Live auction - Lot 194
The one who turns water into oil
View on a port.
Early 19th c
€ 800 / 1.000
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Lot description
Watercolour, 15,5 x 25,0 cm, signed "R.P.B" (spot, very sm. loss on edge, traces of former mount on verso).
Beautiful marine by the English painter and lithographer Bonington (1802-1828). Despite his brief career, he is considered one of the most influential English painters of his time, thanks to his technique that allowed him to obtain effects close to oil painting by mixing gouache, gum and watercolour. Eugène Delacroix, who met him at the Louvre, said in a letter after Bonington's death that "[...] no one in this modern school, and perhaps even before, has possessed that lightness of touch which, especially in watercolours, makes his works a type of diamond which flatters and ravishes the eye, independently of any subject and any imitation".