Roadside Halt
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
18 1/4 x 14 7/8 in. (46.4 x 37.8 cm)
Classification
Paintings
Department
European Paintings
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Francis Neilson, 1945
Accession Number
45.146.1
Tags
Art Historical Context
Richard Parkes Bonington's *Roadside Halt*1826) captures a serene moment of respite in a sun-dappled landscape, featuring horses and travelers paused along a country road. This intimate oil on canvas, measuring just 18¼ x 14⅞ inches, exemplifies Bonington's mastery of light and atmosphere, rendered with loose, fluid brushstrokes that evoke the transience of a summer day. A British artist who thrived in France during the Romantic era, Bonington (1802–1828) bridged English landscape traditions—like those of Constable and Turner—with French influences from Delacroix and Vernet. His innovative us...
About the Artist
Richard Parkes Bonington · 1802–1828
Richard Parkes Bonington (1802–1828) was a British painter and watercolorist who, despite dying at the age of twenty-five, produced a body of work that had a profound and lasting influence on French and British painting. Born in Arnold, near Nottingham, he moved with his family to Calais and then Paris in 1817, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts under Antoine-Jean Gros and copied Old Mas...