Rouen Cathedral, Sunrise

Although Bonington died prematurely at age 25, he was a prolific virtuoso who left his mark on the development of European painting. Connoisseurs have always ranked him with Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix as one of the three pillars of French Romanticism, and with John Constable and J. M. W. Turner as the most influential British landscape painters of the 19th century. Bonington's genius as a painter was so seductive that he attracted a host of admirers and imitators in both France and England. Two of his closest friends were Delacroix and Paul Huet, while Camille Corot admitted to becoming an artist only after seeing examples of Bonington's paintings in an art dealer's shop window. Corot's oil sketch in Rome of 1826 offers an illuminating comparison with Bonington's Rouen sketch of 1825, which is concerned less with the subject depicted than with the art of quickly recording one's impressions of light, color and atmosphere in nature.