Seapiece: Off the French Coast, c. 1823/1824

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 37.7 x 52 cm (14 13/16 x 20 1/2 in.)

framed: 51.8 x 65.4 x 5.4 cm (20 3/8 x 25 3/4 x 2 1/8 in.)

Credit Line

Paul Mellon Collection

Accession Number

1982.55.1

Artists / Makers

Richard Parkes Bonington (artist) British, 1802 - 1828

Image Use

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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.

Associated Names

Agnew & Sons, Ltd., Thomas
Astor, John Jacob 1st Baron of Hever
Mellon, Paul
Nairne, Violet Mary, Lady
Petty-Fitzmaurice, 8th Marquess of Lansdowne, George John Charles Mercer Nairne
Rothschild, Henri de, Baron

Exhibition History

1827: Perhaps Royal Academy, London, 1827, no. 373.

1951: The First Hundred Years of the Royal Academy, Royal Academy, London, 1951-1952, no. 208.

1961: Bonington, Guildhall, King's Lynn, 1961, no. 6.

1962: Pictures, Watercolours and Drawings by R. P. Bonington, Thos. Agnew & Sons, Ltd. London, 1962, no. 6, repro.

1965: R. P. Bonington, Castle Museum and Art Gallery, Nottingham, 1965, no. 252.

1966: Bonington, les débuts du romanticisme en Angleterre et en Normandie, Musée de Cherbourg, 1966, no. 46.

Technical Summary

The medium-coarse canvas is plain woven; it has been lined. The ground is white, freely brushed. The painting is executed vigorously and opaquely; the primary layers are blended wet into wet, over which the ships and breakwaters are laid in with thinner paint and the rigging and figures richly and fluidly; there is broken impasto in the whites. The paint surface is slightly abraded and has been flattened during lining. The painting is otherwise in good condition. There is minute retouching throughout, resulting from the abrasion, and a quarter-inch band of reglazing along the bottom edge. There are residues of a pigmented natural varnish which have discolored yellow. The more recent, moderately thick synthetic varnish has not discolored.

Bibliography

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 51, repro.

1992: Hayes, John. British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1992: 21-23, color repro. 22.