Amy Robsart and the Earl of Leicester

Amy Robsart and the Earl of Leicester from 1827, at the Ashmolean Museum, depicts a dramatic episode from Walter Scott's novel Kenilworth (1821). The literary subject reflects the Romantic taste for historical romance that influenced both Bonington and his friend Delacroix during the later 1820s. Bonington, who died at twenty-five in 1828, achieved a technical mastery of watercolor and oil that astonished contemporaries including Delacroix, with whom he shared a Paris studio and who acknowledged

The dramatic interior scene is illuminated with warm, golden light, the period costumes rendered with rich color and meticulous attention to textile detail.