RICHARD PARKES BONINGTON (BRITISH 1802-1828)

Drawings & Watercolours from the Collection of a Connoisseur

RICHARD PARKES BONINGTON (BRITISH 1802-1828)
Berne - Swiss Costume Studies, 1826
inscribed in graphite, in the artist's hand, upper right, Berne
graphite on cream wove paper
9 x 10.2 cm (3 1/2 x 4 1/4 in)

On April 4, 1826, Richard Parkes Bonington and his mentee and traveling companion, Charles (later Baron) Rivet, left Paris for a two month tour of Northern Italy by way of Switzerland. Most of their time would be spent sketching and painting in Milan, Verona, Venice, Florence, and Genoa. Rivet would return directly to Paris via Turin in early June. The existence of costume studies inscribed by Bonington as having been sketched at Berne and Meiringen, indicate that the artist returned on his own to Paris via Switzerland and the Bernese Oberland. Other extant landscape drawings attributable to the artist and the titles of certain drawings sold at the various studio sales after his death indicate the probable course he followed with stops at Meiringen, Brienz, Interlaken, Thun, Berne, Lausanne, and Vevey. He was back in Paris by July 6. Although the purpose of this expedition was to amass landscape and architectural studies for use later in Paris for finished paintings and watercolours, recording the customs and costumes of the inhabitants of the regions visited was an important element for “local colour.” Two types of figure studies from Bonington’s Italian trip have survived. Graphite and watercolor drawings from the life were sketched at Sarzana, Meiringen, and Berne. These and similar on-site graphite and watercolour studies were later used in the Paris studio for staffage in landscape compositions and as decorative vignettes for collectors’ albums. The drawing under discussion is a previously unrecorded graphite study drawn from the life at Berne. The elaborate lace fanned headdress of the female figure was unique to that Canton.

Further examples of similar costume and figure studies by Bonington can be seen:

Berne - Costume Studies, 1826 National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Meiringen - Costume Studies, 1826 Trustees of the Bowood Collection; Berne - Market Vignette, c. 1827 Royal Academy of Arts, London; The Bridge and Abbey at St-Maurice, ca. 1827 Victoria and Albert Museum, London

We are grateful to Patrick Noon for his help in authenticating and cataloguing this watercolour.