John Robert Cozens: Difference between revisions

Line 46: Line 46:

* K. Sloan, ”Alexander and John Robert Cozens The Poetry of Landscape” (1986)

* K. Sloan, ”Alexander and John Robert Cozens The Poetry of Landscape” (1986)

* A. P. Oppe, ”Alexander and John Robert Cozens” (1952)

* A. P. Oppe, ”Alexander and John Robert Cozens” (1952)

*C. F. Bell and T. Girtin, ”The Drawings and Sketches of John Robert Cozens: A Catalogue with an Historical Introduction”, The Walpole Society, 1934-35

==External links==

==External links==

English painter (1752–1797)

John Robert Cozens (1752 – 14 December 1797) was a British draftsman and painter of romantic watercolour landscapes. Cozens painted striking watercolours which influenced Thomas Girtin and J. M. W. Turner (who together made copies of many of them when young, paid by Dr Monro), and has been described as “perhaps the most poetic of English painters”.^[1] Despite using a “very limited palette, usually blues, greys, and greens, [and] the simplest of compositions … there is a grandeur and simplicity about his best work which appeals directly to the heart”. John Constable described Cozens as “all poetry”, and “the greatest genius that ever touched landscape.”^[2]

According to Andrew Wilton, Cozens was the “progenitor” of the revolution in [British] watercolour in the 1790s, having “in the 1770s systematised a method of applying watercolour pigment, without the admixture of bodycolour or any other substance, that for the first time comprehensively answered the requirement of landscape painting that it should represent vast expanses of land and sky”.^[3] Martin Hardie says he was one of the first [British watercolourists] to use the medium consistently for its own sake as a purely expressional means”, rather than a topographical record.^[4]

Most of his watercolours show scenes from two extended visits to the Alps and Italy, where he made numerous sketches, mostly just in pencil. These were then worked up into fresh paintings back in London, often the same sketch being used a number of times, with different effects.

In June 2010 Cozens’ Lake Albano (c.1777) sold at auction, at Sotheby’s in London, for £2.4 million, a record for any 18th-century British watercolour.^[5]

Biography

The son of the Russian-born drawing master and watercolourist Alexander Cozens, John Robert Cozens was born in London. He studied under his father and began to exhibit some early drawings with the Society of Artists in 1767, when he was only 15. In 1776 he displayed the large oil painting, A Landscape with Hannibal in His March Over the Alps, Showing to His Army the Fertile Plains of Italy (now lost) at the Royal Academy in London.^[6] This painting was the only oil that Cozens exhibited at the Academy and was the inspiration for J. M. W. Turner‘s famous painting of 1812.^[7] Cozens stood for election as an Associate of the Academy the same year, but received no votes. He never stood again, nor submitted other works (watercolours were then not accepted).^[8]

Between 1776 and 1779 he travelled to Switzerland and Italy, where he drew Alpine and north Italian views. He travelled with Richard Payne Knight (then 26) as far as Rome, where Cozens remained until 1779, when he returned to London. Most of the sketches made on this trip were of Swiss scenes; they are now “widely scattered”, with 24 in the British Museum. They show his style developing, rather than complete.^[9]

Back in London the very wealthy author and collector William Beckford paid Cozens to turn his sketches into watercolours; Beckford was already a patron of Alexander Cozens. In 1782 he made his second visit to Italy, accompanied by Beckford, spending time at Naples where, after both had bouts of malaria, they parted, with Cozens remaining in Italy.^[10] His works show that he went as far as Sicily.^[11] In 1783 he returned to England, soon after which he fell out with Beckford. It is on his paintings of Continental subjects that his fame largely rests, and these were the bulk of his output; many subjects were repeated in different versions.^[12] Many of his watercolours were evidently produced back in England, based on the sketch drawings he had made abroad. He only left a few paintings of English scenes.^[13] There are a number of surviving sketchbooks from the second visit; the “Beaumont Album” has 215 drawings and belonged to Sir George Beaumont and his descendants from around the time of Cozens’ death until 1967.^[14] It is now in the Yale Center for British Art.

Few details are known about his life in the years between his return in 1783 and his breakdown in 1794, essentially his thirties. He may have taught, as most watercolourists did, as well as working up his sketches into paintings. He was probably the “Mr Cozens” paid as drawing master to the Princes Ernest and Augustus in Royal Household records of 1787-88 (his father had died by then).^[15]

In 1794, at the age of 42 and three years before he died, he suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to the Bethlem Royal Hospital asylum. The asylum’s chief physician, was Dr Thomas Monro, also a considerable collector and patron. Monro had access to Cozens’ sketches, and paid the young Girtin and Turner to copy and work up Cozens’ sketches at his home in the evenings. Turner was paid 3 shillings and sixpence a night.^[16] Cozens was married, with two children of “about five or six” when he entered the asylum. An appeal was made to the Royal Academy for a grant for his family, signed by artists including Cosway, Nothcote and Farington, and 10 guineas was granted. The Academy also contributed to a subscription for his medical costs, some £70 or £80 a year, organized by Payne Knight and Beaumont, with some 15 subscribers, and Farington administering. Beckford did not contribute. Cozens died in London in December 1797.^[17]

Public collections

His works are in most large English collections, and the largest American ones. The Victoria & Albert Museum has some 30 works,^[18] and the Yale Center for British Art lists 342 works, though nearly all are pencil sketches.^[19]

See also

Notes

References

• Martin Hardie, Watercolour Painting in Britain, Volume I: The Eighteenth Century (1966), London: B. T. Batsford
• Mallalieu, Huon, The Dictionary of British watercolour artists up to 1920, Volume I A-L, 3rd edition, 2002, Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors’ Club, ISBN 185149426X, 2nd edition on the Internet Archive
• Wilton, Andrew, in: Andrew Wilton & Anne Lyles, The Great Age of British Watercolours, 1750–1880, 1993, Prestel, ISBN 3791312545

Further reading

• Wilton, Andrew, The art of Alexander and John Robert Cozens, 1980, New Haven : Yale Center for British Art
• K. Sloan, Alexander and John Robert Cozens The Poetry of Landscape (1986)
• A. P. Oppe, Alexander and John Robert Cozens (1952)
• C. F. Bell and T. Girtin, The Drawings and Sketches of John Robert Cozens: A Catalogue with an Historical Introduction, The Walpole Society, 1934-35

External links