View on the Grounds of a Villa near Florence
Historical Context
Bonington's View on the Grounds of a Villa near Florence from 1826 was painted during his Italian journey — a critical six-month trip that exposed him to Italian light, architecture, and painting and produced some of his finest watercolors and oil sketches. Bonington traveled to Italy in the company of Baron Rivet, and his Italian subjects represent a significant turn in his brief but extraordinarily productive career. The villa garden subject combines his characteristic freshness of observation with the Italian light and architectural detail that he had pursued since his training in Calais and Paris. His Italian works are among his most luminous, demonstrating how Italian light transformed the atmospheric approach he had developed in northern France.
Technical Analysis
Bonington's oil on millboard mounted on canvas shows his remarkable facility with rapid, fresh brushwork, capturing Mediterranean light and atmosphere with an immediacy and freedom that anticipates Impressionism.
Provenance
Collection of the artist; possibly sold in his estate sale, Sotheby’s, London, June 29–30, 1829, as one of, lot 62, “View in the Environs of Florence”, to Catley for £8.18.0, lot 103, “View in the Gardens of Boboli at Florence”, to Tiffin for £7; or lot 213, “Environs of Florence”, to Glynn for £32.11.0 [buyers and prices according to an annotated copy of the sale catalogue in the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague]. Possibly H. Gritten, London; his sale, Phillip’s, London, March 13, 1835, lot 104 as “A glowing unfinished Landscape with Ruins, with peacock in the foreground” for £29.11.6 [price according to an annotated copy of the sale catalogue in the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague]. G. Arnot, 1939 [according to the mount of a photograph in the Witt Library, London]. Arthur Morrison (died 1945), London, by 1940 [see Shirley 1940]; his estate sale, Sotheby’s, London, March 19, 1946, lot 128 for £185 to Roland [price and buyer according to a sale catalogue in the Ryerson Library, Art Institute of Chicago]; Roland, Browse and Delbanco, London, 1946 [this and the succeeding according to the mount of a photograph of the painting in the Witt Library, London]. Peto. Included in anonymous sale Christie’s, London, April 12, 1991, lot 57, bought in. Sold Christie’s, London, November 15, 1991, lot 70 to Richard L. Feigen & Co.; Richard L. Feigen & Co., New York; sold to Carol and Joel Honigberg, Highland Park, Illinois, 2005; gift of Carol and Joel Honigberg to the Art Institute, 2005.
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