CANADIAN PRAIRIE WATERCOLOUR LANDSCAPES
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THE ENGLISH NOVELTY
JOHN SELL
COTMAN, Crambe Beck Bridge near
Kirkham, Yorks. formerly called Chirk
Aqueduct, 1806-7, Victoria and Albert Museum,
London.
JOHN
SELL COTMAN b. 1782, d. 1842 is, in my
estimation, the supreme watercolour painter of his generation. Although his
career was not cut short like so many of the famous Romantics -- Keats, Girtin,
Schubert -- it was curiously aborted; his best work was done in the first
decade of the century when, under the influence of Girtin, he produced a
remarkable series of watercolours characterized by firm drawing, delicate
washes, and an uncanny sense of design. Atmosphere doesn't play a strong role
in Cotman's work; light does. Cotman had a unique ability to give masses and
shadows a kind of equivalence in the design which in some respects prefigures
Cubism, a full century in the future. In his latter years, Cotman was troubled
by fits of depression and this, combined with relative isolation in Norfolk (he
was one of the founders of the "Norwich School") led him away from
his genius to pursue the influence of Turner and what Ruskin came to call
"The Turnerian sublime."
