Street Scene, Ghent

Richard Parkes Bonington was an English Romantic artist whose promising career was cut short by his early death at twenty-five of tuberculosis. An artistic prodigy, he exhibited his first watercolor works at eleven, before his family emigrated to France, where he completed his training and transitioned from watercolors to oils. This view of the city of Ghent, in Belgium, shows the impact of his study of Dutch landscapes in the Louvre, as well as his gift for subtle atmospheric effects.

The painting is divided into two zones, one a quiet domestic scene, the other a bustling cityscape. In the foreground, women in a walled yard are hanging laundry up to dry. Other freshly washed linens hang from the balconies of the adjacent house. On the far side of the wall, a large crowd follows a religious procession towards the church whose towers rise above the ordinary city buildings.

The painting was gifted to Cranbrook in 1955, as part of the Grace Booth Wallace Bequest. George Gough Booth acquired a print by Bonington, Le Tour du Gros Horloge, for the Cranbrook Art Museum in 1944; his daughter Grace's ownership of this painting may have drawn his attention to the artist, or vice versa.

Mariam Hale
2023-2025 Collections Fellow
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
January 2024