Set in Normandy, this canvas of 1826 is painted with a fluidity and lightness akin to watercolor, a medium in which Bonington excelled. Although the artist had been painting with oils for only about four years, works such as this were sufficiently remarkable to impress Eugène Delacroix, who wrote: "I could never weary of admiring his marvelous understanding of effects, and the facility of his execution."
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Bonington spent his childhood in Nottingham, but in 1817 his father moved the family to Calais, and the following year to Paris. There Bonington copied Dutch and Flemish works at the Louvre and later met Eugène Delacroix and entered the studio of Antoine-Jean Gros. In 1822 he showed two watercolors from a sketching trip on the Seine at the Paris Salon; two years later one of his paintings was awarded a gold medal. He spent the summer of 1825 in London, and in response to the work of Constable and Turner began to make oil sketches out of doors. Bonington exhibited at the British Institution in 1826, and at the Salon, the British Institution, and the Royal Academy in 1827 and 1828, dying of tuberculosis in 1828, before his twenty-sixth birthday.
The bucolic scenery of Normandy is here reminiscent of the English countryside, and the design and tonal contrasts suggest the influence of Constable. Bonington’s Landscape with a Pond (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) is similar in feeling, and it is possible that both works reflect a renewal of interest on the artist’s part in Dutch seventeenth-century painting. Noon (2008) points out that Bonington used a dual-perspective system favored by Dutch painters as well as by Turner.
The Parisian collector Louis-Joseph-Auguste Coutan seems to have acquired Roadside Halt during Bonington’s lifetime. He also bought one of Constable’s most important large canvases, View on the Stour near Dedham (Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California), exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1824 and included in his 1830 estate sale. Roadside Halt was relined and somewhat strongly cleaned before it was acquired by the Museum.
[2012; adapted from Baetjer 2009]
Inscription: Signed and dated (lower right): R P B. 18[2]6
Louis Joseph Auguste Coutan, Paris (until d. 1830; his estate sale, Schroth, Paris, April 19, 1830, no. 5, as "Paysage; sur le devant, une Paysanne sur un cheval blanc, et vue de dos, parle à un Vieillard assis sur une pièce de bois"); ?private collection [?Reitlinger], Paris (until 1838; sale, Sotheby's, London, May 18, 1838, no. 84, postponed until June 15, 1838, no. 117); Samuel Archbutt (in 1839; his sale, Christie's, London, April 13, 1839, no. 109, for £18.7.6, bought in); Joseph Gillott, Edgbaston, Birmingham (until d. 1872; his estate sale, Christie's, London, April 26, 1872, no. 178, for £210 to Agnew); [Agnew, London, 1872; sold to Miéville]; Jean Louis Miéville, London (1872–99; his estate sale, Christie's, London, April 29, 1899, no. 13, for £325.10.0 to ?Montaignac or ?Boussod); [William Permain, London; sold to Neilson]; Francis Neilson, Chicago (until 1945)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. "Paintings, Drawings and Prints by J. M. W. Turner, John Constable, R. P. Bonington," March 21–April 28, 1946, no. 194 (as "Roadside Halt [Arrête sur la route]").
Palm Beach. Society of the Four Arts. "Portraits, Figures and Landscapes," January 12–February 4, 1951, no. 3.
Santa Barbara Museum of Art. "The Horse in Art: Paintings–17th to 20th Century," July–August 1954, no. 27.
San Francisco. California Palace of the Legion of Honor. "The Horse in Art: Paintings–17th to 20th Century," August–September 1954, no. 27.
Kansas City, Mo. William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art. "The Horse in Art: Paintings–17th to 20th Century," October–November 1954, no. 27.
Nashville. Fisk University. April 27–June 5, 1961, no catalogue [see letters in archive file].
Nottingham. Castle Museum and Art Gallery. "R. P. Bonington, 1802–1828," April 10–May 25, 1965, no. 254.
Norwich. Castle Museum. "R. P. Bonington, 1802–1828," May 29–June 19, 1965, no. 254.
Southampton, England. Southampton Art Gallery. "R. P. Bonington, 1802–1828," June 26–July 17, 1965, no. 254.
Leningrad [St. Petersburg]. State Hermitage Museum. "100 Paintings from the Metropolitan Museum," May 22–July 27, 1975, no. 44.
Moscow. State Pushkin Museum. "100 Paintings from the Metropolitan Museum," August 28–November 2, 1975, no. 44.
Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art. "Landscape Painting in the East and West," April 19–June 1, 1986, no. 10.
Kobe City Museum. "Landscape Painting in the East and West," June 7–July 13, 1986, no. 10.
New Haven. Yale Center for British Art. "Richard Parkes Bonington: 'On the Pleasure of Painting'," November 13, 1991–January 19, 1992, no. 78.
Paris. Petit Palais. "Richard Parkes Bonington: 'Du plaisir de peindre'," March 5–May 17, 1992, no. 78.
A. Dubuisson. Richard Parkes Bonington: His Life and Work. London, 1924, p. 182, states that no. 5 in the 1830 Coutan sale [probably this picture] was "bought subsequently by Mr. Reitlinger for £325".
A. Dubuisson. Bonington. Paris, 1927, p. 110, states that the "Paysage" from the 1830 Coutan sale [probably this picture], bought by an Englishman for £325, then passed into the Reitlinger collection.
Andrew Shirley. Bonington. London, 1940, p. 47 n. 1, pl. 12, as Roadside Halt, in a private collection; dates it 1819 in the caption, but in the text reads the date on the work as 1820; remarks that from a photograph he believes it to be authentic.
Francis Neilson. Letter. January 14, 1946, states that he bought it from William Permain in King Street, London.
Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 10.
Marion Spencer. R. P. Bonington: 1802–1828. Exh. cat., Castle Museum and Art Gallery. Nottingham, 1965, p. 34, no. 254, accepts the attribution to Bonington, reads the date as 1826, and provides extensive information about the provenance.
George Heard Hamilton. Letter to Margaretta Salinger. December 30, 1969, notes that Spencer rejects Williamstown's "Lane to the Village" while observing that it bears some relation to our painting.
John Ingamells. Letter to Dean Walker. December 11, 1979, felt some reservations about "the composition which, with its confined view, recalled native English picturesque—certainly affected by Bonington—rather than the expansive landscapes of the master".
Malcolm Cormack. Bonington. Oxford, 1989, p. 105, colorpl. 84, reads the inscribed date as "182[6?]" while dating it about 1825–26 in the caption; calls it "clear in light and brilliant in handling".
Patrick Noon. Richard Parkes Bonington: 'On the Pleasure of Painting'. Exh. cat., Yale Center for British Art, Yale University. New Haven, 1991, pp. 42–43, 190–92, no. 78, ill. (color) [French ed., Richard Parkes Bonington: "Du plaisir de peindre," Paris, 1992, pp. 42, 190–92, no. 78, ill. (color)], dates it 1826, remarking on "its purely personal reflections on nature".
Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 207, ill.
Patrick Noon. Richard Parkes Bonington: The Complete Paintings. New Haven, 2008, pp. 250–51, no. 201, ill. (color), observes that the poplars in this picture are employed as part of a dual-perspective system; posits that it is from virtually the same moment as "Cottage and Pond," which he dates to about 1825–26 (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge).
Katharine Baetjer. British Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1575–1875. New York, 2009, pp. 266–67, no. 128, ill. (color).
Elizabeth A. Pergam inNineteenth-Century European Paintings at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Ed. Sarah Lees. Williamstown, Mass., 2012, vol. 2, p. 864, fig. 362.1 (color), under no. 362, compares it to "Lane to the Village" (19th century, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown) by an unknown artist, noting that the similarities between the paintings demonstrate Bonington's larger influence on nineteenth-century European landscape painting.
Richard Parkes Bonington (British, Arnold, Nottinghamshire 1802–1828 London)
1828
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