John Sell Cotman on Yarmouth

Reading ‘John Sell Cotman 1782-1842′ edited by Miklos Rajnai (SBN 0-906969-19-0, Arts Council and Herbert Press, 1982), I came across this passage in a letter written by Cotman  to Frances Cholmeley, 13.April.1812: “I cannot call it paradise for I have no authority sacred or profane that introduce ships of any kind nto that region of delight…. My small garden leads me on to the road (Southtown Road) …Then , a green meadow, then the view along the banks of which, directly before my house, lies the condemned vessels of every nation, rigged and unrigged in the most picturesque manner possible.  Then, our merchant vessels from an Indiaman, Greenlandman, to a collier pass and repass every ebb and flow of the tide.  From my house…we reach the sea in about 3/4 of a mile, on which rides at times the Navy dimly moved in view.  Today at sea a frigate and an open brigg came to anchor.  In short I have never saw so animated a picture as this spot affords, it is always changing, always new.”  The river is not picturesque as it was - there are certainly no green meadows between Southtown Road and the river! – but it is still a dramatic scene as the workmanlike ships come and go, manoeuvring  on these fast flowing waters with such apparent ease, and the mood constantly transformed in the ever-changing light.

Rainbow over the Dolphin, from  Bollard Quay, June 2011

John Sell Cotman

An Aesthetic Appreciation by Dom Stephen Horton

(written in response to the post about the collector and patron Dawson Turner )

On 4th July 1803, Cotman was in York with his fellow artist, Paul Sandby Munn. They were making their way to stay with the Cholmley family at Brandsby Hall, Yorkshire. July 4th is a significant date because it marks the boundary between the aspiring artist in search of a “voice”, and the mature artist who, in the blink of an eye, found it.

Like all great moments in Cotman’s oeuvre, the event was marked, not by the drama attendant upon the production of a big or powerful statement, but by a small pencil drawing. In “Ouse Bridge, York, 4th July 1803″, what we have is not an embryonic statement of things to come but a fully formed manifesto of intent. The drawing, now in the Norwich Castle Museum, measures 127mm by 228mm. Unlike previous works by Cotman, it shows a sureness of touch and an economy previously unseen. Here we have the “art of leaving out”, (a phrase used by Cotman) manifested in blank paper, punctuated with very little pencil. The bridge comes into focus through pressure brought to bear on the pencil. There is, at one and the same time, consummate control, and relaxed detachment. Cotman is not attempting to dominate the scene, nor is he dominated by it. What he registers in this small drawing is a perfect equipoise—the contemplation of the object by the subject—which results in a meeting of the two, or rather a fusing of the two, so that, looking at the drawing, we see through the artist’s eyes; yet, because Cotman’s ego has taken second place, the artist as subject disappears.

What is true regarding this particular drawing is also true about Cotman’s subsequent early work. From 1803 to 1808, nearly everything the artist produced has about it the quality—one could say, the ambiguity—which all great art has: that it was produced by someone yet, coming into the world fully formed, it has a life and identity of its own.

Such ambiguity is reinforced stylistically by the fact that Cotman can never be labelled either a Romantic or a Classicist. His “involvement”, his ability to convey “sensation”, is certainly a Romantic trait, but such identification with the object, whether it be a great monastic ruin or a few leaves by a stream, is balanced by an objectification. Cotman is both fully there in the scene, and coolly detached.

What attracts us today to Cotman’s first and greatest period, is his consummate ability to abstract, or take out from the real only that which is necessary to convey the ideal. For this reason Cotman is not “realistic”; he deals, as did Claude or Poussin before him, with the mythic and universal. In Cotman’s case, however, the universal is conveyed through the particular seen object of pastoral England. Such transformation, from particular to universal, means that the image becomes symbol and, as with all symbols, is multivalent: it works on many levels.

At this point, a word should be said about the way in which Cotman produced his early work, which was entirely made up of pencil drawings and watercolours. Economy is the watchword here. In his great series of watercolours, which are often at one remove—i.e. studio productions made from preliminary drawings done in the field—we see a further transformation: colour, even if only one is used, becomes all important; the build up of washes is always “clean”, and hardly ever does Cotman “bleed” one colour wet into another. His technique could be termed “linear”, since each area of tone or colour is well defined. However, such is his skill as a colourist that Cotman often allows the second wash of colour to “slip”, so that it is difficult to say where one colour area begins and another ends. Such technique gives a wonderful, slightly “off-key” effect, similar to that seen in Japanese block prints and in Warhol’s silk-screen printing. There is no attempt, on Cotman’s part, to hide the medium in which he is working. On the contrary, he allows each layer of wash to speak, inviting the viewer to take a closer look, to move in to the surface, in an attempt to crack open its secrets.

In these early works, Cotman is the consummate colourist. Each colour has a familial relation to the others and, usually, only a few are used. The unity of effect amid the diversity of the scene is achieved through such family relationships of colour. Hence the eye is not bounced breathlessly from area to another. Like Girtin before him, Cotman achieves a monochromatic effect, even when he uses colour—thus his watercolours are full of colour but are not (paradoxically) “colourful”. Even when he is depicting a complex tangle of vegetation or a highly detailed architectural motif, the result is poise and balance, which has a stilling effect on the viewer. Cotman’s ability to “take out” and reassemble the constituent parts in a way which seems inevitable, is what marks him out as one of the great early 19th century artists.

Stephen Horton is a watercolour artist. Examples of his work may be viewed on the Prinknash Abbey website www.prinknashabbey.org

Dawson Turner (1775-1858)

After attending Dr. Andrew Moore’s talk about Dawson Turner (1775-1858) delivered on the 5th February 2010, one of the excellent series of Friday talks at the Time and Tide Museum, I borrowed the book he referred to from the reference section in the Central Library: ‘Dawson Turner, A Norfolk Antiquary and his Remarkable Family’, edited by Nigel Goodman, Phillimore & Co. Ltd., 2007.

Yarmouth Priory by John Sell Cotman, commissioned by Dawson Turner

I am a great admirer of John Sell Cotman and was familiar with the name of Dawson Turner as a significant patron, but was nevertheless amazed to hear about the quality of the art collection he accumulated at Bank House (now Barclays Bank) on Hall Plain. Turner, a partner at the Turner Gurney Bank set up in Yarmouth in 1781, first won renown as a botanist. He was a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, (founded in 1788 by the Norwich botanist James Edward Smith). Of his large collection of botanical drawings, many were by William Jackson Hooker, a protégé who went on to marry Maria, the eldest daughter.  It is interesting to see the important role female botanists were able to contribute in these early days of collecting and classifying. Turner prized the drawings of Ellen Hitchins, for example, whom he greatly admired.

Once Turner began to collect works of art, he proved to have an impressive eye for quality. He was in advance of his time in prizing the beautiful Bellini in his possession, Mother and Child Enthroned with St. Peter and St. Paul and a Donor, 1505, now in the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. He acquired an exquisite Poussin landscape painting, View of Tivoli, and another lovely landscape painting by Hobbema, which was his favourite. Dutch and Flemish masters featured strongly as would be expected, given the close trading and cultural links that existed. As well as the wonderful Christening Feast by Jan Steen, Turner had examples of Gerrit Dou and Aelbert Cuyp amongst many other artists from across the North Sea. He also had a portrait of Catherine Parr by Holbein, a Canaletto, a studio sketch by Rubens and work attributed to Van Dyke and Titian. Of the English masters, he had two paintings by Sir David Wilkie, a landscape by Richard Wilson, family portraits commissioned from Thomas Phillips RA, and works by Crome and Cotman, the last three being friends, with Cotman and Crome employed consecutively as drawing tutors to Turner’s talented daughters.

Not only that, Turner accumulated an amazing collection of manuscripts, folios, autographed letters, illustrations and books of all sorts. He was a most unusual pioneer in collecting contemporary ephemera – newspaper cuttings, advertisements, shop bills, railway tickets, lottery notices and such. He had all his collections beautifully bound in calf or Russian leather by Yarmouth bookbinders of whom he said “that Yarmouth yields only to London in the excellence of its binders”. I could happily create a long list of items in his collection which excite me, but it would be an indulgence. I will only mention Book of Job (1825) by William Blake and correspondence with that unique genius, Turner’s Liber Studorium which he bought from J.M.W. Turner himself and a 15th Century Flemish Book of Hours – what a privilege for his many distinguished guests to be able to browse such a collection!

Dawson Turner was supported in all this work by his most congenial and accomplished wife Mary Palgrave of Coltishall. Eight out of their eleven children survived, six of which were daughters. These were all taught drawing, etching and lithography, not only by Cotman and Crome but also the likes of James Heath ARA and John Varley who visited Bank House. Drawings and prints produced by Mary and her daughters were used to illustrate Dawson Turner’s publications, including catalogues of his collections, works on Medieval architecture in Norfolk and Normandy, portraits to accompany letters which he also collected and bound, and so on. It was very unusual for women to be engaged so industriously on work destined for publication, one of the many features of this fascinating family.

Bank House now and Bank House then, a watercolour created by Father Stephen Horton, specially for this article, from an original print (see note below). 

Mary died after 54 years of marriage, and one year later, in 1851 and much to everybody’s amazement, Dawson Turner, aged 76, eloped with a widow called Rosamund Matilda Duff, who was thirty five years his junior and of humble origins. They married in Gretna Green and moved to London to avoid the disapproval of family, friends and colleagues. Sadly his collections were sold after 1852 when he faced financial difficulties.

Whenever I now cross Haven Bridge towards Barclays,  I take great pleasure in thinking about the Turner family and what they were able to achieve in the early 19th Century .

Note:   For more information about Stephen Horton’s work, have a look at the gallery on the Prinknash Abbey website by clicking here.