RICHARD PARKES BONINGTON ; His Life and Work. By A.
Dubuisson. (The Bodley Head. 63s. net.) WHEN he had just begun to collect material for a biography of Richard Parkes Bonington (the English-born artist who lived most of his lift in France, where he died in 1828, at the age of twenty-six), Mr. C. E. Hughes discovered that Monsieur A. Dubuisson, who had greater facilities for research in France, had already been engaged on the same task for seine time. Mr. Hughes has accordingly contented himself by translating the Frenchman's work and augmenting it with some notes which were the result of his own research. To judge only by the amount of somewhat similar work which appears in modern exhibitions, it would be safe to say that although Bonington was not a great artist, he has undoubtedly had a great influence on the art of our times. He was the exponent of a certain kind of fresh, effective and facile mode of technique, which was almost bound to react on the artists who came after him. His chief contribution to art, perhaps, was his use of complementary colours as a means of attaining greater vitality in colour. harmony. To accomplish what he did, in so short a space of time, was in itself a worthy achievement. Had he lived longer, however, we can reasonably assume from his particular kind of development that his significance to Art _would not have been much_ greater, though he might have
arrived at a still greater proficiency in technique. This biography, containing the usual facts about parentage, friend- ships, appreciation and lack of it in his day, is very thorough ; while the pictures are catalogued with the greatest care and the few which are illustrated arc very well chosen and representative.
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