Sketch of a Woman

Art Historical Context

Richard Parkes Bonington created this delicate sketch in 1828, the final year of his short but brilliant career. A leading figure of the Romantic era, the British-born artist spent much of his life in France, where he absorbed influences from both British watercolor traditions and French historical painting. His works are celebrated for their luminous quality and spontaneous feeling, qualities that shine through even in modest studies like this one. Executed in pen and brown ink on wove paper, the drawing measures just 14 by 9.5 centimeters. The small scale and fluid medium suggest an intimate, on-the-spot observation rather than a finished composition. Bonington’s confident, economical lines capture the essence of his subject with remarkable economy, demonstrating the technical skill that earned him admiration from contemporaries such as Eugène Delacroix. Now part of the National Gallery of Art’s Rosenwald Collection, “Sketch of a Woman” offers visitors a rare glimpse into an artist’s working process. It reminds us that even the briefest drawings can reveal the sensitivity and vitality that defined Bonington’s lasting contribution to nineteenth-century art.

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...