A printed image of a painting made before 1900
The French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix described the sparkling, jewel-toned watercolors of the British painter Bonington, with whom he shared a Paris studio, as “like diamonds.” In this view of Rouen seen from the northeast, broad wet washes evoke the sunlit sky, a dark cathedral soars above the blotted colors of the city’s haze, and exquisite touches of a fine brush suggest tiny figures and the masts of distant ships. A version of this view was reproduced in aquatint by Thales Fielding in N.-J. Lefebvre-DuruflĂ©’s Excursion sur les cĂ´tes et dans les ports de Normandie, published 1823–25.
