Coastal Scene with Fishing Boats

Coastal Scene with Fishing Boats from 1828 is one of Bonington's final paintings before his death from tuberculosis that September at age twenty-five. Even in his last months, Bonington continued to paint the marine subjects that had established his international reputation. 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 his profound influenc

The fishing boats and coastal setting are rendered with fluid, confident brushwork, the atmospheric effects of light on water achieved through transparent glazes over a luminous ground.