colour was brilliant and true with a gemlike quality of its own. He was distinguished by his technical skill in oil and water-colour and with the point. He was in short a man of rare and genuine artistic faculties, cultivated with great assiduity, and combined constant observation of nature with careful study of the methods of the old masters. In principle he was eclectic, desiring to unite the merits of all previous schools, and his pictures vary greatly in style an method. His earlier work in oils is marked by its impasto, especially in pictures where costumes form a string feature, but he modified this greatly in his later work. His main faults as an artist are a want of firmness and solidity, especially in his figures,and his imagination was delicate and graceful rather than grand or passionate. In some of his designs he did not scruple to borrow figures bodily from well-known pictures, but he made them his own while preserving their life, so that this practice did not impair the value of his works or give them the quality of pastiches.
The principal purchasers of his pictures in England were the Duke of Bedford, the Marquis of Lansdowne, Mr. Thomas Baring, and Mr. Carpenter. The latter published some twenty engravings after pictures by Bonington in his own and other collections. In France the greatest collector was Mr. W. Brown of Bordeaux. At his sale, in May 1837, were fifty-two oil pictures and six drawings and water-colours which sold for what were than considered large prices. Several of his pictures are in the Hertford collection, now belonging to Sir Richard Wal1ace. At Lord Seymour's sale in Paris the late Lord Hertford bought ‘Henry III receiving the Spanish Ambassador’ for 49,000 francs, and at the ‘Novar’ sale at Christie's in 1878 ‘The Fish Market, Boulogne,’ and ‘The Grand Canal, Venice,’ brought 3,150l. apiece. The Louvre contains a number of his studies and one famous picture-‘Francis I, Charles V, and the Duchesse d’Etampes.’ In the National Gallery are the ‘Piazzetta, St. Mark's, Venice’ (Vernon), a sketch in oil, ‘Sunset’ (Sheepshanks), and three water-colours. The British Museum possesses one water-colour and a sketch-book of Bonington, as well as a fine collection of lithographs by him and after him.
Bonington etched a plate of Bologna, which was published by Colnaghi, but this is his only known etching except six trials in soft-ground etching. He also made illustrations for many books, and of these the most curious are seven outline drawings in imitation of mediæval illuminations, which were published in a little work by J. A. F. Langlé called ‘Les contes du gay sçavoir: Ballades, Fabliaux et Traditions du moyen âge,' Paris, 1828. A catalogue, by Aglaüs Bouvenne, of lithographs, &c., by Bonington was published in Paris in 1873; it mentions sixty-seven known works. A celebrated collection of his lithographs was made by M. Parguez. M. Burty compiled the catalogue of its sale.
[Cunningham's Lives of British Painters (Heaton); Annual Reg. (1828); Gent. Mag. (1828); Redgrave's Century of painters; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists (1878); Blanc's Histoire des Peintres; Library of Fine Arts; L’Art, Feb. 1879; Portfolio, April 1881; Nouvelle Biographie Universelle; Catalogue de l’œuvre gravée et lithographiés de R. P. Bonington, par Aglaüs Bouvenne; Catalogues of Royal Academy and British Institution, &c.]
BONNAR, GEORGE WILLIAM (1796–1836), wood-engraver, was born at Devizes on 24 May 1796. After having been educated at Bath, he was apprenticed to a wood-engraver in London, and acquired much skill both as a draughtsman and an engraver, distinguishing himself by his revival of the art of producing a gradatlon of tints by means of a combination of blocks. Together with John Byfield he engraved for ‘The Dance of Death,’ edited by Francis Douce in 1833, Holbein's ‘Imagines Mortis,’ from the Lyons edition of 1547. Some of his woodcuts appeared in the ‘British Cyclopædia.’ He died on 3 Jun. 1836.
[Redgrave's Dictionary of Artists, 1878.]
BONNAR, WILLIAM (1800–1853), painter, was a native of Edinburgh, and son of a respectable house-painter. After the usual precocious evidences of talent he was apprenticed to one of the leading decorative painters of his time, and ultimately became foreman of the establishment On the occasion of George IV's visit to Edinburgh in 1822 Bonnar helped Mr. D. Roberts to decorate the assembly rooms for a state ball. A little while after some sign-boards which he had painted caught the attention of Captain Basil Hall, who sought out and encouraged the young painter. A picture called ‘The Tinkers,' exhibited in 1824 at Waterloo Place, was received with much favour by the public. Shortly after the foundation of the Royal Scottish Academy Bonnar was made a member, and remained until his death ‘one of its most consistent, independent, and useful members.’
Bonnar painted many pictures, of which a large number became popular when engraved. Among these may be mentioned ‘The Strayed Children,’ ‘Peden at the Grave of Cameron,’
