Henri III

Henri III: Introduction

Richard Parkes Bonington’s Henri III turns a courtly reception into a drama of placement, costume and colour. Henri III of France sits at the left, dressed almost entirely in black, while Don John of Austria approaches from the right in a pale, gleaming costume. A green-covered table lies between them; attendants, furnishings and deep red hangings make the room feel richly appointed but close. Painted in 1828 and exhibited at the Royal Academy shortly before Bonington’s death, the picture belongs to the artist’s ambitious late engagement with historical and literary subjects.^[1]

This is not a landscape painter merely changing his choice of scenery. In Henri III, Bonington uses the body, the interior and the social ritual of an audience to organise the work. Yet the colour relationships and quick changes of touch that animate his coast and city views remain important. The result is a history painting in which ceremonial detail and painterly fluency depend on one another.

At a Glance

• ArtistRichard Parkes Bonington (1802–1828)
• TitleHenri III
• Date1828
• MediumOil on canvas
• Dimensions54 × 64.4 cm (image size)
• CollectionWallace Collection, London, P323

Richard Parkes Bonington in context

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. A royal meeting, not an assassination scene
3. How the composition stages the encounter
4. Costume as historical language
5. Why history painting mattered
6. Colour, touch and the question of finish
7. A late literary and historical mode
8. The Royal Academy and Bonington’s final year
9. The Wallace Collection record

A royal meeting, not an assassination scene

The Wallace Collection identifies the subject precisely: Henri III, king of France, receives Don John of Austria, the son of Emperor Charles V.^[1] That identification matters because nineteenth-century history pictures often drew on episodes involving several similarly named French rulers, ambassadors and court favourites. This scene should not be confused with an episode concerning the assassination of the Duke of Guise, nor with Bonington’s separate Henri IV and the Spanish Ambassador.

Only a small amount of political context is needed to understand the encounter. Henri III, who lived from 1551 to 1589, occupied a pivotal place in the French Wars of Religion. Don John belonged to the Habsburg imperial family. Bonington does not stage a battle or a public ceremony; he chooses the controlled setting of a reception, where rank must be conveyed through who sits, who stands, who approaches and who observes.^[1]

The historical subject therefore works through etiquette. Henri remains seated beside an imposing chair, while Don John inclines towards him from across the table. The two men are close enough to register as participants in a direct exchange, but the furniture preserves a formal interval. Nothing in their gestures permits a confident reconstruction of words or private feelings. What can be read is the structure of an audience: a ruler receives; a visitor presents himself; attendants turn a meeting between two people into an event witnessed at court.

How the composition stages the encounter

The painting’s first opposition is unusually clear. Henri forms a dark, low mass at the left. His black clothing joins the shadow around the chair and wall, while his face, collar and hands emerge in smaller patches of light. Don John is higher and brighter. His pale cloak and hose create the largest light shape in the central group, immediately distinguishing the visitor from the seated king. The contrast directs attention without requiring a theatrical spotlight.^[1][5]

Between them, the green cloth covering the table provides a middle register. It separates the figures physically, but it also connects their colour fields: the muted green answers the warm brown interior, the red textiles and the flashes of cream and metal. Objects set on and around the table suggest a furnished royal chamber rather than an empty stage. Bonington varies their definition. Some edges and highlights are legible at once; others dissolve into the surrounding brown. This selective emphasis keeps the accessories from competing with the encounter.

The eye moves on a shallow diagonal from Henri’s tilted head and extended arm, across the tabletop, towards Don John’s pale torso and bent stance. Behind him, two attendants create a second, more compressed exchange. Their warm red, orange and white clothing thickens the right side of the painting and prevents Don John’s light costume from appearing isolated. A band of darker architecture above and behind the figures closes the room around them.

Bonington also avoids making the centre mechanically symmetrical. The great chair rises behind Henri, but its vertical form is offset from the canvas’s midpoint. Don John stands to the right of it; the table occupies the lower centre; the background figures press towards the far edge. These unequal weights are held together by repeated warm reds and by the dark horizontal passages across the upper interior. The composition feels ceremonial without becoming static.

Costume as historical language

Costume carries much of the picture’s claim to a past world. Henri’s dark dress, small cap and pale collar set him apart from the brighter visitor. Don John’s light cloak falls in broad planes over his shoulders and back, then gives way to more narrowly described hose and footwear. The attendants add further variations of red, cream and dark cloth. Bonington uses these differences to make rank, role and proximity visible before a viewer knows every detail of the story.

The contrast is not simply black against white. Henri’s clothes contain glints and broken accents, while Don John’s pale costume is crossed by grey, warm beige and reflected colour. Red appears as a recurring note—in drapery, dress and smaller accessories—rather than as one uninterrupted block. The green table covering cools these warm relationships and gives the central space a material density.

This attention to dress places Henri III within Bonington’s wider fascination with earlier European courts and literature. Costume allows a painter to evoke an age through surfaces that are immediately visual: dark and pale fabrics, reflective ornament and embroidered detail can register through changes in colour and brush pressure. The effect need not depend on an inventory of garments. What matters here is how richly varied surfaces make the encounter specific while retaining the speed and liveliness of painting.

Why history painting mattered

The Wallace Collection explains that Bonington, like many contemporaries, was drawn to history painting because it carried greater prestige than landscape or domestic subject matter. He completed and exhibited several major works in the genre despite the brevity of his career.^[1] Henri III should therefore be understood as a serious public ambition, not a decorative departure from his better-known coastal and architectural scenes.

Patrick Noon’s 2025 supplement helps place that ambition in proportion. Within the ninety-five oils registered in the 2008 catalogue, he groups seventy-two as French or Italian landscapes and twenty-three as figural or literary pictures. He dates this entire burst of oil painting to the years 1824–28.^[2] Landscapes formed the larger group, but the historical and literary pictures were substantial enough to constitute a sustained strand of the artist’s work.

The Wallace record also describes the subject of Henri III as original. Its comparison is exact and limited: Henri IV and the Spanish Ambassador, another Bonington picture in the collection, recast an earlier interpretation, whereas this composition did not.^[1] “Original” here does not mean that no European artist had ever represented Henri III or a diplomatic audience. It means that Bonington devised this particular treatment rather than adapting the earlier composition invoked in the comparison.

That distinction sharpens the work’s achievement. Bonington had to make a historical meeting intelligible through his own arrangement of seated and standing figures, the interval of the table, and the density of the room. The painting’s narrative is not delivered by a single emphatic action. It emerges from an original pattern of relative positions.

Colour, touch and the question of finish

At first sight, Henri III appears more densely worked than Bonington’s open-air subjects. The setting contains upholstery, carved furniture, vessels, costume details and architectural shadow. Yet close visual attention reveals considerable variation in finish. Faces and hands receive enough definition to hold the encounter, while surrounding objects are often indicated with abbreviated marks. Broad dark passages establish the room; smaller light touches call out an edge, fold or reflective ornament.^[5]

This balance lets the picture suggest abundance without describing every item equally. The brightest light is reserved for the visitor’s costume and for selected flesh tones. Henri’s black dress does not read as a blank silhouette because its surface is interrupted by fine warm and pale accents. At the right, saturated reds enliven the attendants and hanging fabric. Across the centre, the muted green table stops the warm palette from becoming uniform.

The method links this court interior to the rest of Bonington’s practice. In On the Coast of Picardy, figures and working boats are measured against an expansive coast; here, people and furnishings fill almost the entire visual field. In The Doge’s Palace, Venice, architecture gathers light around a public building; in Henri III, architecture becomes a dark enclosure against which fabric and skin can glow. The subjects differ, but each depends on carefully controlled relations between broad tonal areas and selective detail.

A late literary and historical mode

Harvard Art Museums’ Evening in Venice, painted in 1826–28, provides a useful comparison. That work takes its figures from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice: Bassanio and Portia occupy the centre, and Bonington evokes Venetian Renaissance painting through soft colour associated with what he had seen during his Italian travels.^[3] The comparison shows that Henri III was not an isolated attempt at figure painting. Both works bring literature or history into an intimate, richly coloured interior.

They differ in their narrative mechanics. Evening in Venice turns on the exchange of a ring and the relationship between a couple. Henri III organises attention through audience protocol and the imbalance between a seated ruler and a standing visitor. One composition uses a recognisable action; the other depends more heavily on posture, rank and spatial distance. Together they reveal how Bonington could alter his pictorial grammar for different stories.

This strand of his work also belongs to the cross-Channel Romantic culture explored in Bonington’s British and French Romanticism. His friendship and artistic exchange with Eugène Delacroix helped connect British techniques and subjects with a Parisian world attentive to literature, history and colour.^[3][4] The comparison is most useful when kept specific: Bonington’s historical interiors demonstrate his participation in that shared culture, while their compositions remain his own.

The Royal Academy and Bonington’s final year

The Royal Academy showing gave Henri III a public setting appropriate to the standing of history painting. The Wallace Collection records that it was exhibited there shortly before Bonington died in 1828.^[1] This fact should not turn the picture into a premonition or a summary of everything he might have achieved. It does, however, establish that the work reached a major exhibition during his lifetime and that his late historical ambition was visible to a London audience.

Noon’s chronology gives the achievement a striking concentration: the artist’s known oil production described in the supplement falls within only four years, from 1824 to 1828.^[2] Readers following that compressed development can place the picture beside the broader account of Bonington’s life and the range surveyed in his paintings. Seen in that context, Henri III is neither an appendix to the landscapes nor evidence of a completed change of direction. It is one of several late works showing how rapidly he enlarged the kinds of subject that oil painting could serve.

The Wallace Collection record

The painting belongs to the Wallace Collection in London, where it carries inventory number P323. The collection records the work as oil on canvas, dated 1828, with an image size of 54 by 64.4 centimetres; its current online record places it in West Gallery II.^[1] Those details securely distinguish it from Bonington’s other French royal subjects.

For a wider bibliographic view, Yale University Press issued Patrick Noon’s Richard Parkes Bonington: The Complete Paintings on behalf of the Paul Mellon Centre in 2008. Yale describes the volume as the first catalogue raisonné of Bonington’s oil and watercolour paintings, based on 25 years of research and covering about 400 attributed works.^[4]

Henri III ultimately succeeds by making ceremony pictorial. A dark seated king, a pale approaching visitor, a barrier of furniture and a cluster of witnesses turn a reception into a carefully weighted encounter. Bonington’s command of colour and abbreviated touch does not disappear when he enters the prestigious field of history painting. It becomes the means by which rank, material richness and narrative tension remain visible within a small canvas.

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. Wallace Collection, “Henri III”, P323:, accessed 30 August 2026.
2. Patrick Noon, “A supplement to Richard Parkes Bonington, the Complete Paintings”, Colnaghi Studies Journal, XVII (October 2025), pp. 61–76:, accessed 30 August 2026.
3. Harvard Art Museums, “Evening in Venice”, 1943.182:, accessed 30 August 2026.
4. Yale University Press London, Patrick Noon, Richard Parkes Bonington: The Complete Paintings:, accessed 30 August 2026.
5. Wikimedia Commons, “Richard Parkes Bonington - Henri III - WGA02429.jpg”:, accessed 30 August 2026.

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