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Artist or Maker: Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-1828)
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Provenance: Lewis Brown, Paris, 17 April, 1937, lot 3 (£28 to P.M. Turner).
with The Fine Art Society, London, 1942.
The Newall Collection; Christie's, London, 13 December 1979, lot 4.
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Exhibited: London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, Bonington and his Circle, 1937, no. 80.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Laing Art Gallery, Coronation Exhibition, 1953, no. 47.
New York, Davis & Langdale, British Drawings 1760-1925, 2-31 May 1985, no. 43.
Paris, Musée du Petit Palais, Richard Parkes Bonington 'On the Pleasures of Painting', 1992, no. 116, illustrated in colour.
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Literature: The Hon. Andrew Shirley, Bonington, 1941, pp. 71 and 117, pl. 139(i).
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Notes: This is one of a range of balcony scenes painted by Bonington, apparently removed from any literary or historical context, where the characters pause in their conversation and their thoughts drift faraway. The presence of the Genoan tower in the background indicates that this watercolour must be dated to the autumn of 1826. A pencil study of this port town is at Bowood House, Wiltshire.
Lewis Brown was the greatest collector of Bonington's works on paper. He amassed a large collection with the intention of creating a public space in which to exhibit it. Sadly this project never came to fruition and upon his death in 1836 over a hundred lots of Bonington's most beautiful drawings and watercolours were sold at auction in Paris. Delacroix commented to the art critic, Thoré, at a later date that it would never again be possible to gather together such a testimony to Bonington's genius.
The small scale and subject matter of the present watercolour are typical of the works bought by Brown during the 1830s. In an obituary written about this great amateur collector in L'Artiste vol. II, 1836, p. 312 Brown is quoted as having said: 'I will not abandon drawings, which have given so much joy to me, a traveller, as a portable and comfortable gallery; I retain all my admiration for artists who have committed their compositions to such convenient dimensions for me, at the risk of making them less durable for them.'
We are grateful to Patrick Noon for his help in preparing this catalogue entry.
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