington family left Nottingham for Calais. A scholarly catalogue published by the National Gallery of Art relates the move to the social and economic disruption affecting Nottingham's lace and hosiery industries; the family established a lace business in the French port before moving on to Paris in 1818.^[2] This explanation is more securely grounded than a romantic tale of artistic exile. Bonington was fifteen: old enough for the change of language, coast and professional setting to become formative, but still at the beginning of his training.

Calais placed him beside the Channel rather than simply on the French side of it. Shipping, low beaches, tidal expanses and rapidly shifting weather became recurring subjects. The port also brought him into contact with Louis Francia, a Calais-born watercolourist who had spent many years working in England. Institutional accounts identify Francia as one of Bonington's teachers or early artistic associates.^[2][5] Through him, Bonington encountered a British watercolour tradition in France itself. The geography of his education was cross-Channel from the outset.

This helps explain why attempts to assign his early manner wholly to Britain or France are unsatisfactory. Francia could carry British methods into a French coastal setting; Bonington could absorb them while living among French artists and audiences. Place and technique did not map neatly onto nationality. The Channel was both subject and working corridor, a fact that would later make Bonington's exhibitions in Paris and London feel like connected parts of one career rather than separate national episodes.

Paris, the Louvre and Gros

The family's move to Paris in 1818 widened Bonington's field of study. His father directed him to copy Dutch old-master paintings in the Louvre in watercolour and enrolled him in the studio of Antoine-Jean Gros, a leading history painter. The two activities offered very different disciplines. In the museum, Bonington studied how earlier painters organised landscape, atmosphere, architecture and incident. In Gros's academy, he faced the conventional programme of drawing from plaster casts and preparing for the elevated subjects expected of an academically trained painter.^[3][4]

Bonington did not remain within that programme. Both the National Gallery and Noon's later account describe his abandonment of academic tuition in favour of landscape. This was not a rejection of learning. Louvre copying continued to matter, and his late historical subjects show that figure painting and old-master art were never simply discarded. What he resisted was a prescribed route in which prolonged cast drawing preceded independent work. Landscape, travel and watercolour offered a more immediate field of enquiry.^[3][4]

The decision also placed him among artists for whom work outside the academy could become a shared practice. Paris gave him access to French peers, publishers, collectors and exhibition opportunities while his command of watercolour retained a British inflection. The result was neither an untouched English style transplanted abroad nor a complete absorption into French academic culture. His education proceeded through choices between institutions, media and companions.

Watercolour, Lithography and the Printed Image

Before Bonington returned seriously to oil painting, watercolour and print-related work formed the practical basis of his career. The British Museum describes him as a painter, watercolourist and lithographer and records that he began exhibiting in 1822.^[1] Noon characterises the years before the 1824 Salon as productive ones in which Bonington made topographical watercolours for print publishers and literary illustrations for the friendship albums collected in France.^[4]

Those activities demanded different kinds of control. A topographical view had to make a place legible; an album illustration had to sustain interest on an intimate scale; a design intended for reproduction had to survive translation into print. Watercolour rewarded economy, since a light reserve or a transparent wash could establish weather and distance without laborious modelling. Lithography, still a relatively new reproductive process, offered another way for drawn information to circulate. The variety of works now connected with his name at the British Museum—drawings, prints, studies and albums—confirms that his practice cannot be reduced to finished oils.^[1]

The importance of these years is explored more fully in Bonington's watercolours and drawings. In biographical terms, they established three habits that persisted: working on a portable scale, responding rapidly to a site and thinking about how images would reach viewers beyond the studio. His later oil technique did not replace those habits. It adapted them.

Normandy, Picardy and Exhibiting from 1822

Bonington's landscape education unfolded through travel in northern France. The National Gallery records extensive work in Normandy and Picardy and identifies Paul Huet among the companions with whom he visited places such as La Ferté and Saint-Valery-sur-Somme.^[3] The British Museum's concise chronology places the beginning of his exhibiting career in 1822.^[1] Together, these facts show an artist developing public visibility while repeatedly testing his methods against particular coasts, rivers, towns and buildings.

Travel was not an escape from professional life. The views produced or developed from these journeys could serve publishers, private collectors and exhibitions. Ports and estuaries also offered varied motifs within a concentrated area: boats aground or afloat, broad skies, sandbanks, distant buildings and figures working at the water's edge. Bonington did not need grand mountains or violent storms to generate pictorial interest. Modest shifts in tide, cloud and viewpoint were enough.

The National Gallery's account of An Estuary in Northern France shows how the methods formed in watercolour entered oil. Bonington painted that work on a paper-fibre board, using thin, fluid strokes and working directly into wet paint; the museum considers it to have been made outdoors at La Ferté around 1825–27.^[3] The example belongs slightly later than his first exhibitions, but it clarifies the direction of travel. The immediacy associated with watercolour became a way of handling oil, not a medium-specific effect left behind.

Normandy and Picardy were therefore more than a list of destinations. They were recurring working territories in which observation, portability and repetition could interact. A cathedral, harbour or stretch of coast might first be drawn or painted in watercolour, reconsidered in another medium, and eventually presented to a metropolitan audience. This practical network of tour, studio and exhibition is central to the British and French Romanticism surrounding Bonington.

The Paris Salon of 1824

The Paris Salon of 1824 transformed Bonington's professional standing. Having spent several years making topographical watercolours and illustrations, he resumed oil painting in preparation for the exhibition. His public debut in oils comprised five marine and coastal views. He received a gold medal, as did the more established British artists John Constable, Copley Fielding and Thomas Lawrence.^[4]

The award placed his achievement within an unusually visible Anglo-French moment at the Salon. Yet its significance should not be reduced to the claim that British landscape simply taught France a new way to paint. Bonington had already been living and working in France for years. His exhibits emerged from French coastal travel, Parisian professional networks and techniques shaped partly by British watercolour. The success belonged to exchange rather than one-way transmission.

It also confirmed that marine and coastal subjects could support serious ambition. Bonington did not have to abandon compact landscapes for an academic hierarchy of large figure compositions in order to receive recognition. At the same time, the Salon opened doors that would later permit a wider range of subjects. Success as a landscape painter gave him the professional freedom to move towards Venetian views and historical scenes without severing his earlier practice. An overview of Bonington's paintings makes that widening range especially clear.

London in 1825 and Artistic Friendships

Bonington visited London in the summer of 1825. Noon's account places his meeting with Eugène Delacroix there; the British Museum also associates the journey with Delacroix and Eugène Isabey.^[4][5] On returning to Paris, Bonington and Delacroix shared a studio in 1825–26 and discussed travelling to Italy together. Their friendship connected the landscape and figure-painting strands of contemporary Romantic art, but it was also practical: they saw works, worked in proximity and exchanged ideas about old masters, literary subjects and handling paint.

London affected Bonington's materials as well as his relationships. Noon records his discovery there of a commercially prepared millboard patented by Robert Davy. Lightly primed and easy to carry, the board made it practical to take outdoors the rapid oil handling he had already practised in watercolour. The change is visible in small oil studies made around Rouen in 1825, where site, support and speed became closely linked.^[4] Material innovation was not an abstract technical advance; it changed what could be carried and attempted during a journey.

The British Museum self-portrait of about 1825–26 gives a quieter glimpse of this period. Bonington shows himself in a broad-brimmed hat, his head supported by one hand, drawn in brown wash with white touches over graphite. The museum warns against treating the pose as a prediction of illness or early death. Supporting the head was a practical way to remain still while moving one's gaze between mirror and drawing, even though the pose also carried established associations with melancholy.^[5] Read with that caution, the work presents an artist attending closely to the act of looking rather than staging his future legend.

His relationships extended beyond Delacroix. Paul Huet shared northern French painting territories; Thomas Shotter Boys remained close during Bonington's final illness; Isabey and other artists participated in the movement of people and works between Paris and London.^[3][5] This was a network of peers, teachers, patrons and publishers rather than a single decisive influence. It also included admired artists whom Bonington may not have known personally. The Wallace Collection notes that Bonington and J. M. W. Turner saw one another's work through exhibitions and engravings, and describes their relation as one of mutual influence and creative competition.^[6]

Switzerland and Northern Italy, 1826

The Italian journey developed from plans made with Delacroix, but Delacroix withdrew because of professional and financial commitments. Bonington travelled instead with his friend and patron Charles Rivet. They left in April 1826 and spent roughly three months crossing Switzerland and northern Italy. The route remained north of Rome and only touched Tuscany. Venice, with its Gothic architecture, Shakespearean associations and paintings by Titian and Veronese, became the journey's principal imaginative centre.^[4][5]

The itinerary shows the breadth of Bonington's interests. He did not travel only to locate picturesque scenery. Architecture, church interiors and old-master painting mattered alongside light on water. Drawings made on the tour preserved structures and details; small oil studies tested how colour and illumination could be registered directly; later studio works enlarged Venetian motifs for collectors and exhibitions. The publisher of the companion catalogue of Bonington's drawings, the result of more than twenty-five years of research, specifically highlights works made during this 1826 passage through Switzerland and northern Italy.^[8]

Venice also connected his earlier and later concerns. Its canals and boats extended his experience of coastal and river subjects, while its palaces offered an architectural theatre associated with history, literature and ceremony. The move from a small study to an exhibition picture was not a move from truthful observation to mere invention. It allowed information gathered on site to enter more elaborate compositions. Bonington's Venetian works retain the economy of a traveller's notation even when their scale and finish address a collector's wall.

The journey lasted only a season, but its consequences occupied the remainder of his career. Italian views joined northern French coasts in his repertory, and Venetian architecture helped prepare his expansion towards historical subjects. Rather than treating Italy as the inevitable climax of an artist's education, it is more accurate to see it as another concentrated period of looking whose materials were developed after his return.

Commissions and Widening Subjects, 1827–28

Demand increased rapidly after the 1824 Salon and Bonington's first public appearance in Britain at the British Institution in 1826. Noon describes commissions for oils and watercolours from private collectors, art dealers and publishers of annuals and travel books in both Paris and London.^[4] His market was now genuinely international. Exhibitions created recognition, publishers multiplied images and patrons could encounter his work while moving through the same cross-Channel networks as the artist.

Landscape remained central, but it no longer defined the outer limit of his ambition. In the count given by Noon's 2025 supplement, 72 of the oils catalogued in 2008 are landscapes made in France or Italy; the other 23 use figures or literary themes. Those figural works drew on Shakespeare, Walter Scott, Goethe, Cervantes, French history and contemporary poetry.^[4]

The late history paintings were not a repudiation of the coast. They involved another application of the same visual intelligence: selecting telling detail, balancing broad areas of colour and allowing costume or architecture to carry much of a scene's character. History painting also held greater institutional prestige than landscape. The Wallace Collection places Henri III within that ambition and records that Bonington exhibited it at the Royal Academy shortly before his death.^[7] Its subject and exhibition history are considered more closely with Henri III.

This widening of subject matter can easily be mistaken for a planned ascent from watercolour to oil or from landscape to history. The chronology resists that neat ladder. Bonington continued to receive watercolour commissions while painting oils; he returned to landscapes while developing figure scenes; designs circulated through prints as pictures entered elite exhibitions. His career expanded by addition and interchange.

Illness, London and Death

Bonington's health deteriorated in 1828. He returned to London, where he died from tuberculosis in September, still aged twenty-five.^[5][8] The exact brevity of his life has often dominated accounts of him, sometimes turning every shadowed portrait or quickly handled landscape into evidence of impending death. The British Museum's discussion of the self-portrait offers a necessary corrective: much of the melancholy attached to his image grew after his death, as admiration hardened into the legend of a doomed Romantic hero.^[5]

His final year is better understood through the work and professional demands that continued during it. Major historical pictures were being exhibited, landscape and watercolour commissions remained active, and his reputation operated in both Paris and London.^[4][7] Illness ended an expanding practice; it does not supply the meaning of everything that preceded it. The strongest biography keeps mortality in view without allowing it to replace the artist's decisions, materials and working relationships.

Reputation and the Work of Cataloguing

Bonington's reputation grew through several channels after 1828. Friends remembered his skill; prints carried his compositions to new audiences; studio sales dispersed works; and later writers shaped an increasingly romantic image of the young Anglo-French artist. Delacroix recalled the exceptional facility of Bonington's hand, while Turner's admiration was sustained through works seen in exhibitions and engravings. The Wallace Collection interprets Turner's Calais Sands of 1830 as a eulogy to the younger painter.^[4][6]

Those tributes should not collapse Bonington into the artists who admired him. His particular importance lies in the way his practice joined circumstances that are often narrated separately: English birth and French training, watercolour and oil, direct outdoor study and studio elaboration, landscape and historical illustration, private album and public Salon. Later French painters valued the freshness of his handling, but calling him merely a forerunner of Impressionism substitutes hindsight for those specific conditions.^[3]

Modern cataloguing has also changed what can responsibly be said about the career. Yale University Press issued Patrick Noon's Richard Parkes Bonington: The Complete Paintings for the Paul Mellon Centre in 2008. The publisher presents it as the first catalogue raisonné devoted to the complete known body of Bonington's oils and watercolours, built on twenty-five years of research and about 400 accepted, catalogued and reproduced works.^[9] The companion Complete Drawings followed in 2011 and covers more than 400 drawings.^[8]

Noon's 2025 supplement demonstrates why cataloguing is an ongoing scholarly activity rather than a final monument. It revisits five oil paintings as new works become available for direct examination and evidence changes.^[4] That process matters especially for an artist whose fluid execution inspired copies and whose works were widely dispersed after his death. Bonington's life story is short, but the history of identifying, interpreting and reconnecting his work remains active.

Follow Richard Parkes Bonington's career through four stages

1817–1821Formation 1822–1824Normandy 1825–1826Exchange 1827–1828Late work

1817–1821

Calais, Paris and Gros

The move from Nottingham to Calais and then Paris placed an English-trained young artist inside French academic and exhibition culture. Watercolour, copying and study under Antoine-Jean Gros shaped the first phase.

1822–1824

Travel, print and the Salon

Normandy tours supplied coasts, rivers and medieval architecture. Lithography carried those subjects into print, while the 1824 Salon established Bonington's public standing in France.

1825–1826

London, millboard and Italy

A London visit brought fresh contact with British painting and portable prepared millboard. Work alongside Delacroix and the 1826 journey through Switzerland and northern Italy widened both subject and method.

1827–1828

Landscape and historical ambition

Bonington continued coastal and Venetian subjects while pursuing larger literary and historical paintings. British exhibitions and the Royal Academy brought this late ambition before a wider public.

Researched works directory

This searchable directory is an online evidence census assembled from public museum and collection records. It is not a substitute for Patrick Noon’s printed catalogues raisonnés.

Search artworks Medium All media Drawing Painting Reset

226 artworks

Name	Date	Medium
A Coast Scene	1820–1828	Painting
A Cutter and other shipping in a Breeze	1827–1828	Watercolour
A Distant View of St-Omer	1824	Painting
A Distant View of St-Omer	c. 1824	Painting
A duel between Frank and Rashleigh	1828	Print
A Faun with Pipes	Date unknown	Drawing
A Seascape	Date unknown	Drawing
A Venetian Scene	c. 1828	Watercolour
A Wooded Stream and a Farmhouse in Normandy	Date unknown	Drawing
Abbeville - Vue Pris, de la route de Calais	Date unknown	Print
Abbey St-Amand, Rouen	Date unknown	Watercolour
An Estuary in Northern France	c. 1825–1827	Painting
An Italian Town	1822–1828	Painting
Ancienne Porte a Stirling	1826	Print
Ancienne Tour	1826	Print
Ancienne Tour Près de Lanark	1826	Print
Anne Page and Slender (Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 1, Scene 1)	1829	Artwork
Architectural Remains and Fragments: Rouen - Fontaine de la Crosse	1827	Print
Architecture du Moyen Age	1824	Print
Argyle Castle	1826	Print
Argyle Castle	1828	Print
At the English Coast	1825	Watercolour
Beach Scene	c. 1825	Watercolour
Beach Scene with Cart and Horse	1825	Painting
Beached Vessels and a Wagon, near Trouville, France	c. 1825	Painting
Beauvais - interieur d'une cour	Date unknown	Print
Bergues - La Tour du March,	Date unknown	Print
Bergues: La Tour du marché	1824	Print
Boccadasse, Genoa with Monte Fasce in the Background	1826	Painting
Bologna	1826–1827	Drawing
Bologna	1828	Print
Bonington - Vue de Venise	Date unknown	Watercolour
Bothwell Castle	1826	Print
Bothwell Castle	1828	Print
Boulogne Harbor	1823	Watercolour
Bracklin-Bridge	1828	Print
Brackline	1826	Print
Caen - Eglise Saint-Sauveur	1824	Drawing
Caen - Maison Grande Rue Saint-Pierre	Date unknown	Drawing
Calais Jetty, France	c. 1824	Painting
Campos sur les bords du Rio das Velhas	1827	Print
Castle on a Scottish Loch	1822–1828	Painting
Cathedrale Notre-Dame	1824	Print
Charles V visits François Ier after the Battle of Pavia	c. 1827	Watercolour
Chateau d'Argyle	1826	Print
Chateau de Bothwell	1826	Print
Chateau de Bothwell / Bothwell Castle	1826	Print
Christ preaching - unfinished	Date unknown	Painting
Coast Scene in Picardy, France	1826	Painting
Coastal Scene with Fishing Boats	1828	Painting
Croix de Moulin-les-Planches	1827	Print
Demetrius de Palatiano	19 th century	Painting
Die adriatische Küste	c. 1820	Painting
Die normannische Küste	1823–1824	Painting
Dieppe Harbour	Date unknown	Painting
Don Quixote	1825–1826	Painting
Don Quixote in His Study	1825–1826	Painting
Doune Castle	1828	Print
Du Sacristain de Saint Angadresne	c. 1828	Print
Dutch: Processie in Verona	1801–1828	Painting
Edimbourg pris de la Chapelle St Antoine	1826	Print
Edimbourg vu de Calton-Hill	1826	Print
Edimbourg vu de la Chapelle Saint-Antoine	1826	Print
Edinbourgh vu de la Chapelle S. Antoine	1826	Print
Edinburg from S. Anthony Chapel	1828	Print
Edinburgh from St. Anthony Chapel	1826	Print
Edinburgh from the Calton Hill	1828	Print
Eglise de Saint-Taurin, Evreux	1824	Print
Eglise de St. Jean a Lyons	1824	Print
Eglise St. Sauveur	1824	Print
Embouchure de la Riviere Caxoera	1827	Print
Entree de la rade de Rio-Janeiro	1827	Print
Entrée de la salle des pas-perdus, Palais de Justice	1824	Print
Evening in Venice	1826–1828	Painting
Façade de l'Eglise de Brou	1825	Print
Façade St. Jean	1824	Print
Figures on a rocky shoreline	Date unknown	Artwork
Fishing Boats in a Calm, Ships at Anchor	1825	Painting
Fishing Smacks in French Harbour	1818–1825	Painting
Five Studies of a French Pointer	1825–1826	Drawing
Fontaine de la Crosse	1827	Print
French Coast Scene	1815–1828	Painting
French Coast with Fishermen	1825	Painting
French Hulk	1820–1828	Painting
German: Ein Waldweg	1825–1826	Painting
Glenfinlas	1826	Print
Glenfinlas	1828	Print
Glenfinlas Valley (Vallée de Glenfinlas, from Vues Pittoresques de l'Écosse)	1826	Artwork
Goetz Von Berlichingen Before The Imperial Magistrate	c. 1826	Drawing
Grand Canal, Venice	1826	Drawing
Greek Armatole (irregular fighter).	1825	Painting
Half-length Portrait of a Bearded Man in Historical Dress	1818	Drawing
Henri III	1828	Painting
Hôtel de Sens : dessin / Richard-Parkes Bonington	19 th century	Drawing
Ile de la Cite	Date unknown	Watercolour
In the Forest of Fontainebleau	c. 1825	Painting
Intérieur d'une Cour	1824	Print
Jour du Marché	1824	Print
L'Eglise de St. Gervais et St. Protais	1824	Print
L'espace	c. 1826	Painting
La Conversation	1826	Print
La Place du Molard, Geneva	Date unknown	Painting
La Prière	1826	Print
La Tour du Marché	1824	Print
Lac de Killin	1826	Print
Lac Lomond	1826	Print
Landscape with a Pond	1825–1826	Painting
Landscape with Castle Ruin	Date unknown	Watercolour
Le Château de la Duchesse de Berry	1823–1825	Painting
Le matin	1824	Print
Le Repos	1826	Print
Le Retour	1826	Print
Le Silence Favorable	1826	Print
Les Pendus	1826	Print
Les Plaisirs Paternels	1826	Print
Les Salinieres near Trouville	1827–1828	Painting
Lillebonne - Chateau d'Harcourt	1824	Print
Lillebonne - Chateau d'Harcourt	Date unknown	Print
Loch Lomond	1826	Print
Loch Lomond	1828	Print
Loch Tay	1828	Print
Lochkillin	1826	Print
Low Tide at Boulogne	1824	Painting
Maison Grande Rue St. Pierre	1824	Print
Maison Située Rue St Veronique	1824	Print
Man and Woman in a Landscape, possibly Faust and Marguerite	c. 1826	Drawing
Molard-Bonington-1829	1829	Print
Molard-Bonington-1829-cropped	1829	Print
Near Honfleur	1823	Watercolour
Near Jumieges	Date unknown	Watercolour
Old Gate Way at Stirling	1828	Print
Old Gateway at Stirling	1826	Print
Old Tower near Lanark	1828	Print
On the Adriatic	c. 1826	Painting
On the Coast of Picardy	1826	Painting
On the Seine – Morning	1825	Painting
Palais de Justice, Rouen	Date unknown	Drawing
Paris from Pere Lachaise	Date unknown	Watercolour
Pays de Caux: Twilight	1818–1828	Painting
Peasant Women from Ragusa	1826	Drawing
Pesmes	1825	Print
Peveril of the Peak - Julian Peveril and Alice Bridgenorth, surprised by Major Ralph Bridgenorth	c. 1826	Watercolour
Picardy Coast with Children – Sunrise	c. 1826	Painting
Picturesque Views of Scotland: Brackline	1826	Print
Pierre de Vaivre	1827	Print
Polish: Zdjęcie z krzyża The Descent from the Cross.	1820	Painting
Portia and Bassanio	c. 1826	Watercolour
print	1827	Print
print, title-page	1828	Print
Processie in Verona	19de eeuw	Painting
Promenade vénitienne (Venetian Promenade)	Date unknown	Artwork
Quentin Durward and the Disguised Louis XI (recto); Study of male figure (verso)	1825–1826	Drawing
Quentin Durward at Liège, Belgium	1827–1828	Painting
Quentin Durward in Luik, objectnr TA 11006	1825	Drawing
Restes et Fragmens d'Architecture du Moyen Age: Église St. Sauveur, Caën	Date unknown	Print
Riva degli Schiavoni, from near San Biagio, Venice, by Richard Parkes Bonington	Date unknown	Painting
Road Workers, near Lillebonne	Date unknown	Painting
Roadside Halt	1826	Painting
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and his wife Amy Robsart.	1820	Painting
Rouen	1825	Watercolour
Rouen: Entrée de la Salle des Pas Perdus, Palais du Justice	1824	Print
Rue du gros-horloge, Rouen	1824	Print
Ruines de Chateau d'Arlay	1827	Print
Ruines du Château d'Arlay	1827	Print
Ruins of the Abbey Saint Bertin	1824	Painting
Sea Coast, the Dunes	Date unknown	Painting
Seapiece: Off the French Coast	c. 1823–1824	Painting
Shipping in a Swell	1824–1827	Watercolour
Shipping in an Estuary, Probably near Quilleboeuf	1825–1826	Watercolour
Sketch of a Woman	1828	Drawing
Street in the Outskirts of Besançon, France	1827	Print
Studies for Shylock	1825	Drawing
Study of a Gentleman in 17th Century Costume, After Van Dyck	1827–1828	Drawing
Study of a Seated Woman	Date unknown	Drawing
Study of a Woman with her Head on her Hand	Date unknown	Drawing
Sunset: A Sketch	Date unknown	Painting
Sunset in the Pays de Caux	1828	Watercolour
The Antiquary	Date unknown	Painting
The Chibouk	1826	Painting
The Church of St. Wulfran, Abbeville: The North Door of the West Front	c. 1823	Drawing
The Count of Palatino in the costume of a Palikar	Date unknown	Painting
The Doge's Palace, Venice	1826	Painting
The Escape from Argyle Castle	1826	Print
The Escape from Argyle-Castle	1828	Print
The Grand Canal	1826–1827	Painting
The Grand Canal, Venice	1826–1827	Painting
The Interior of Sant' Ambrogio, Milan	1826	Painting
The Old Jetty, Boulogne, France	Date unknown	Painting
The Pont des Arts, Paris	1826	Painting
The Proposal (recto); Unfinished drawing of a horse and rider (verso)	1820	Drawing
The Rialto, Venice	Date unknown	Painting
The Salt Marshes near Trouville	1826	Watercolour
The Use of Tears	1827	Watercolour
The Use of Tears	Date unknown	Painting
Titlepage to Restes et Fragments	Date unknown	Print
Tomb in the Church of Saint-Omer, France	Date unknown	Painting
Tombeau de Marguerite de Bourbon, Eglise de Brou	1825	Print
Tour aux archives à Vernon	1824	Print
Tour du gros horloge, batie sous la domination des Anglais en 1417, Evreux	1824	Print
Tour du gros-horloge, Evreux	1824	Print
Trees and a Cottage by a River	1827	Drawing
Untitled (one of three)	Date unknown	Print
Vessels in a Choppy Sea	c. 1824	Watercolour
View in Brittany: Bridge, Cottages and Washerwomen	1818–1828	Painting
View near Rouen	c. 1825	Painting
View near Sarzana, Val di Magra	1826	Painting
View of the Rialto Bridge, Venice	c. 1826	Watercolour
View on the Grounds of a Villa near Florence	1826	Painting
View on the River Seine - Morning	c. 1825	Painting
Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l'ancienne France	1825	Print
Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l'ancienne France, Franche-Comté: Église de l'abbaye de Tournus	1825	Print
Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l'ancienne France, Franche-Comté: Ruines du château d'Arlay	1825	Print
Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l'ancienne France, Franche-Comté: Vue d'une rue des faubourgs de Besançon	1825	Print
Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l'ancienne France, Normandie: Église de Saint Gervais et Saint Protais à Gisors	1824	Print
Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l'ancienne France, Normandie: Rue du Gros Horloge, Rouen	1824	Print
Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l'ancienne France, Normandie: Tour aux archives à Vernon	1824	Print
Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l'ancienne France, Normandie: Tour du Gros-Horloge, Evreux	1824	Print
Vue d'une rue des faubourgs de Besançon	1827	Print
Vue d'une rue des Faubourgs de Besançon (View of a Street in the Outskirts of Besançon)	1827	Print
Vue Generale de l'Eglise de l'Abbaye de Tournus	1825	Print
Vue Générale de l'Eglise de St. Gervais et St. Protais, à Gisors	1824	Print
Vue Generale des Ruines du Chateau d'Arlay	1827	Print
Vue prise à l'entrée du jardin des Plantes. Au premier plan, bâtiment de la minéralogie et à l'arrière, dôme de l'hôpita, D.2182	1806–1828	Drawing
Vue Prise de la Route de Calais	1824	Print
Vues Pittoresques de l'Écosse	1826	Print
Young Woman Writing a Letter	1820–1828	Painting

Frequently Asked Questions

References

1. British Museum, “Richard Parkes Bonington,” person record:, accessed 30 August 2026.
2. National Gallery of Art, British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries, systematic collection catalogue, “Richard Parkes Bonington”:, accessed 30 August 2026.
3. National Gallery, London, “Richard Parkes Bonington: An Estuary in Northern France”:, accessed 30 August 2026.
4. Patrick Noon, “A supplement to Richard Parkes Bonington, the Complete Paintings,” Colnaghi Studies Journal XVII (October 2025), pp. 61–76:, accessed 30 August 2026.
5. British Museum, “Self-Portrait,” museum no. 1984,1006.28:, accessed 30 August 2026.
6. Wallace Collection, “Turner and Bonington”:, accessed 30 August 2026.
7. Wallace Collection, “Henri III,” P323:, accessed 30 August 2026.
8. Paul Mellon Centre, “Richard Parkes Bonington: The Complete Drawings”:, accessed 30 August 2026.
9. Yale University Press London, “Richard Parkes Bonington: The Complete Paintings”:, accessed 30 August 2026.

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