A Wooded Lane

A Wooded Lane from 1825 shows Bonington venturing beyond his characteristic coastal subjects into woodland landscape. The painting reflects the influence of seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painting, which Bonington studied closely during his visits to collections in Paris and London. 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 prof

The dappled light filtering through the canopy is rendered with sparkling touches of color, the composition leading the eye along the path with a naturalism that anticipates Barbizon School painting.