John Sell Cotman
(1782-1842) was one of the
finest English artists of the Romantic era. The son of a Norwich
barber turned draper, Cotman taught himself drawing as a boy, moved
to London in 1798 "to learn to be a painter" at age 16, found
employment coloring aquatints for Rudolph Ackermann, then joined in
1799 the informal "academy" run by Dr. Thomas Munro. He exhibited
at the Royal Academy in 1800, the year of his first sketching trip
to Wales, and may have sketched with Thomas Girtin at Conwy, on the
Wales north coast. In 1801 he joined the Sketching Club started by
Thomas Girtin (who was then in Paris), and made his living selling
drawings for use as amateur sketching patterns. In 1803-1805 he
spent his summers in Yorkshire, at the home of his patron Francis
Cholmeley (1783-1854) and the art collector Walter Fawkes. Cotman
moved back to Norwich in 1806, joined the Norwich Society of
painters, and made his living as a drawing master. During 1812-23
Cotman was based in Yarmouth, near his lifelong patron Dawson
Turner (1775-1858); with Turner's support Cotman travelled
throughout southwest England and Normandy, producing a large number
of superb architectural watercolors and etchings. Cotman moved to
London and was elected to the Old Water-Colour Society in 1825, and
in 1834 became Professor of Drawing at King's College, London.
Cotman's early paintings (before 1804) are
notable for their
dark and stormy romanticism. Some of this adopts the picturesque
style of the Norwich painter John Crome (1768-1824), and some of it
clearly borrows from the atmospheric style of Thomas Girtin.
Around 1804 Cotman's style went through a
complete
transformation toward greater light and serene planes of
transparent color. Why this change occured is unknown, but it may
have been stimulated by the influence of John Varley during
1801-04, when both attended the London Sketching Club, and (I
suspect) exposure to the late Italian drawings of Francis Towne,
who lived in London from 1800.
Cotman's marriage in 1809 induced him to
return to Norwich to
pursue his career as drawing master. Around this time he also
significantly modified his "Greta" style, probably to make his
paintings more popular with art collectors. And he burdened himself
further (at the request of the banker and amateur antiquarian
Dawson Turner) by making hundreds of architectural drawings and
etchings of ruins and villages in Norfolk and Suffolk, transforming
the best of these drawings into etchings (shown at right). Dawson
Turner later sent Cotman to Normandy in 1817, 1818 and 1820 to make
more architectural drawings. He clearly loved the Normand
countryside and made many fine paintings of the area; in these he
imitates the prismatic palette and dominant orange hues of Joseph
Turner's middle style, and imitates the topographical artist Samuel
Prout in the placement of figures. The etchings proved to be an
enormous labor, and he began to suffer from severe depression. He
moved back to Norwich to teach, but was hounded by creditors.
Despite his enormous talent and
compositional skill, Cotman
struggled throughout his later years with family responsibilities,
the tedious burdens of drawing master, and increasingly severe
symptoms of depression. Around 1830 he changed his painting style
again, to much darker and more massively composed imaginary
landscapes, painted on small sheets with a watercolor medium made
with rice paste that imitated the thick texture of oil paints. But
Cotman died in obscurity (Ruskin and Turner never mention him), and
an appreciation of his works did not begin until the late Victorian
era. Since then, however, his stature as a watercolourist and
etcher has only increased.
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ACCOUNT OF A TOUR IN NORMANDY
Undertaken Chiefly for
the Purpose of Investigating the Architectural Antiquities of the
Duchy, with Observations on Its History, on the Country, and on Its
Inhabitants.*** This occurs in TWO
formats
one a large folio by Cotman with lithographs in colorour the other
a cheaper octavo with etchings of the plates by Mrs
Turner***
by John Sell Cotman and Dawson
TURNER,Published by John and
Arthur Arch, Cornhill & J.S. Cotman Yarmouth, London and Great
Yarmouth, 1822. Large Folio. from a set of 100 full page engraved
plates by Cotman. Lithographs prepared by by Vincent Brooks, Day
& Son, Gate Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields and also Sold by
Chapman and Hall,
These journey's to Normandy were made in
1815, 1818 and 1819 and
Cotman accompanied Dawson Turner on these tours. The Turners were
in fact John Sell Cotman's chief benefactors and patron.All plates
are full foio page with the lithograph laid to the centre of the
page as per published format ; no foxing; no mount ready to frame.
Rare underpriced gems £45 each
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sorry all sold at present
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