Charles V visits Francis I after the Battle of Pavia 1827

Richard Parkes Bonington made this history painting using oil on paper. It depicts the meeting of Charles V and Francis I following the Battle of Pavia. Bonington was part of a generation of painters who sought to free themselves from academic constraints, and the bravura brushwork on display here is evidence of that impulse. You can see that the pigment is applied in very thin layers, almost like watercolor washes. This was a favored technique in the Romantic era, as artists sought to capture fleeting emotional states. Yet, despite Bonington’s evident enthusiasm for the medium, we should not overlook the social context. Even the most apparently spontaneous artworks are made through a system of labor and exchange. In this case, the pigments used would have been manufactured, traded, and sold through an economy rapidly industrializing. So, even if the painting has an air of spontaneity, it is nevertheless part of a wider system of production.