Child at Prayer

Child at Prayer from 1827 is an unusual devotional subject in Bonington's predominantly landscape-oriented oeuvre. The painting shows the influence of old master paintings Bonington studied in the Louvre, where he spent his formative years copying works by Venetian and Flemish masters. Bonington's technique in watercolor and oil was notably fresh and spontaneous, capturing light and atmosphere with a directness that anticipated the Impressionists; Delacroix called him 'the master of lightness an

The warm, golden tonality and intimate scale recall seventeenth-century Flemish genre painting, with Bonington's characteristic luminous touch lending freshness to the traditional devotional subject.