Richard Parkes Bonington

Richard Parkes Bonington was born near Nottingham and moved with his family to France at fourteen, studying in Calais and then Paris. He became a brilliant painter of watercolours and small oils of the French coast, Normandy towns and Venice, with fresh colour and light, and later of historical scenes. He was a close friend of Delacroix and helped bring English watercolour technique to French painters. He died of tuberculosis in London at twenty-five, and the Wallace Collection holds an important group of his works.