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CROME and COTMAN

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Presented by Edward E. Minor
Yale '96S
from the Library of
William C. Minor, M. D., 1863

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^s/ir J oriiujduid Laii.

JOHN CROME

AND

JOHN SELL COTMAN

By

LAURENCE BINYON
Of the Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum

LONDON
SEELEY AND CO. LIMITED, GREAT RUSSELL STREET
NEW YORK . THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
I897

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATES
PAGE
The Poringland Oak. By J. Crome. Collection of the Rev. C. J. Steward Frontispiece
Mousehold Heath, near Norwich. By J. Crome. National Gallery 28
Breaking the Clod. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of James Reeve, Esq. 62
Fishing Boats, Moonlight. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of James Reeve, Esq. 76
ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT
Carrow Abbey. By J. Crome. Collection of J. J. Colman, Esq. 9
The Cow Tower. By J. Crome. Collection of J. J. Colman, Esq. 1 1
Portrait of J. Crome. From a Drawing by J. S. Cotman. British Museum 13
Dawn. By J. Crome. Collection of J. J. Colman, Esq. 15
The Windmill. By J. Crome. National Gallery 19
Study of a Tree. Soft-ground Etching by J. Crome 25
At Scoulton. From the Etching by J. Crome . 26
On the Yare at Thorpe. By J. Crome. Collection of H. G. Barwell, Esq. 31
Yarmouth Beach. By J. Crome. Collection of J. J. Colman, Esq. . 35
Grove Scene. By J. Crome. Collection of J. J. Colman, Esq. 39
At the Back of the New Mills. By J. Crome. . Collection of J. J. Colman, Esq. 43
Portrait of J. S. Cotman. From a Lithograph in the possession of J. Reeve, Esq. . 51
Landscape Composition. By J. S. Cotman. From a Sketch in the possession of
Basil Cornish, Esq. 53
The Centaur. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of J. Reeve, Esq. 55

4 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PACE
Durham Cathedral. By J. S. Cotman. British Museum 57
Duncombe Park. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of J. Reeve, Esq. 59
Greta Bridge. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of J. Reeve, Esq. . 6 1
Draining Mill, Lincolnshire. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of J. Reeve, Esq. 65
Prior's Entrance, Ely Cathedral. From the Etching by J. S. Cotman 69
Crypt of the Abbey Church of the Holy Trinity at Caen. From the Etching by
J. S. Cotman 73
The Shadowed Stream. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of J. Reeve, Esq. 77
Postwick Grove. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of J. Reeve, Esq. 79
Gunton Park. By J. S. Cotman. By permission of Mr. Palser . 81
Chateau in Normandy. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of J. Reeve, Esq. 83
Windmill. By J. S. Cotman. By permission of Mr. Palser 85
The Waterfall. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of J. J. Colman, Esq. 87
Fishing Boats off Yarmouth. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of J. J. Colman, Esq. 89
The Mishap. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of J. J. Colman, Esq. . 91
The Baggage Waggon. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of J. J. Colman, Esq. 93
Bamborough Castle. From a soft-ground Etching by J. S. Cotman 95
The Devil's Bridge. From a soft-ground Etching by J. S. Cotman 97
The Wold Afloat. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of J. Reeve, Esq. 99
Landscape Composition with Figures. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of J. J.
Colman, Esq. IOI

PREFACE
Crome and Cotman are the glories of the Norwich School. Unlike in
temperament, in character, in the scope and aim of their art, and in the
circumstances of their lives, they are alike in possessing genius. Norwich
has bred a great number of excellent painters, but these two stand high
above the rest.
What is meant by the Norwich School ? The word " school " has
been used in several senses. It meant, first of all, the body of painters
produced by a certain country, a certain province, or a certain town. In
the earliest times of painting there were few migrations ; and a painter's
work generally savoured of the soil where he was born and bred. But
then came freer communication and interaction : Leonardo, for example,
coming to Milan from Florence, impressed all the Milanese painters with
his influence ; he founded a school, the characteristics of which are de
rived from his dominant personality ; and Raphael did the like at Rome,
which of itself has scarcely produced a painter. Again, in modern times,
we have seen " schools " which had their sole unity in holding certain
theories in common, such as the English Pre-Raphaelites.
It is in the primary sense that we talk of the Norwich School. Im
pute it to what cause we will, there is no doubt that the Eastern Counties
have been far more prolific of painters than the rest of England. The
average excellence and number of their artists remind one of Holland,
which in actual physical features they of course so much resemble. The
Norwich School had no common bond of theory ; it is their Norwich
birth and training which constitute them a distinct body. And if we are
to group painters into schools at all, this is the most reasonable principle
to build on. Race counts for much in artistic as in all kinds of pro
duction ; and though it is easier to be fanciful than to be just in
discriminating between the various schools of a country, one would
certainly expect to find great differences resulting from so great a variety
of race as exists in England. These are probably more apparent to
foreigners than to ourselves. Of course there has always been the counter
acting influence of an almost all-powerful centre in London ; and Norwich

6 PREFACE
is the only place which possessed artists of sufficient strength to create
a rival centre. Nor would this have been possible had Crome, their chief,
left his native city for London, like nearly every other genius of the
provinces. This is a subject which has been little worked at ; and it is not
intended to pursue it here. But as there has been some tendency of late
to discount the claims of Norwich to include Cotman in her school, on
the ground that he was chiefly trained in London, where also he worked
for the last years of his life, it is well to make plain the reasonable
grounds of his inclusion. Cotman himself, whose heart was always with
Norwich and with Norfolk, would assuredly not have wished to be dis
sociated from them.
On the other hand, it is right to recognise that Crome and Cotman
are far more than local glories : Norwich claims them by right of birth,
England by right of genius. Both of these painters, Cotman especially,
have suffered misconception, since much of their best work, indeed all
Cotman's best work, is in private hands and unknown to the general
public ; and both have been too often judged by imitations of their
pictures. Crome's work in particular has been confused with that of his
pupils, besides being most extensively imitated. On this account the
writer has preferred to treat as far as possible with pictures and drawings
that are not only authentic but attested. For help in this matter,
as on every other point connected with the subject, he offers the most
cordial thanks to Mr. James Reeve, Curator of the Castle Museum at
Norwich, who, with generous kindness, placed his unique collection of
original documents relating to the Norwich School at the writer's disposal.
Mr. Reeve's authority on the subject, which he has made his life-long
study, is acknowledged to be unequalled; and whatever merit this
monograph may have as a record of facts, is due to him.
The writer has also to acknowledge help of various kinds from Mr.
Frederick Wedmore, Mr. Cosmo Monkhouse, Sir Reginald Palgrave,
K.C.B., Dr. Cotman, Mr. J. L. Roget (whose History of the Old
Water-colour Society has so valuable a notice of Cotman), Messrs. Dowdes-
wells, and others ; and would especially thank those who have permitted
pictures in their possession to be reproduced in these pages.
These illustrations will give a more adequate suggestion of Crome's
and of Cotman's work than has been hitherto generally obtainable in
London; they have been made from the excellent reproductions which,
with a number of others, the Autotype Company are about to issue in a
portfolio illustrative of the Norwich School.

JOHN CROME

I. Early Tears and Apprenticeship
John Wodderspoon, writing a memoir of Crome in 1858, lamented
his difficulties in finding the truth, although it was not forty years since
Crome had died, and many who knew him were still alive. It is not
easy, in 1897, to unravel the tangle of ancedote and tradition ; but the
amount of our information has certainly increased.
When a man writes of the lately dead, he naturally applies to the
dead man's friends and acquaintance ; and these out of their abundant
recollections furnish him with stores of matter. This is often excellent
stuff for forming an impression of a man's mind and character. But on
questions of actual fact, niceties of chronology, such as must, after all,
make the anatomy of a memoir, the information thus procured is apt
to be uncertain, contradictory, and indefinite.
The notices of Crome's life by Dawson Turner and Wodderspoon
are profuse of generalities, but shun dates. , Dates seemed perhaps
trivial then, now they are precious ; and for most of the few events
in Crome's life we have to turn to ¦ the unconscious memory of parish
registers, of diaries preserved for other reasons, of newspaper advertise
ments, and catalogues.
Long accepted without inquiry, on Dawson Turner's authority, the
date of Crome's birth has been given, and is still given, in nearly all
books of reference, as December 21, 1769. But researches made in
the registers of St. George's Tombland at Norwich, some years ago,
proved that he was born on December 22, 1768.
His father was a journeyman weaver, who either kept or was a

8 JOHN CROME
lodger in a little public-house in the least reputable quarter of Norwich,
the Castle Meadow on the hill beneath the castle, a part then known as
the Castle Ditches.
Whatever education Crome received was of the simplest sort.
It was an ancient custom, prolonged to days within living memory, for
the boys and girls of the city who sought a place in service, to assemble
at early morning on the site of the old Ducal Palace, there to await
the chance of an employer. The boy Crome, when he had reached
the age of twelve, "went" like others "on the palace," in the phrase
of the Norwich lads ; and attracted the notice of Dr. Rigby, who took
him into his service as errand-boy. In Dr. Rigby 's house he remained
two years or more, playing many a prank, according to his own tales
in after-times, and once ambitiously bleeding a patient almost to death.
But the doctor was pleased with him. At any rate, he lent him help
in getting himself apprenticed.
The apprenticeship began on the first day of August 1783, and
was for seven years. Crome's new master was Mr. Francis Whisler,
" a Coach, House, and Sign Painter," of 41 Bethel Street.
It is impossible not to think that this trade was the boy's own
choice. Born painters are never slow in manifesting their predilection.
Doubtless, to be with colours — for at first it was Crome's business
only to grind them — was delight ; and later on, to handle brushes
and to use them, if only on coaches and wall-panels, was a fine ambition.
The extraordinary breadth of touch in Crome's early pictures is
due to this training. Paint upon sign-boards and coaches has to make
its effect at some distance ; and the result is no less manifest in Crome's
pictures than, say, the sculptor's training in Verrocchio's.
The seven years passed, bringing to the young apprentice a certain
amount of familiarity with paints and brushes, and about the end of
his time more particular gifts of fortune. The first of these was a friend.
Robert Ladbrooke, of the same age as Crome, had been apprenticed
to a printer. The two met, and became close companions. They had
a passion in common ; both were determined to be painters. According
to Dawson Turner, the two entered into a sort of partnership for a
time. They hired a garret, and clubbed together in buying prints to
copy. It was in these youthful enthusiastic days that Crome would

JOHN CROME 9
wander off into the fields and sketch on a piece of pasteboard, with
his colours in an oyster-shell. His first sketch in oils, we know from
the catalogue of the exhibition of 1821, was made in 1790, the year
in which his apprenticeship expired.

Carrozv Abbey. By J. Crome. Collection of J. J. Colman, Esq.
From the reproduction published by the Autotype Company.
Having served his term, he still, it seems, continued to work as
a journeyman painter for Whisler. He is known to have painted
several signs, and one at least is still preserved at Norwich, in the
Pockthorpe Brewery. It is the sign of the Sawyers, painted on both

10 JOHN CROME
sides, the sawyer standing astride of the pit, and the figure boldly and
broadly put in, with vigorous touches.
With such jobs as these Crome managed to save enough, we may
suppose, to enable him to occupy his spare time with drawing and
painting for his own pleasure, in Ladbrooke's company ; and before
long the pair seem to have been able to get some money for their work.
Smith and Jaggers, the Norwich print-sellers, from whom they bought
prints when they could afford it, noticed the young enthusiasts and
bought some of their drawings.
It was probably through the print-sellers that Crome and his
sketches became known to an amateur and collector of the neighbour
hood, Thomas Harvey of Catton. He proved a most valuable friend.
Harvey could give him instruction in painting : there were several
of Harvey's pictures in Crome's collection when he died. And more,
he had a choice collection himself, which Crome was now at liberty
to study and to copy. Here was an inestimable privilege. Mr.
Harvey's collection has been long dispersed, and we do not know
what pictures it contained, except the beautiful and celebrated Cottage
Door of Gainsborough ; and this we know Crome copied. We may
also confidently conjecture that there were pictures by Richard Wilson ;
and through a connection with Holland — he had married the daughter
of a Rotterdam merchant — Mr. Harvey had collected some Dutch
pictures, among them a Hobbema.
Crome had no reason to complain of fortune. In finding one friend,
he also found others. One of those to whom Harvey introduced him
was William Beechey.
It was while Crome was still a child, and before he had begun life
as the doctor's errand-boy, that William Beechey, after painting and
exhibiting portraits with some success in London, saw an opening at
Norwich and came down there to live. According to one account,
indeed, Beechey himself had begun as a house-painter in Norwich ; but
this is probably a legend. The accepted story is that he was born in
Oxfordshire and articled to a solicitor. But that he came to Norwich
in 1 78 1 is certain ; and there, too, he found a wife, Miss Jessup, who
was herself a painter of miniatures. After working in Norwich for
four or five years, Beechey returned to London, and was soon on the

JOHN CROME

1 1

road to prosperity, sunned by royal favour. He did not, however, lose
touch with Norwich and his Norwich friends ; and Harvey of Catton
was one of these. According to Beechey's account, Crome was about
twenty when they first met. This would imply that it was in 1789.
Probably it was a year or two later.1 In Beechey's description we come
for the first time near to the man himself.

The Cow Tower. By J. Crome. Collection of J. J. Colman, Esq.
From the reproduction published by the Autotype Company.
" Crome, when first I knew him, must have been about twenty years
old, and was a very awkward, uninformed, country lad, but extremely
shrewd in all his remarks upon art ; though he wanted words and terms
to express his meaning. As often as he came to town, he never failed
to call upon me, and to get what information I was able to give him
upon the subject of that particular branch of art which he had made his
1 Crome was young-looking. In the portrait sketch by Cotman he does not look
forty years old. Yet it was made in 1809.

12 JOHN CROME
study. His visits were frequent ; and all his time was spent in my
painting -room when I was not particularly engaged. He improved
so rapidly that he delighted and astonished me. He always dined and
spent his evenings with me."
It is evident that Crome was one of those men whose gifts are
entirely concentrated on a single mode of expression. His genius was
graphic, and had no need of literary acquirement and cultivation. In
this he was like Rembrandt and like Gainsborough ; and his art gained
rather than lost by his not having " a refined and cultivated personality."
Yet there is abundant testimony that his manners were winning and
his talk attractive. Homely in appearance, he had native wit and the
charm of simplicity, and a droll and ready tongue.

II. Visits to London — Marriage — First Works
From Beechey's account it would appear that Crome paid not in
frequent visits to London. Probably Sir William, when writing, had
a period of many years in his mind ; but it is reasonable to infer that
his first visits were made while he was still a learner, anxious to gain
all he could from the hints and practice of the older painter.
At Beechey's studio he would learn the general method of painters in
vogue, and could add the precepts of the schools to what Mr. Harvey
had already taught him. The method of painting which we find in
Crome's pictures is substantially the same that we find in Hogarth ; a
method founded on the general tradition of the Dutchmen. Hogarth's
pictures are especially good examples of this method, because his touch
is so decisive and direct, abhorring tentative experiment. His practice
was to cover his canvas with a tone of warm gray, choosing the precise
character of the tone with the subject and the lighting of the particular
picture always in view ; and on this he painted lightly and firmly,
making use of the ground for shadows, and often leaving it in such
places entirely untouched. The unfinished Shrimp Girl in the National
Gallery shows this method perfectly.
If we turn now to Mousehold Heath or The Windmill we find the

JOHN CROME

13

same process employed. In the foreground the warm under-painting is
largely utilised ; and in the sky of Mousehold Heath the beautiful trans
parency of the clouds is got by the under-painting showing through the cool.
and pearly colour laid above it. Of course, it is not to be assumed that
the precise method is the same in every picture ; but the general principle
is that described. To paint thus requires absolute decision. Fumbling
is ruinous. And Crome's gift was such as to develop the advantages
of this method to the full. He seems rarely to have made experiments.

Portrait off. Crome.
From a Drawing by J. S. Cotman, British Museum.

In London the young Norwich artist had more opportunities for
seeing the art of his contemporaries than in his native town, although
there were portraits there by Gainsborough, Hoppner, and Opie in St.
Andrew's Hall ; and Norfolk was richer than most counties in fine
collections of pictures.
In the landscape painting of this time there was little that was
original or stimulating. Wilson had died in 1782, Gainsborough in
1788. The landscapes of De Loutherbourg are typical of the period.
Nor was any bright star yet above the horizon. Barker of Bath, born

14 JOHN CROME
a year after Crome, was just beginning his successful career ; he first
exhibited in 1791. But the most fashionable painters of the day were
painters of portrait or allegory.
Many of these artists had been, like Crome, born and bred in distant
country towns or villages. But sooner or later they were drawn to
London ; the attraction was irresistible. Even Gainsborough, whose
heart was in the lanes of Suffolk, had made London his home at last.
But Crome, in whose nature there was a curious stubbornness, an in
dependence which, without asserting itself in violence or rebellion, took
its own way and followed no false ambition, seems never to have
contemplated leaving his beloved country. He was poor, but he was
able to live, and by continuing to paint signs was able to indulge in
landscapes. His days were laborious, but he was not in actual want.
Too much has been made of Crome's poverty ; and too much import
ance attached to the stories told by Dawson Turner of the strange shifts
to which he was put for brushes and canvas.
Crome, doubtless, refused no job that brought him help ; he
had no nice scruples about " debasing his Art," and took gladly what
came, even after he had taken to teaching and was on the way to
prosperity. This is proved by a bill, settled May 27, 1803, for painting a sign,
and for gilding and lettering, for which Crome charged £2 : 14s. It is
improbable that the work was done much before the day on which it
was settled.
But there is no evidence that Crome was ever in severe poverty ; and
in 1792, at twenty-three, he was able to marry. His wife was a girl
named Phoebe Berney — Pheby Bearney, it is spelt in the register — and
the wedding took place at St. Mary's Coslany, on the 2nd October.
There were reasons for hastening it. The first child, a daughter, was
born on the 30th of the same month.
Ladbrooke married a sister, Mary Berney, in October of the year
following. Crome's days were now to become more strenuous than before. The
first child was followed by many others ; among them, John Berney,
distinguished afterwards as a painter, who was born in 1794.
In 1793 Crome was ill in the Norwich Hospital, once in the spring,

JOHN CROME

15

and again in the autumn. Beyond this there is nothing to record
except the births of successive children, till we reach the end of the
century. With a young family rising fast around him, Crome had a hard
struggle. But he had will and courage, and while supporting himself
and his children, was gradually acquiring mastery in painting. He was

Dawn. By J. Crome. Collection off. J. Colman, Esq.
From the reproduction published by the Autotype Company.
also beginning to give lessons. Some of the pictures of these first years
were " compositions in the style of Richard Wilson " ; for two pictures,
so described, painted in 1796 and 1798, were in the exhibition of Crome's
works held after his death in 1821. Where are these pictures now?
Probably most pass under Wilson's name. At any rate, they are not
often met with. There is, however, at the British Museum a drawing
by Crome which must date from this or a still earlier period. It is an

1 6 JOHN CROME
Italian scene, with a low waterfall in the middle distance, mountains
beyond, and figures under trees in the foreground. It is in black chalk
on gray paper, and so much in Wilson's manner that it must often be
attributed, by those who see it, to Wilson himself. But the drawing was
presented by Mr. Carpenter, once Keeper of the Prints and Drawings ;
and not only was he a connoisseur of wide knowledge, but he was
acquainted with George Vincent, Crome's pupil, and indeed gave Vincent
the commission for his masterpiece, Greenwich Hospital. It is certain,
therefore, that there were reasons for attributing the drawing to Crome ; it
may be that it came from Crome himself. And with all its general
likeness to Wilson, the drawing shows the trace of a robuster handling,
of a hand not quite at home in the artificiality of the scene. We shall
be safe, I think, in assuming this to be a very early drawing of Crome's
after Wilson.
It seems clear, in any case, that Richard Wilson was the master and
model of Crome's youth. We shall see, later on, how this influence
persisted to his maturity.

III. Crome begins Teaching — The Norwich Society founded
The Norwich Directory for 1801 gives the address of 17 Gildengate
Street as that of " John Crome, drawing master."
This is not, however, the first evidence we have that Crome had
begun to make teaching a profession. Among the families in the neigh
bourhood of Norwich to which Mr. Harvey had introduced Crome, was
that of the Gurneys of Earlham. It was Harvey, no doubt, who
suggested to Crome that he should better his position by teaching, and
John Gurney was apparently the first to engage his services. In the
diary of Richenda Gurney ! there occurs the following entry : —
"¦Jan. 17, 1798. — I had a good drawing morning, but in the course
of it gave way to passion with both Crome and Betsy — Crome because he
1 This and the following extracts arc from Th Gurnets of Earlham, by Augustus
J. C. Hare.

• JOHN CROME 17
would attend to Betsy and not to me, and Betsy because she was so
provoking." In the summer of 1 802 John Gurney took his six unmarried daughters,
his son Samuel, and a friend, Fowell Buxton, on a tour to the Lakes, and
Crome accompanied them. The party went by way of Matlock ; and
there Crome made sketches from which he afterwards painted pictures.
From Ambleside Hannah Gurney wrote to Elizabeth Fry : —
"Ambleside, 1802. — To-day we could not get out till rather late on
account of the weather, which none of us minded, as we were all busily
employed in drawing, Kitty reading to us. Chenda, Cilia, and Mr. Crome
were comfortably seated in a romantic little summer-house, painting a
beautiful waterfall."
Towards the end of August, Crome left for home ; the Gurneys
returning later in a leisurely tour. He made himself a pleasant com
panion. " We were very sorry to part with Mr. Crome," writes Rachel
Gurney in her diary at Patterdale, under the date of August 28.
This pleasant excursion was the first of several, which enabled Crome
to see a good deal of England. Before 1805 he was on the Wye, where
he painted Goodrich Castle, and Chepstow, and Tintern Abbey. And
before 1806 he was at Weymouth.
In the summer of 1 806 he was again with the Gurneys at Ambleside.
But before this, in 1803, an important event took place. The Norwich
Society of Artists was founded.
Crome by this time had become something of a personage in the city,
and with Ladbrooke formed the centre of a little knot of artists. As the
friend of Beechey and of Opie, whose acquaintance he had made in 1798,
he was to some extent in touch with what was going on in London,
but had never exhibited a picture there. Lovers of art seemed to be
plentiful at Norwich, and Crome and his friends set to work to make the
city an independent centre. Thus was founded the first provincial
school which had sprung up in England, and, until recent years, the only
one. The Society had a very magnificent title. It called itself " The
Norwich Society for the purpose of an inquiry into the rise, progress,
and present state of Painting, Architecture, and Sculpture, with a view to
point out the best methods of study, and to attain to greater perfection
in these arts." Members were elected by ballot, and had to subscribe

1 8 JOHN CROME
toward the general fund. The Society met once a fortnight at seven in
the evening, and studied prints and drawings together for an hour and
a half. After this there was a discussion on a paper read by one of the
members, who took it in turns to provide a supper of bread and cheese.
The first meeting was held in February 1803 "in a dingy building in
a dingy locality called the Hole in the Wall in St. Andrew's, Norwich." 1
W. C. Leeds was the first president ; Crome did not hold that office till
1808. After two years the Society, not satisfied with academic discussion, or
perhaps having exhausted all its theories, decided to display the fruits of
practice in an exhibition. This was held in the large room of Sir
Benjamin Wrench's Court, a quadrangle afterwards destroyed in 1828,
to make room for the present Corn Hall.
To this first exhibition, consisting of 223 works, Crome contributed
over twenty pictures and drawings. Carrow Abbey, which is reproduced
at p. 9, was one of these ; it is now the property of Mr. Colman, of
Carrow, near Norwich. It is a picture of large size, and very important
as showing what Crome's style at this early period was. Here, as in his
later maturity, he seizes the essential forms, he eschews accident and
triviality. All that remains of the ancient abbey — the great gable end
— rises against the sky. In the broken ground before it is a hollow filled
with water, and two figures are beside the pool. The severe ascending
lines of the building, the disposition of the clouds, and the upright form
of the composition, are all made to conspire towards the dignity of the
whole. The painter has seized on everything in the colour as in the lines.
of his subject which deepens the sense of venerableness and antiquity sur
viving in majestic solitude.
Another picture exhibited in this year was called Scene in Cumber
land. Can this be the so-called Slate-Quarries of the National Gallery?
It, is possible. At any rate this latter picture must be referred to the
same period. There is, I believe, only internal evidence surviving for its.
authorship ; and good judges have expressed a doubt about it. But it
seems impossible to suppose that it was not painted by Crome. The
way in which the water in the hollows is painted, to take a characteristic
detail, is exactly like the painting of the pool in Carrow Abbey ; and not
1 Mr. Cosmo Monkhousc in the Dictionary of National Biegraphy.

JOHN CROME 19
less so, the painting of the broken ground. Moreover, the composition
and the sentiment of the picture are precisely what one would expect1 from
a man of Crome's individual temper working under the influence of

The Windmill. By J. Crome. National Gallery.
From the reproduction published by the Autotype Company.
Wilson. It is not quite the real Crome yet, it is not the mature and
perfectly developed Crome, but it is the work of a master. Some eyes
will find in it a certain baldness ; but we may say of it what Matthew

20 JOHN CROME
Arnold said of some of Wordsworth's poetry : " It is bald, as the
mountain-tops are bald, with a baldness that is full of grandeur."
The same manner of painting, and just the same coarse canvas, appear
in a picture painted probably in this year, 1805, and exhibited in 1806.
Like Carrow Abbey, it is in Mr. Colman's collection. This is the Cow
Tower on the Swannery Meadow, an old tower on the Yare, still standing.
The composition will be seen from the reproduction (p. 11); but
otherwise an inadequate impression of the painting is conveyed. The
colouring is a sober harmony, and in the painting of the old, discoloured
bricks of the tower itself there is delightful work. But the whole im
pression is decidedly an impression of austerity. Here, even more than
in Carrow Abbey, we get the essential Crome of this earlier period. It
is absolutely original. In certain passages, especially the sandy road and
slope at the right, something akin to the manner of Velazquez seems
suggested. But one can think of no one else as inspiring any portion of
it. Again we notice the same lightness of handling, the same extra
ordinary combination of breadth and precision, which throughout dis
tinguishes Crome's work, and from which one derives a pleasure similar
to that given by pregnant and happy epithets in a writer. All is sane,
large, simple.
Crome had already found himself. Yet he still continued at times to
exercise his brush in the manner of his favourites, Gainsborough and
Wilson. Probably such exercises were more profitable than pictures like
the Cow Tower, which one could never imagine to be popular.
A Composition in the style of Wilson was painted in 1809 ; and a
Temple of Venus, after a sketch by Wilson, was exhibited in 1 8 1 1 . But
just now Crome seems to have had Gainsborough chiefly in his thoughts.
With the Cow Tower in 1806 was exhibited A sketch in Gainsborough's
manner. And Gainsborough's influence is perceptible in a large picture,
of 1 807 presumably, which was one of Crome's early contributions to the
Royal Academy exhibitions in 1808. He had first appeared at Somerset
House two years before, when his name appears, once as " Crome " and
again as " Croom," with two Landscapes from Nature. He exhibited
also in 1807, 1809, 181 1, 1 8 12, 18 16, and 181 8 ; but the Blacksmith's
Shop of 1 808 was probably the most important of his contributions to
the Royal Academy.

JOHN CROME 21
It is interesting to note that John Berney Crome appears with his
father in the, Academy catalogue of 1 8 1 1. This was the son's first
appearance in London, where he was to exhibit much, chiefly at Suffolk
Street and the British Institution, before his death. Born in 1794, he
was only about seventeen at this first appearance in London. He soon
developed into a prolific and skilful painter ; and several of his pictures
have been sold and greatly admired as the work of his father. But he
was extravagant, and grew careless in his later years, producing a great
number of pictures, nearly all of them moonlight subjects. He would
meet any emergency with one of these rapid and facile productions, which,
as may be imagined, are worth little as works of art.1 At the present
time, however, John Berney was a skilful pupil of his father's and ably
seconded him at the exhibitions.
The Blacksmith" s Shop, which was exhibited at Messrs. Agnew's last
year, is a large and important picture, containing seven figures ; but it is
not a very characteristic or significant work. It is the outside of the
shop (not the inside, as some writers have assumed from the title), a
gabled building with thatched roof, the timbers warped with age and the
lines of its structure uneven. A man is sharpening a tool at a grindstone
in the foreground, across which is spread a triangle of shadow, in the old
conventional way ; other figures are at the door and within. Something
too abruptly angular and intractable in the main lines of the composition
mars the general effect ; but the quality of the actual painting is delightful ;
the luminous play about the uneven smoothness of the gable wall, the
bloom upon the rusted thatch, are painted as only Crome could paint such
things. It is in the handling of the trees especially, which thrust their
branches up behind the roof, that one feels a reminiscence of Gains
borough. 1 One of these moonlight scenes is in the Picture Gallery at Brussels.

22 JOHN CROME

IV. Influence of Hobbema — The Sale of 1 8 1 2 — Pupils
So far, we can find no trace whatever of the influence of Hobbema,
on whom it has often been presumed that Crome's art was founded.
Nor is there a trace, so far, of any other Dutchman's influence.
Hobbema was, however, one of Crome's idols during the latter part
of his career. When did he begin to admire him ? There was a Hobbema
at Mr. Harvey's, but it does not appear to have been particularly studied
by Crome in his youth. But Hobbema and Ruysdael must assuredly
have been in his mind when doing the etchings, which date from 1812
and 1 8 13. It is said that while riding about Norfolk on his daily visits
to pupils, Crome used often to pass the fine oaks in Kimberley Park. It
must have been also on these visits that he became acquainted with
Hobbema in collectors' houses. It seems not unreasonable to conjecture
that, being fascinated with the oak-trees as a subject for painting, and
seeing how finely Hobbema had painted such subjects, he was seized with
a desire to emulate the Dutch master. If so, it was with no ignoble
envy ; for Hobbema was always " his dear Hobbema," whose name was
to be upon his dying lips. But it is evident that, for the Norfolk gentry
and amateurs, Crome was not looked upon as much more than the
Norwich drawing -master. Even Dawson Turner, who bought his
pictures and admired them, thought he was honouring Crome by record
ing that one of his pictures had been mistaken for a Van der Neer. So
it was but natural that Crome's ambition should be touched and his pride
stirred. He, too, would show that his oaks were worthy of being
treasured with those of Hobbema, and his moonrises with those of Van
der Neer.
The oaks in Kimberley Park furnished Crome with a large picture,
once in the Fuller-Maitland collection at Stansted, now in Mr. Orrock's
possession. The oaks are noble trees, painted with rather less definition
than in later years ; and everything in the composition is made use of, to
enhance the erectness and massive strength of the sturdy trunks.
Crome was now prospering well. His teaching brought him a fair
income, and he was able to live in comfort and to indulge his whims.
He had an inconvenient habit of attending auction rooms, and buying

JOHN CROME 23
odd lots that took his fancy. Sometimes, as when a cartload of head
stones which he had bought appeared at his house, there was some
difficulty in finding room for his purchases, and the family protested.
It seems that these accumulations became embarrassing, and Crome deter
mined on a sale. The sale was advertised in the Norfolk Chronicle to
take place in Mr. Noverre's Room at Yarmouth, Wednesday, September
23, and two following days, 18 12. But what is remarkable is, that
neither in the advertisement nor on the catalogue is any auctioneer's
name mentioned. The inference is, that Crome played auctioneer
himself. If this is so, we may find a trace of the fact in a story told by Allan
Cunningham,1 who says that Dawson Turner suggested to Crome to have
a sale of his pictures, and the auctioneer professing himself unable to
describe them, Crome undertook the office himself. This unlikely tale
is probably founded on a hearsay account of the sale of 1812. It was
not, however, a sale of Crome's works : there is no picture of his in
the catalogue.
This catalogue of eighteen pages, well printed on fine paper, affords
abundant evidence that Crome was a man of some means, and had taste
and knowledge of art. " Prints, Etchings, and Original Drawings . . .
together with curious books of prints " made up the contents of the
" splendid collection."
It is interesting to note what masters figured in Crome's portfolios.
Among the drawings Raphael, Rembrandt, Murillo, Poussin, Gains
borough, Rowlandson, Lucas van Leyden, Goltzius, de Vlieger, van
Goyen, Salvator Rosa, and Bassano are said to be represented ; among
the etchings Rembrandt, Waterloo, and Canaletti ; among the painters,
after whom Crome had engravings, were Titian, Giorgione, Rubens,
Raphael, Andrea del Sarto, Claude, Reynolds, Morland, Gainsborough,
Stothard, Hogarth, Teniers, Eeckhout, and Vernet.
With the pictures of many of these masters Crome had probably
become acquainted in the various collections existing in Norfolk, at
places where he visited as a teacher.
It was in the year before the sale, in 181 1, that his most celebrated
pupil, James Stark, was articled to him for three years. Stark was then
1 The Cabinet Gallery of Pictures, 1833.

24 JOHN CROME
seventeen. When the three years were up he went to London and
entered the Academy schools.
A man of finer gift, George Vincent, who was two years younger
than Stark, became Crome's pupil about the same time. He exhibited
some early efforts at the Norwich exhibition in 1811 and 18 12, some of
which were described as " after Crome."
These and other pupils were affectionately attached to their master,
and he never ceased to take the liveliest interest in their work. A letter
of his to Stark in 18 16 shows how cordial a friend he was, and how
unpretending in his counsels ; it is as if he were writing to a companion
of equal age and gift : he writes as a man who is still learning, still
aspiring.

V. Etchings — Water-colours
Crome was one of the earliest men to revive original etching in
England. The art which had flourished so abundantly in the seven
teenth century, made illustrious by Callot, Rembrandt, and Claude, had
degenerated in the eighteenth into a mere fashion of reproducing and
multiplying designs.
Turner's Liber Studiorum was published before any of Crome's
etchings were made ; but wonderful as are the preliminary etchings of
the Liber in their powerful economy of means and seizure of essentials,
they were not intended to be looked upon as complete in themselves,
without the superadded mezzotint, nor are they true etcher's work.
On the other hand, Crome preceded Wilkie and Geddes.
The first date on any of Crome's etchings is 1809. It is a soft-
ground etching, of the kind so fashionable at one time for reproducing,
almost in facsimile, sketches in soft black pencil, till lithography drove
the more uncertain and laborious method out of the field. Crome's soft-
ground etchings, of which the illustration is a fair example, are more
successful than the ordinary hard-ground etchings, which are, almost
without exception, ill-bitten and ill-printed. They are lighter too in
touch, more successful in rendering atmosphere, and show, some of them,
a sense of wind and freshness not generally associated with Crome.

JOHN CROME

25

Except two of churches, one of a dog, and another of cattle, these are
all landscapes ; one, a road passing through a farm, with trees and
scattered buildings ; another a pool with dark straight firs contrasted with
the knotted foliage of the oak ; another fallen trees across a hollow way.
The hard-ground etchings seem to betray a different aim. They are,

Study of a Tree. Soft-ground etching by J. Crome.
for the most part, minute and intricate studies of the growth and foliage
of trees, chiefly oaks. Many are dated ; but there is no date on any,
other than 1812 or 1813. One may conjecture that they were done
after the soft-ground etchings ; arid from a story of Dawson Turner's it
seems that Crome had Ruysdael's etchings — which are all of the same
kind of subject— in his mind as models. As far as the anatomy of trees

26 JOHN CROME
is concerned, the thrust and curve of trunk and stubborn branch, Crome's
etchings are extraordinary in their grasp. But his style seems almost to
have deserted him ; and there is scarcely an attempt to counterfeit the
softness of atmosphere.
The little piece we have chosen as an example is better bitten than
most of Crome's plates. Otherwise it has not the delicate work of the
small At Hingham, a scene on the river with trees and sheds and boats,
like Mr. Barwell's beautiful study (p. 31). This, had the acid
succeeded, would have been a charming thing. Another plate that is
admirable in its Dutch way, is the Bawburgh, with its pool and willow.
But the most Crome-like of the etchings and the finest, is the Mousehold
Heath, the magnificent sky of which, with its great rolling clouds, was to

At Scoulton. From the etching by J. Crome.
be destroyed by Dawson Turner and Berney Crome, quite unaccountably,
for the sake of a miserable phantasm of its former self, defaced with ruled
lines and almost obliterated.
Crome himself was not satisfied with his etchings and would not
publish them, although, according to Dawson Turner, he issued a pro
spectus in 1 8 1 2 and got a number of subscribers. Nor does he seem to
have done any more plates after 18 13.
A set of thirty-one etchings was published at Norwich in 1834.
The volume was called Norfolk Picturesque Scenery. Four years later
seventeen of these plates were issued with a memoir by Dawson Turner,
and a portrait, engraved, after a picture by Murphy, under the title of
Etchings in Norfolk. There have been two issues since, but these later
impressions are worth little. It is unfair to judge Crome by his etching,

JOHN CROME 27
which was with him a quite secondary pursuit, like his water-colours.
These, which may be conveniently mentioned here, are not often met with,
though there have been a good many imitations of them. Mr. Reeve
has one, a woody heath, of great delicacy and beauty. A large and rather
damaged sketch of a hollow road with a cart, and oaks upon a bank
beside it, is in the British Museum Print Room. It is broadly washed
with a few colours in a large and sober style. There are one or two
others at -South Kensington ; two in Sir Charles Robinson's collection,
lately at the Guildhall, are Hobbema-like sepia studies of wood and
common. Mr. J. L. Roget has a very spirited and delightful little
sketch of a crowd of ships at sea. Of finer excellence, perhaps, than any
of these is the delicate and finished Yarmouth Beach, belonging to Sir
Reginald Palgrave, a beautiful drawing full of air and sun, with many
figures charmingly grouped. But the water-colours commonly seen are
drawing copies of little interest or importance.

VI. Visit to France
While we have been following the obscure career of a painter in a
corner of England, Europe has been convulsed with war and change.
In 1814 Napoleon, born within a few months of Crome, was at last
dethroned and a prisoner in Elba. The world breathed freely again ; in
England especially there was extravagant rejoicing ; and from all parts
of Europe people flocked to Paris. Grimaldi was singing every night
in the pantomime his famous song —
London now is out of town ;
Who in England tarries ?
Who can bear to linger there
When all the world's in Paris ?
Artists especially were thronging thither, for in the Louvre was
gathered together that incomparable collection of masterpieces, the
richest spoils of foreign galleries, which Napoleon had brought home
from his victorious campaigns.
Like hundreds of other Englishmen, Crome determined not to
neglect this marvellous opportunity ; and in the early autumn, with two

28 JOHN CROME
Norwich friends, Mr. Coppin and Mr. Freeman, he crossed the Channel
and landed at Calais.
Stories are told of the difficulty the three found in expressing their
wants ; how Crome drew sketches of what he needed, and having drawn
a boiled egg, received a salt-cellar ; how their British stomachs mutinied
at French dishes, and how they recoiled in dismay from the apparition
of a French plum-pudding, made from a recipe which one of them had
thoughtfully brought with him.
In a letter from Paris, dated October 10, which has been preserved,1
Crome shows a pleasant British pride.
Dear Wife (he writes) — After one of the most pleasant journeys of one
hundred and seventy miles over one of the most fertile countreys I ever saw we
arrived in the capital of France. You may imagine how everything struck us with
surprise ; people of all nations going to and fro — Turks, Jews, etc. I shall not
enter into ye particulars in this my letter, but suffice it to say we are all in good
health, and in good lodgings, — that in Paris is one great difficulty. We have been
at St. Cloud and Versailes ; I cannot describe it on letter. We have seen three
palaces the most magnificent in [thej world. I shall not trouble you with a long
letter this time as the post goes out in an hour [so] that time will not allow me was
I so disposed. This morning I am going to see the object of my journey, that is
the Thuilleries. I am told here I shall find many English artists. Glover has
been painting. I believe he has not been copying, but looking, and painting one
of his own compositions.2 Pray let me know how you are going on, giving best
respects to all friends. I believe the English may boast of having the start of
these foreigners, but a happier race of people there cannot be. I shall make this
journey pay. I shall be very careful how I lay out mv money. I have seen some
shops. They ask treble what they will take, so you may suppose what a set thev
are. I shall see David to-morrow, and the rest of the artists when I can find time.
I write this before I know what I am going about at vc Thuilleries as the post
compels me. — I am, etc., yours till death, John Crome.
One wishes that the post could have waited ; we might then have
known something of Crome's impressions of the pictures. The friends
1 It was quoted in full in the Eastern Daily Press, January 13, 1885.
a This picture of Glover's was a composition in which he tried to combine the
excellences of all great masters, wandering like a bee from picture to picture and sucking
something from each. The result, which he christened The Bay of Naples, 5.0 pleased
Louis XVIII. that he ordered a medal to be struck in its honour. This was prevented
by the return of Napoleon, who, however, also admired the picture and sent it with a
medal to England, whither Glover had already fled.

JOHN CROME 2Q
returned by way of Belgium, where Crome made the sketch for a
picture of the Ostend river at Bruges.

VII. Pictures of 1 8 1 4- 1 8 1 6
From this period till his death is the most fruitful part of Crome's
career. The record of these years, 18 14-21, is little more than the
enumeration of works painted. Many of these cannot now be identified ;
but we know the dates of certain important pictures, and these are
enough material for forming a tolerably clear conception of Crome's
progress. While seeing the pictures in Paris, he had not been idle with his
own pencil. On returning to Norwich, he painted, in 1815, a picture
from a sketch he had made of the Boulevard des Italiens. The picture
is now at Keswick Hall, near Norwich, with its companion, the Fish-
market at Boulogne, which was not painted till 1820, five years later.
It will be convenient, however, to speak of the two together ; for the
two stand by themselves in Crome's work, different from anything else
in it. They show the sensitiveness of the artist's style. Just as he
would paint foliage in one way, when he wanted to express one aspect
of its charm, its softness and cool transparency say, and in quite a
different way when the stir of branches or the delicate articulation of
leaves preoccupied him ; so now he expressed the sensation of a different
atmosphere in a characteristic way. One feels this especially in the
boulevard picture. A sharpness and brightness of air, such as an
English traveller is pleasantly aware of on a first arrival in Paris, the
very freshness of sensation brought every moment by novel sight and
sound, with the briskness of the streets, the trees rustling, the cool blue
of the October sky, and little clouds hastening across it, all this is
translated on to the vivid canvas. As a composition, the picture is
not quite fortunate ; but the whole work is full of originality ; the
choice of subject was itself original. And there is much of historical
interest too, in this representation of a boulevard of old Paris, just
at this moment, when all the nations of Europe were gathered in
the city.

30 JOHN CROME
The Boulogne is equally notable with the Boulevard des Italiens for
the number of figures, excellently put in, which it contains. When
Crome could paint figures so well as this, it seems strange that he
should have allowed other hands to insert them in some of his pictures.
No one can doubt that in these two cases figures and landscape were
painted by the same hand ; the figures grow in their places, and one
could not say where the landscape begins and ends. In both of these
pictures Crome allowed himself more variety and gaiety of colour
than elsewhere ; in the groups of fisher-folk at Boulogne there is light
yellow, and pink and blue and red, as well as darker browns, in the
varied dresses of the men and women. But the beauty of the Boulogne
is chiefly the lovely, warm, afternoon light filling the sky and the open
space of the sands with transparency, through which the line of cliff,
broken by mast and sail, shows a hundred pearly shades of colour. On
the land side of the cliff a hollow, with farm buildings above, catches
and absorbs the peaceful glow.
As we have noted, this picture was not actually painted till 1820.
Going back to 1815, we can identify another picture of that year, the
Grove Scene near Marlingford, engraved in the Magazine of Art for
1882 (p. 225). It is now in the collection of Mr. Huth.
A work of somewhat similar subject, the Lane Scene at Catton, in
the possession of Mrs. Gunn, belongs in all probability to the following
year. This is a beautiful and admirable example of a certain type of
Crome, characteristic of this mature period and of a sober strength and
masterly style.
Of the same period, about 18 16, or later, is the picture by which
Crome is best known, the great Mousehold Heath of the National
Gallery. It was done, not as a commission, but for the painter's own
pleasure " for air and space " ; and it remained in his studio till
after his death, when it was bought by Joseph Stannard for £1 unframed.
It had been painted on two pieces of canvas, so ill-joined, that they soon
came apart— a fact from which arose a well-known story of its having
been cut in two by a dealer to fetch more money. After a time the
canvas was mended ; and the picture passed into the hands of William
Yetts, who exhibited it at the International Exhibition of 1862, whence it
was bought for the nation for ^400.

On the Tare at Thorpe. By J. Crome. Collection of H. G. Barwell, Esq.
From the reproduction published by the Autotype Company.

JOHN CROME 33
The cattle in the picture were inserted after Crome's death. Crome
painted nothing more noble than Mousehold Heath. It is daring in
its simplicity. But how subtly expressed is the dewy atmosphere
rounding off the undulations of the heath ; how luminous the clouds !
Constable's clouds in the pictures on the next wall seem heavy and
material beside them. These are of nothing but vapour, air -born,
intangible, steeped in the soft light, and solemnising with their peaceful
presence the wide aerial evening.
Less wonderful, but of exceeding charm, is the little Mousehold
Heath at South Kensington. It may well be identical with the picture
called Boy keeping Sheep; Morning, painted in 1815. The composition
here has sweeter lines than is usual with Crome ; it is painted with
absolute directness ; and there is a sense in it of refreshing stillness
and soft early light, which makes it haunt the mind.
The even course of Norwich art was disturbed for a time in 18 16.
Ladbrooke headed a secession from the original society ; and for three
years, 18 16-18, a rival exhibition was held in rooms in the Shakespeare
Tavern on Theatre Plain. The dispute arose over the modification
of the rules of the society. Ladbrooke was joined by Stannard and
by Thirtle, Cotman's brother-in-law ; but the seceders could not
compete with Crome and his following ; the movement languished
and the exhibitions died.
A fine example of Ladbrooke's painting has lately been acquired
for the National Gallery — a view of Oxford. The influence of Crome
is seen in the foreground, where Ladbrooke has inserted teazles, but
these are not as Crome would have painted them. There are many
artificialities in the composition, but it is, nevertheless, a beautiful
picture.

VIII. Last Pictures
The year 1 8 1 8 brings us to the probable date of one of the greatest
of Crome's creations, The Poringland Oak. But let us first notice
another picture, known to date from this year, the Ostend River near
Bruges. The sketch for this had been made in 1 8 1 4, as we saw. The

34 JOHN CROME
picture may be taken as the type of Crome's paintings of moonlight, in
which he seems to have set out to surpass Aart van der Neer, as in his
forest scenes Hobbema and Ruysdael. The moon rises bright and
immense from the horizon, touching with delicate illumination the low
banks of the river, the boats and buildings, while on the farther shore
a grove of great trees fills half the picture with contrasted darkness ; not
a black gloom, but a subtle darkness of many shades and soft recesses.
A Scene at Poringland, painted in 1818, occurs in the catalogue of
the Crome exhibition of 182 1. Is this the picture now in Mr. Steward's
possession? Probably it is. Mr. Steward's picture was exhibited at
the British Institution in 1824, and there bore the title, Study from
Nature: Poringland, Norfolk, which brings us nearer to the former title.
But we have other means of arriving at a date. In the pool in the
foreground of The Poringland Oak are four figures of boys bathing.
Three of the boys are Crome's sons, and the figures were painted in by
Michael Sharp. Now Michael Sharp Crome, the youngest of the boys
here represented, was born in 18 13, when Michael Sharp, after whom he
was named, was staying in Crome's house ; and looking at the picture
one would say that the youngest boy was about four or five years old.
Hence we should arrive at the same date as that of the picture exhibited
in 1 82 1, and may reasonably conclude that The Poringland Oak is that
picture, and was therefore painted in this precise year 1818. Assuredly,
this is one of Crome's masterpieces. The oak, to begin with, though
young, is a tree of nobler growth than the Dutchmen ever painted ; and
it is portrayed with a keen sense of its majestic beauty. And behind it,
coming through its branches and enkindling clear reflections from leaf
and bark, and mirrored in the solemn pool beneath, how beautiful a
light ! How richly the light clouds above catch on their soft edges the
glory that makes luminous the serene evening sky ! To have seized the
light so intimately, and at the same time to have painted the tree so
firmly, with such precise apprehension of its growth, yet with so broad a
style, and with no confusion of the delicate intercepted lights, is a
triumph of the rarest kind. Lesser men would have been content to
grapple with one problem only, and would perhaps have had less success
in that than Crome in both.
With The Poringland Oak is usually associated another magnificent

Yarmouth Beach. By J. Crome. Collection of J. J. Colman, Esq.
From the reproduction published by the Autotype Company.

JOHN CROME 37
portrait of a tree, The Willow, till lately belonging to Mr. Holmes, and
now in America.
It has been described as looking " as if commenced and finished in a
moment of inspiration," the workmanship " light and delicate " as in a
Gainsborough. Those who have seen it say it is almost Crome's
masterpiece. In the absence of this famous picture, we may turn to Mr.
Barwell's On the Tare at Thorpe, to see how beautifully Crome
could express the willow's slender waving foliage. The picture is a
sketch, painted with the utmost lightness but also with extraordinary
firmness. Among the pictures of 1819 the Tarmouth Beach belonging to
Mr. Colman may conjecturally be numbered : certainly a Tarmouth
Beach was painted in this year. The reproduction (p. 35) will give a
fair idea of this fine and typical but not especially notable picture.
Of the Boulogne of 1820 I have already spoken ; but there is another
picture of this year to be noted, the surprising Grove Scene, also in
Mr. Colman's collection. Surprising, because here at last we come upon
a picture which recalls Hobbema throughout. It is said that Crome
painted it to please his wife. One can certainly believe that he painted
it to please some one, not himself. It is full of intricate, precise detail ;
not in the least dry or tedious, but careful as Hobbema is careful, and
with just that degree of breadth that Hobbema has. Or we might say
with equal truth that it resembles a fine Stark ; for Stark, who was
Crome's pupil, is far more faithful to Hobbema than Crome was. The
picture is a vagary, and lies outside the line of Crome's individual
development. But it is interesting, and, from the lateness of its date,
extremely remarkable.

IX. Crome as a Teacher — Death
The last five years had been a busy time with Crome, for we must
remember that, while producing these pictures, he was still practising as
a teacher. He kept two horses and drove round the country to all the
chief houses of the neighbourhood to give his lessons. In the evening

38 JOHN CROME
he would retire to his favourite tavern, where he had his arm-chair and
presided in a company of his friends and gossips. Naturally, therefore,
his time for painting was limited. He worked on Sundays and in his
holidays. The number of pictures attributed to him, which is very
great, must be some multiple of the number of those which he actually
painted. In the year of his death an exhibition of all his finest works
was held at Norwich. At that time few, if any, had gone out of Norfolk.
But the number exhibited was little over a hundred.
Of Crome as a teacher we get an interesting glimpse in the life of
one of his pupils, Rajah Brooke of Sarawak.
" In later life," says Dr. Jessopp,1 " Brooke seems to have been a fair
draughtsman. ' Old Crome ' was the drawing-master during his time at
Norwich, and a great favourite with the boys. As a teacher he was,
according to the tradition of the school, simply useless, and his pupils
took a delight in decoying the old gentleman into ' finishing ' their
drawings for them, which usually meant beginning a sketch and ending it
at a sitting, for Crome, when once he took a pencil or brush into his hand,
never could be induced to drop it, and he would work away with extra
ordinary rapidity, quite forgetting how time was passing. The Rev.
Jonathan Matchett, now resident in Norwich, still possesses one of these
* school exercises.' It is a small landscape in oils, which Crome actually
painted during his lesson at the school, with the boys looking on at him,
admiring his artistic skill." This identical sketch, an old cottage, is
now in Mr. Reeve's collection.
Another characteristic anecdote is recounted in Wodderspoon 's
memoir. A brother painter met Crome " in a remote spot of healthy
verdure, with a troop of young persons." He expressed surprise at seeing
him, as he thought he had left him in Norwich, engaged with his school.
" I am in my school," replied Crome, " and teaching my scholars from
the only true examples. Do you think," pointing to a lovely distance,
" you or I can do better than that ? "
A similar story is told by John Burnet, Wilkie's friend and engraver.
He speaks of Crome as his " old and esteemed friend."
There were many others to whom Crome was an esteemed friend.
1 Quoted in 'The Raja of Sarawak, by Gertrude L. Jacob. Macmillan and Co.,
1876.

Grove Scene. By J. Crome. Collection of J. J. Colman, Esq.
From the reproduction published by the Autotype Company.

JOHN CROME 41
Among these must be mentioned Samuel Paget, father of Sir James
Paget, at whose house at Yarmouth Crome was always welcomed, and
whose children he would amuse with fantastic sketches. Yarmouth was
also the home of Dawson Turner, the antiquary, who had eleven pictures
by Crome in his collection, some of which were lithographed for his
privately printed book, Outlines in Lithography.
Dawson Turner, who is still better known through his friendship and
collaboration with Cotman, had been acquainted with Crome for some
years. Some of the etchings had been made in his house. He had not
known Crome during his youth and early struggles, and consequently
what he says of that time in his memoir is not very accurate. But on
this later period his authority may be trusted. On one of his Cromes he
makes this note : " He painted it for me but a year or two before his
death, immediately on his return from his midsummer journey to London,1
with his whole soul full of admiration at the effects of light and shade,
and brilliant colour, and poetical feeling, and grandeur of conception, dis
played in Turner's landscapes in the Exhibition. His object in this
small piece was to embody upon the canvas a portion of what was im
pressed upon his mind." This admiration for Turner shows how alive
Crome was to new influences. What were the pictures which had so
impressed him ? Probably the Entrance of the Meuse and Richmond
Hill, exhibited in 1 8 1 9, and now in the National Gallery, or perhaps the
Rome from the Vatican of 1820. This fresh stimulus .might have had
interesting results, but it was destined that Crome should paint no more.
In the midst of this full and happy existence, in the height of his maturity,
the end came quite suddenly. Crome had been working hard, this
spring of 1821, for three days. He had stretched a canvas six feet long
for a picture of Wroxham Water Frolic, which he said was to be his
masterpiece, but it was never finished. The next day he was seized with
inflammation. On April 2 1 he was dying.
" My father's disorder has so much gained ground," wrote Fred
Crome on that day to Dawson Turner, " that there is not the least hope
of him ; indeed, I think he is now breathing his last. At the same time,
he is not aware of his situation ; we, of course, are obliged to appear the
reverse of our feelings. ... It is killing to me. He is seldom easy
1 It is noticeable that an annual journey seems to be implied.

42 JOHN CROME
unless I am by his side, holding his hand, or supporting his head. All
are in tears about me." On the 22nd Crome was dead.
The affection which those about him felt for him, visible enough in
his son's letter, was equally manifest at his funeral. Carriages thronged
the street. " Mr. Sharp and Mr. Vincent," says the Norwich Mercury,
" came from town on purpose, and Mr. Stark was also present. An
immense concourse of people bore grateful testimony to the estimation
in which his character was generally held."
In September of the same year there was a five days' sale of the
painter's prints, books, and pictures, but none of his own works were
included. A hundred and eleven of these, however, lent by owners in
Norwich and the neighbourhood, were exhibited in the autumn — an
exhibition which included nearly all his important works.

X. Crome's Place in the History of Art
Dr. Richard Muther, in the one work at present existing which
attempts to deal with modern painting as a whole, says of Crome that
"he lived absolutely apart from the England of his time." "Norwich
was his birthplace and his life-long residence. He did not know the
name of Turner, he knew nothing of Wilson, he had perhaps never heard
Gainsborough's name. His pictures are influenced neither by his con
temporaries nor his English forerunners. . . . Hobbema is his model,
the art of the Netherlands his ideal."
Even a German professor cannot be expected to know everything,
and Dr. Muther's book is an astonishing achievement. When one con
siders the immense scope of its design, and the difficulties of procuring
accurate knowledge, it would be very singular if errors were absent.
Still, while recognising the intelligence of conception displayed in this
history, we may be permitted to deplore that almost all of the statements
quoted from Dr. Muther about Crome are the reverse of true. It is
worth while drawing attention to this, because the book is now a standard
work of reference, and because the view taken of Crome is based on
English writers, and is the prevalent view of him at this day in
England.

v^%8fif

At the Back of the New Mills. By J. Crome. Collection of J. J. Colman, Esq.
From the reproduction published by the Autotype Company.

JOHN CROME 45
It will be evident from the foregoing pages that this conception of
Crome's art, as continuing with modifications that of Hobbema and the
Dutchmen, has only ingredients of truth. Richard Wilson and Gains
borough, there can be no doubt about it, were Crome's first loves in art.
He carries on the English tradition of landscape, bequeathed by them,
with the infusion of a more vigorous realism of his own. It was this
inborn tendency to realism which attracted him later to the Dutch
masters. Crome's was not a nature to rest satisfied with the Italian
tradition in the representation of trees, for example, handed down
through Claude and Wilson, nor with the mannered facility of Gains
borough's later style. In the grave and self-suppressing art of Hobbema
he recognised a spirit akin to his own. But in emulating the Dutch
master he brought his already formed style to the work, and in The
Poringland Oak was able to produce a picture which is more than equal
to anything of Hobbema's or Ruysdael's in grasp of vital truth, while
in the glow of inspiration it by far excels them.
Crome, then, stands at the meeting of two traditions in landscape ;
and it is not too much to say, that his name is greater than any which
had made either illustrious ; above Claude, above Ruysdael.
Since his day, landscape art, not uninfluenced by photography, which
has opened to all men's eyes what only keen observers saw before, has
immensely increased its " content " ; the common stock of observed and
recorded truth is vastly greater than it was. And as a natural result,
there have been, and are, continual revolts against the tendency to
dulness which realism threatens ; therfe is even a danger for some minds
of going to the other extreme, and prizing art which achieves a certain
style by dint of sheer inadequacy of observation.
In looking back to seek a classic, it is Crome we should fix upon
rather than Constable, who, by an accident, was the means of re-creating
French landscape, since so potent a force in modern painting. For
Crome, with a range and knowledge not inferior to Constable, is in all
imaginative qualities, as well as in actual power and ease of painting, his
superior. Constable attracts us because we see him always earnestly
wrestling with his material ; but he rarely masters it entirely. He was
well fitted to stimulate and rouse, because he was so deliberate a
reformer ; but we must beware lest admiration for moral courage lead us

46 JOHN CROME
into making all innovation an excellence. It is sometimes assumed to be
Constables chief praise, that he chose to paint foliage at the dullest
period of the year, the heavy green of midsummer ; simply because it
had been avoided before his time. Constable has other claims than this.
But even The Hay-Wain, a noble picture, has a prosaic, flat effect, when
the mind is saturated with Mousehold Heath.

XI. Characteristics of Crome's Art
What was Crome's own aim in painting ? We are fortunate in
knowing, from a letter a to his friend and pupil James Stark, something
of his thoughts. It was written in 1816, in the time of his maturity.
Friend James (he writes) — I received your kind letter and feel much pleased at
your approval of my picture. I fear you will see too many errors for a painter
of my long practice and at my time of life ; however, there are parts in it you like,
I have no doubt, so I am happy. ... In your letter you wish me to give you mv
opinion of your picture. I should have liked it better if you had made it more of
a whole, that is, the trees stronger, the sky running from them in shadow up to
the opposite corner ; that might have produced what, I think, it wanted, and have
made it much less a too picture effect. ... I cannot let your skv go off without
some observation. I think the character of your clouds too affected, that is, too
much of some of our modern painters, who mistake some of our great masters ;
because they sometimes put in some of those round characters of clouds, they must
do the same ; but if you look at any of their skies, they either assist in the com
position or make some figure in the picture, nay, sometimes plav the first fiddle.
. . . Breath must be attended to if you paint, but a muscle gives it breath.2 Your
doing the same by the sky, making parts broad and of a good shape, that they
may come in with your composition, forming one grand plan of light and shade,
this must always please a good eye, and keep the attention of the spectator, and
give delight to every one. Trifles in nature must be overlooked that we may have
our feelings raised by seeing the whole picture at a glance, not knowing how or
why we are so charmed. I have written you a long rigmarole story about giving
dignity to whatever you paint — I fear so long that I should be scarcely able to
understand what I mean myself. You will, I hope, take the will for the deed, and
at the same time forgive all faults in diction, grammar, spelling, etc.

1 In the possession of Mr. A. J. Stark, the painter's son, and printed in the memoir
prefixed to the catalogue of the sixth exhibition of the Norwich Art Circle.
2 This, at first sight, rather cryptic sentence must be read Breadth, as the context
shows.

JOHN CROME 47
This letter shows us that Crome did not work from a sort of
unconscious instinct, but consciously pursued a chosen aim. And how
excellently clear is his mind, how fine his aim !
Crome's devotion to breadth and dignity is admirably seen in certain
small pictures of " still life " and of plants, made probably as studies
for foregrounds. It helps him in the foregrounds of his large com
positions. In Mousehold Heath could anything be better than the
thistles, docks, and sorrel ? They are painted with entire knowledge,
but with superb economy of means. And it is the same with Crome's
trees. The botanist is not at a loss to name them ; the character of
each is brought out and dwelt upon with loving care ; but it is not
as a map of anatomical detail that an oak or a willow appears to Crome,
but as a thing of life, full of running sap, silently but ceaselessly growing
and changing, and not so much adorned with foliage as sentient through
a thousand leaves. In the letter to Stark we see his hatred of the
placid conventions which petrify and kill ; he will not tame free nature
to a mere " picture effect." 1 Hence he never paints after a formula ;
whatever he sees is fresh to him and wonderful ; he is always alert to
get a new impression. Seeing a tree in sunlight, he paints its branches
all defined, its leaves all touched with light ; but when he paints a shady
avenue, he waives all his knowledge of detail, and expresses only the
broad, transparent shadow, as in the Chapel Fields of the National
Gallery. Other painters have seen only this side of the charm of
foliage, and have been content to spend their lives upon it ; yet none
has better rendered it than Crome in this picture, where the hidden
sunshine of a gray September day makes luminous twilight in the soft
green leaves, and streaks the road beneath the stems with dreamy
shadows. What a pity that this composition has been marred by cattle
and figures, added by another hand !
This sensitiveness, this capacity for perpetually receiving fresh im
pressions, is especially to be noted in Crome's treatment of light. Here
he shows a subtlety of sight and a certainty of touch which are of the
rarest order. In the little Rembrandt - like Dawn (p. 15) he paints
the still, whjte, early glow, brightening and expanding ; in Mousehold
1 Perhaps, however, " too picture " should be read " two-picture " ; i.e. an effect
wanting unity.

48 JOHN CROME
Heath the evening sunshine bathes the earth and sky, and steeps the
clouds in aerial clearness ; and the New Mills (p. 43) is a type of
Crome's pictures of wood and water and old buildings, in which the
mirrored light plays through the shadow, exquisitely luminous, or
quivers from above on the dark leaves with just that effect which
Constable is often said to have first painted. The Poringland Oak seems
to attack the most difficult problems of direct and reflected sunshine,
and triumphs over all.
We have already noticed that Crome in most of his etchings seems
to lose his style. The reason is that he had not found a means of
representing atmosphere in black and white. And it is probable that
any pitch of realism is compatible with good art, so long as there be
atmosphere. The visible world never at any moment coincides with
the tangible world ; it is the tangible world, divested of all interposing
atmosphere, whether objective or subjective, that science and " realistic "
artists and novelists try to reach ; but the true painter and true poet
see things only as they are visible to human beings full of emotions,
memories, a thousand unconsciously-stored results of experience, which
again go out unconsciously to tinge and influence the seeing eye and the
portraying hand. In his etchings Crome represented trees divested
of part of what, to us, is their reality. In his paintings it was never so ;
he painted the full life of things, but clothed in luminous air.
In all art, one of the greatest difficulties is to grapple with life, and
at the same time to keep one's style. To achieve style and maintain
it, without coming to close quarters with reality, is by comparison easy ;
but to wrestle with immense, intractable nature, and mould it to one's
will, yet at the same time to keep inviolable the conditions of beauty,
this it is which, in a phrase of Matthew Arnold's, "tears to pieces"
many artists. It is Crome's glory that he triumphed in this trial.
Very few indeed are the landscape painters who have put so much
matter into their pictures and risen to such a dignity of manner.

JOHN SELL COTMAN

I. Boyhood and Early Life in London
Far different from the life just recorded is that of John Sell Cotman.
Crome, after the first struggles, had little to disturb his peaceful industry ;
but Cotman rarely enjoyed peace of mind. He had to contend with
perpetual difficulties, with tormenting apprehensions. Nothing is sadder
than the story of his ever -renewed hopes of recognition and success,
continually clouded ; nothing is finer than the indefatigable effort with
which he fought against fortune, in spite of inward weariness often
neighbouring on despair in a nature thrice more susceptible to anxiety
from the depth and tenderness of its affections. Had he failed, had he
gone under, there would have been far more sentiment expended over
him. But he needs no man's pity. Hampered and beset as he was,
he accomplished a body of work of marvellous excellence and variety.
Had his scope matched his genius, his name would stand even higher
than it will.
Cotman's father was a well-to-do silk mercer and dealer in foreign
lace, whose place of business was in Cockey Lane, Norwich. John Sell,
his eldest son, was born in Norwich on May 16, 1782.1 He was edu
cated at the Grammar School, and perhaps took kindlier to his books
than many artists ; but drawing was his great delight. He would wander
out into the country sketching. His early surroundings fostered an
inborn love of architecture and all relics of antiquity, no less than an
ardent delight in the changing beauty of fields and skies and streams.
1 Redgrave, followed by other authorities, wrongly gives the date as June 1 1.
D

5o JOHN SELL COTMAN
Few towns in England have so much of fine old architecture as Norwich,
so many "various splendid remains," as Cotman himself said long after
wards, when he had seen most of the ancient cities of England ; and he
spoke also of its beautiful neighbourhood, "not to be equalled in its
quiet way by any city in the British Empire, and beloved by me."
Cotman was one of those in whom early associations strike deep root,
and he never ceased to love Norwich and Norfolk.
Mr. Reeve, in his incomparable collection of Cotman drawings, illus
trating every phase of the artist, has one Indian-ink sketch of Old Houses,
Mill Lane, Newmarket Road, which, if the date on it (1794) be correct,
was done in Cotman's thirteenth year. It is not remarkable in itself, but
already shows a sense of style.
On leaving school the boy was intended for his father's business.
But after a brief trial he rebelled ; he was bent on being a painter.
The father was distressed ; but, anxious to do the best for his son, sought
the advice of Opie, who was then at Norwich. " Let him rather black
boots than follow the profession of an artist," was Opie's bitter reply.
But, in spite of everything, John Sell had his way ; and in 1797 or 1798
he journeyed up to try his fortunes in London.
Of his first experiences there we have a glimpse in a once famous,
now almost forgotten novel, Thaddeus of Warsaw. The hero, a Polish
noble of the house of Sobieski, exiled in London and reduced to want,
finds " that his sole dependence must rest on his talents for painting. His
taste easily perceived that there were many drawings exhibited for sale
much inferior to those which he had executed for mere amusement." So
he sets out for Great Newport Street, the great home of print-sellers, and
entering a shop throws his drawings instantly upon the counter. His
pride is mortified by the print-seller's disrespectful treatment of him ; he
flings himself out of the shop and goes home. But necessity compels
him to venture forth again, and he consents to make six drawings a week
for a guinea.
Sobieski's experiences are said to have been suggested by what actually
happened to the young Cotman. Without accepting the tale literally,
we may see in it the relations between the young artists and the print-
sellers of the day, and may conjecture something of Cotman's sensitive
pride, on which perhaps Jane Porter, the author of Thaddeus, meant

JOHN SELL COTMAN

5i

playfully to rally him. We know, at any rate, that John Thirtle, after
wards Cotman's brother-in-law, used regularly to look in Ackerman's
window to see if there were any new drawings by his Norwich friend.
It was not long before Cotman's talents won him appreciation from
his rivals, and from that famous connoisseur and patron of artists, Dr.
Thomas Monro. Monro was now about forty years old, and had been
since 1792 physician to Bridewell and Bethlehem Hospital. But his

Portrait of J. S. Cotman.
From a Lithograph in the possession of J . Reeve, Esq.
great love was for art, of which he was an enthusiastic amateur. During
the long winter evenings his house in Adelphi Terrace became a studio
in which a group of young men, some of whom were already becoming
famous, copied drawings under the Doctor's encouraging supervision,
sharing candles and receiving a supper and half-a-crown for the evening.
Working here were the founders of English water-colour painting, chief
among whom were Girtin and Turner.
At this early period of his career Turner held a position secondary
to that of Girtin. They were of equal age, but so far Girtin had shown

52 JOHN SELL COTMAN
himself the bolder spirit, and had gone the farther. It was Girtin who
really enfranchised water-colour art. His drawings, broadly washed
with a full brush on cartridge paper, displayed a richness of colouring
and a spaciousness of style hitherto unknown. In 1796 he had spent
the summer in the north of England, and in his painting of moor and
fell and cloud there was an imaginative apprehension of the beauty of
solemn and solitary places, not less rare and noble in its way than the
kindred poetry of Wordsworth.
On all the youthful painters who gathered at Adelphi Terrace in
the winter evenings, or who rambled through England on sketching
tours in the summer, Girtin had a profound influence. Besides Turner,
De Wint, Francia, John Varley, and Joshua Cristall were fellow-workers
at Adelphi Terrace.
Cotman also felt the charm and power of Girtin's art ; and perhaps
of all that youthful band he was nearest to Girtin in spirit. He joined
Girtin's sketching club, which had been started in 1799, apparently in the
first instance by Francia. There were ten members : Girtin, Francia, R. K.
Porter (brother of Jane Porter, who used sometimes to set the subjects
for the evening, and thus made Cotman's acquaintance), T. Underwood,
G. Samuel, T. Worthington, and J. C. Denham, who were the original
seven ; and three later acquisitions, A. W. Callcott, P. S. Murray, and
Cotman himself, probably the youngest of them all. Before 1 800, when
Cotman was eighteen, he had made sketching excursions in Wales and
in Surrey. In the Royal Academy Exhibition of that year he had six
drawings, five of Surrey subjects, in the neighbourhood of Dorking,
Guildford, and Leatherhead, and one of Harlech Castle. In the same year
he received for a drawing the Honorary Palette of the Society of Arts.
The summers of 1800 and 1801 were probably spent in Wales, for
we find him exhibiting subjects from South and from North Wales in the
Academy of the years following them, 1801 and 1802. In Mr. Reeve's
collection is a drawing of Bridgnorth, in Shropshire, made on his way to
Wales, or on his return, dated 1800, and signed in upright characters,
Cotman. It is a monochrome in warm brown.
Although spending most of his time in London and in long excursions,
Cotman did not neglect to spend part of each year at Norwich. In the
Norwich Mercury of September 4, 1802, he "informs his friends that

JOHN SELL COTMAN

53

during his stay in Norwich, which will be for three weeks or a month, he
proposes giving lessons in drawing to those ladies or gentlemen who may
think his sketching from Nature or style of colouring beneficial to their
improvement." The terms asked were half-a-guinea an hour. '
Two months after this advertisement appeared, Girtin died in
London. He was only twenty-seven.
The sketching club survived him, but apparently somewhat trans-

Landscape Composition. By J. S. Cotman.
From a Sketch in the possession of Basil Cornish, Esq.
formed ; or perhaps there were several clubs which sprang out of the
original club. At any rate we know that Cotman belonged to a club
which met in 1803 and onwards. As in Girtin's days, they would meet
at the house of one of the members, who provided paper and colours,
as well as a supper, and who kept the drawings of the evening. A
few of these sets must still exist ; one was sold at Dr. Percy's sale
in 1 8 90. The composition here reproduced is one of a number of
sketching club designs belonging to Mr. Basil Cornish ; more than one
is by Cotman, whose influence seems perceptible in most of them. Others
are by Hayward, Neill, Paul Sandby, Munn, John Varley, and Webster ;

54 JOHN SELL COTMAN
names also recorded on the back of a Weird Scene — Moonlight, in Mr.
Reeve's possession, as having been present on March 23, 1803, when
Cotman was president for the evening. Mr. Reeve has a number of
Cotman's sketching club compositions ; and The Centaur here reproduced
is one of these. Several are of similar mythological or historical subjects,
and show that figures occupied the young artist at this time almost as
much as landscape.
From the Academy catalogues for the next few years we are able to
trace Cotman's ramblings over the country. Besides Wales, he sketched
in Shropshire, Somersetshire, and Lincolnshire, as well as in London
and the neighbourhood ; but his favourite haunt was Yorkshire, where
he made a warm friend in Mr. Francis Cholmeley of Brandsby. He
taught the young Cholmeleys drawing ; and they all took the liveliest
and most affectionate interest in the work of their friend " Cotty," as
they named him. While with the Cholmeleys he made some pencil
portraits of them and of some of their friends. These are not
remarkable, but show that Cotman did not neglect portraiture, which a
little later he took up in some earnest.
Cotman had always a great charm of manner, and he was good-
looking. The portrait reproduced on p. 51, from a unique lithograph
in Mr. Reeve's possession, shows his face as it was at this time or a
little later, before anxiety had worn it, as it did so soon.
This friendship was maintained by correspondence for many years.
Cholmeley had always kind and wise counsel for Cotman, and to him
the young painter confided his hopes and disappointments. In one of
these letters we find already that note of depression which was later so
much intensified. Cotman writes full of disappointment at the ill
success of his drawings, and accuses himself of extravagance ; and
Cholmeley writes back a long letter to console him, encourages him to
hope for the future, and to remember that he has good friends, like the
Turners, who, as he himself had written, " were as kind and generous as
ever." Dawson Turner and his wife seem indeed to have early interested
themselves in Cotman's career ; it is evident that their friendship was
already of some standing. In a letter to Turner of November 1805,
Cotman says that his summer tour of that year has been confined to York
and Durham, and that his chief study has been " colouring from Nature."

JOHN SELL COTMAN 55
Next year he was in Lincolnshire, and while sketching there the

The Centaur. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of J. Reeve, Esq.
From the reproduction published by the Autotype Company.
impulse came to him to return and settle down at Norwich ; and having
made up his mind, he started home.

56 JOHN SELL COTMAN
II. Return to Norwich, and first Residence there — Early Drawings
On returning to his native city, Cotman found the Norwich Society in
the first flush of its youthful activity. The first exhibition, as we saw,
had been held in the previous year.
Indeed, we can hardly doubt that the spectacle of a young and
vigorous society holding exhibitions in the place where he was known
already, and numbering many friends among its members, had its influence
in determining his resolution to live and work at Norwich. Full of hope
and interest in his work, he began to make plans for the future, and to
carry out schemes already in his mind. One of these was to paint in oils.
Hitherto, he seems to have worked entirely in water-colours ; but we
know, by a letter from his friend Francis Cholmeley, that while in
Yorkshire he had turned his thoughts to oils.
Towards the end of the same year he took a house in Luckett's
Court, Wymer Street, — a pleasant old house, now pulled down, — in
tending to open there a school of drawing, and to hold a fortnight's
exhibition of his own works. The exhibition does not seem to have been
held ; probably because the Norwich Society offered better opportunities.
He must have joined the Norwich Society almost immediately on settling
in the city. In the next year's exhibition, 1807, he had twenty works,
among them six portraits and a " sketch after Vandyke," probably the
sketch of a man's head now in Mr. Reeve's possession. There were also
Durham Cathedral and Croyland Abbey, favourite subjects of Cotman's,
both represented at the British Museum, and it may be by these very
drawings. Both have done service as drawing copies and are somewhat
rubbed and faded. Yet the Durham, here reproduced, remains a noble
drawing. It has Girtin's largeness and serious simplicity, and at the same
time a deeper comprehension of the grandeur of the architecture, an in-
tenser feeling for the actual moulding and essential character of the old
stone. Altogether this is a finer thing than Mr. Colman's Durham
Cathedral and Castle, an oblong drawing, in which the wonderful situation
of the cathedral is not seized to the fullest advantage, and in which the
colour — which has altered a little — is less harmonious.
The British Museum Croyland is not quite a success. It is too large

Sfji i |

'"; 'P.

V . r
'c ¦

Durham Cathedral. By J. S. Cotman. British Museum.

58 JOHN SELL COTMAN
for the composition ; and the painting is, for Cotman, a little laboured.
Nevertheless, the piled, contorted, mountainous thunder-cloud receding
slowly over the fen, the ruined arches and tower of the Abbey, rising
against it in cold light, even the chill of the air after the storm, these are
expressed with an intensity and a grandeur that few could have surpassed.
But a drawing which is finer and in better condition than these is Mr.
Reeve's Greta Bridge. Here, and in the same owner's Duncombe Park,
the finest qualities of Cotman's earlier art are summed up. No reproduc
tion can convey the extraordinary charm of colour which Greta Bridge
possesses. Sober is too tame and negative a word for the harmony that
pervades it : it is quiet, it is severe ; yet full of living power in all its
quietness, rich and abundant in all its severity.
Of equal and perhaps rarer charm is the exquisite Duncombe Park.
Nowhere so perfectly has Cotman painted the grace of trees in spring.
The delicate stem of the ash and its fresh leaves traced on the sky are
painted firmly, with no second touches to mar their transparency, yet
with what sensitive precision, what aerial lightness ! Such a drawing as
this makes no loud appeal ; but when the eye has lingered upon it
sufficiently for the mind to enter its atmosphere, this vision of spring
woods in their solitude, " retired as noonday dew," seems indeed to have
distilled the secret charm of all such places, and to contain all the beauty
of one's memories, with a beauty heightened and more real.
It is odd to remember that while exhibiting drawings like this, Cot
man styled himself "portrait painter." But doubtless painting portraits
brought more profit than painting Duncombe Parks. As an example of
Cotman's portraiture at this period, the reproduction of a water-colour of
Crome (p. 13) done in 1809 is interesting.
In 1808 the Norwich Exhibition had a wonderful display of Cotman's
work ; no less than sixty-seven productions, and among them several
sketches and studies in oil, his first beginnings in this medium.
In the exhibition of this year was Mr. Reeve's delightful Twickenham,
Mid-day, in which, though the method of painting is the same as in
Greta Bridge, there is perceptible a certain difference in feeling, an
element of fresh beauty. The sense of breeze and sunshine, the ex
pression of physical joy in a day of idle pleasure on the river, are things
which in earlier drawings Cotman seenis scarcely to have aimed at,

Duncombe Park. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of J. Reeve, Esq.
From the reproduction published by the Autotype Company.

60 JOHN SELL COTMAN
choosing rather solemn solitudes or noble effects of architecture. Later,
we find often a great delight in the painting of pleasure-parties, scenes with
gay and luxurious accessories. But rarely do we find it expressed with
such happy freshness, such a feeling of youth and morning, as in this
early Twickenham.

III. Marriage — Drawings previous to 1817
Already, as we have noticed, Cotman had suffered from fits of
despondency when he felt uncertain of his future. But just now he
seems to have been full of hope as of activity. He was much esteemed
at Norwich, was making friends, and feeling that his powers were recog
nised by his fellow-artists. He had schemes for the future, and looked
forward. Early in 1809 he was married.
His wife, Ann Mills, was the daughter of a farmer at Felbrigg, near
Cromer, and at Felbrigg the wedding took place on January 6. Of his
wife we know little, but in a pencil portrait by Cotman, possessed by
their grandson, Dr. Cotman, her features and expression have a look of
sweet firmness, which confirms what appears elsewhere about her
character. Cotman lost no time in settling to his work as a teacher. His plan
of teaching was a peculiar one. It was the system of a circulating library.
Subscribers could choose, for a quarterly subscription of a guinea, from a
collection of six hundred drawings, taking home what they liked to copy.
Cotman gave instructions in copying on the two days in the week when
the drawings were delivered. It was his practice to number these draw
ings ; the numbers often seen on his water-colours refer to this collection.
And as there are some bearing numbers running into several thousands,
the collection must have greatly increased in later years.
Besides painting and teaching, Cotman now began to turn serious
attention to etching. Perhaps among his earliest attempts on copper
were some of the soft-ground etchings, not published till long afterwards
in the Liber Studiorum of 1838. But these were done for his own plea
sure. It was in his thoughts now to publish a volume of etchings by
subscription. But before turning to the series of etchings which were to

Greta Bridge. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of James Reeve, Esq.
From the reproduction published by the Autotype Company.

<JJj°&m£uz<7 jAe< Cytod

JOHN SELL COTMAN 63
form so large a part of Cotman's production during the next ten years,
it is necessary to note some drawings of this time.
Cotman's work cannot be split up neatly and crudely into periods.
He kept so many aims before him in his work, concentrating himself,
however, on each for the time being, that it would be dangerous to assert
a date too precisely for many of his drawings. Still, we can indicate
roughly the probable period of most of his work.
We have noticed in the Twickenham a certain indication of a new
element in Cotman's painting. In the drawings of the years immediately
following we find a distinct change. It shows itself chiefly in the direction
of colour, as if Cotman were dissatisfied with the sobriety, however rich,
of his early style. The warm yellows, which afterwards became so
fascinating to him, begin to appear.
In the large Trentham Church of 1 808 or 1 809 there is an interesting
instance of his fondness for sumptuous colour. The chief feature in the
drawing is a gorgeous Moorish saddle-cloth of crimson embroidered with
gold, which is hung over the pulpit, and this is evidently painted with
intense enjoyment.
In the Draining Mill, Lincolnshire, of 18 10, warm tones begin to
assert themselves ; and in the Mousehold Heath of the same year the
favourite yellow is even more prominent. These two drawings, both in
Mr. Reeve's collection, mark a transition, and are not quite so successful
as they might have been, fine as each is in its way, on that account.
From this time to about 18 15 the water-colours show frequently an
attempt to paint sunshine, such as is absent from the earlier work ; not
the hot sunshine of the years after Cotman's visits to Normandy, but a
limpid wash of light.
But more remarkable than any of the water-colours of this time is a
series of black and white drawings on gray paper, of which Mr. Reeve
possesses beautiful examples. One of these, The Mare and Foal, is dated
1 8 16. And to the same date, or perhaps a little earlier, may be assigned
one of Cotman's most wonderful achievements — Breaking the Clod, which
is here reproduced as a plate. Of this lovely drawing I hope to say
something later on. Not far removed from this are some compositions
in which, as in Breaking the Clod, the charm and mystery of foliage have
been the central aim. Dewy Eve, with its broad and darkly branching

64 JOHN SELL COTMAN
trees, under which two . boys are fishing, and the Shadowed Stream
(p. 77) are instances ; and perhaps more beautiful than either, Postwick
Grove (p. 79).
Here, and also in a drawing of Cader Idris, with a mountain pool in
the foreground, into which Cotman has inserted, to break the lines, a
number of stakes, a curious effect is noticeable. To gain richness and
brilliance, Cotman mixed with his colour thin paste, which had been
allowed to go sour ; the paint, instead of being absorbed, lies on the sur
face, transparent in the track of the brush, and clotted at its edges. The
result is a wonderful glowing effect, especially in the intense and luminous
blues of Cader Idris}
All of these are in all probability anterior to Cotman's first visit to
Normandy in 18 17. After his Normandy tours his colouring was
almost always in a far higher key.
With the drawings made in Normandy and after his return I shall
deal later. Meanwhile let us come back to the etchings.

IV. Etchings — Residence at Tarmouth
A letter to Dawson Turner, dated February 1 8 1 1 , the original of
which is now in the Print Room of the British Museum, tells us some
thing of Cotman's aims in etching. He says : " I decidedly follow
Piranesi, however far I may be behind him in every requisite " ; and he
goes on to ask his friend if he could manage to procure him a sight of a
complete set of Piranesi's etchings, such as he knew Mr. Hudson Gurney
to possess. Again : "It has been my aim to improve by every means in
my power, even in the article of paper, which I caused to be made for
me. The substance is stouter and better-coloured than most prints."
When this letter was written, Cotman had already etched his first
series of plates. Most are dated 1810, several January 181 1. The set
was issued in parts, and published in 1 8 1 1 by Boydell and by Colnaghi
in London, and dedicated to Sir H. C. Englefield, Bart. With the
exception of one plate, a sylvan scene in Duncombe Park, the subjects are
all architectural, and the majority of these are antiquities in Yorkshire.
1 All these drawings are in Mr. Reeve's collection.

Draining Mill, Lincolnshire. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of James Reeve, Esq.
From the reproduction published by the Autotype Company.

JOHN SELL -COTMAN 67
All Cotman's etchings were badly printed, in the driest possible way, and
this makes his bitten lines appear more meagre and poverty-stricken than
they really were. As an etcher, he cannot be compared to Piranesi.
Nor, except in some of the few plates published after his death, did he
work in the true etcher's spirit. These etchings are, in fact, simply
records of architectural studies. It is in this light that we must view
them ; and so regarded, they have extraordinary merit. Few have
understood architecture so well, or drawn it with such mastery.
It is not merely the seizure of a picturesque point of view, from
which a ruined arch or a cathedral front conveniently, helps the
composition and gives interest to the landscape, nor is it the plain
likeness of a building. Cotman loved architecture, and at his hands a
monument of antiquity receives a loving treatment, its dignity is com
municated, its features tenderly recorded. It is to him a thing of
venerable life, and he draws it almost as a sentient creation, that has
lived its life and gathered round it an atmosphere of its own, not so
much built upon as growing out of the ground, with its own trees and
hills about it, surrounding the weather-moulded walls with a kind of
natural sanctity. Even the clouds are made to conspire sometimes
towards the particular impression designed. In the Byland Abbey, for
instance (a nearer view than that in Mr. Reeve's fine early drawing), the
white ascending clouds carry on and upward the lines of the building, as
if in the artist's mind they were raising again in a triumphant dream the
soaring arch of the long-fallen roof.
In the same letter from which I have already quoted Cotman
announces his intention of beginning a series of Etchings of all Orna
mented Antiquities in Norfolk. The series thus projected was issued,
like the first, in ten parts, the publication of which extended from 1 8 1 2
to 181 8. In this last year they were issued complete by Longmans.
The plates are sixty in number.
Meanwhile Cotman had left Norwich for Southtown, Yarmouth. In
making this change he was chiefly influenced by his friendship for
Dawson Turner, who lived at Yarmouth, and whose antiquarian enthusiasm
had found in Cotman so ready a seconder. Through Dawson Turner
also Cotman gained many pupils, and he was encouraged to think that
by living at Yarmouth he would benefit professionally.

68 JOHN SELL COTMAN
At the same time he did not sever his connection with Norwich, but
continued giving regular lessons there. His time was therefore passed
between the two places. He was to remain in Yarmouth till 1823.
These years were principally occupied with etching. But he also
devoted more attention than he had hitherto done to oil-painting. The
Waterfall, with its beautiful composition and bold colour, dates from
the earlier part of this period ; and from these years also must date the
earliest of Cotman's fine sea-pieces, of which the Fishing Boats off
Tarmouth is so splendid a specimen.
The now habitual sight and companionship of the sea began to enter
into Cotman's life ; he studied shipping, and mastered the forms of
waves. And perhaps as potent, though indirect, was the influence on his
mind and art of the changeful vastness, the restless infinity of the sea,
bringing a new and quickening stimulus to his eye and brain.
But to return to the etchings. While the Antiquities of Norfolk
was still in course of publication, Cotman projected another large work,
the Sepulchral Brasses of Norfolk. This occupied him between 18 14
and 1 8 1 8, and the work was published in 18 19. In a second edition,
published by Bohn in 1839, a series of Suffolk brasses were added. The
Brasses need not concern us, beyond showing how absorbed in antiquities
Cotman was at this period.
1 8 14 is also the date of a little yolume illustrated by him, occasioned
by the fall of Napoleon in that year. The book, privately printed, is an
account of the "Grand Festival at Yarmouth, on Tuesday, the 19th of
April 1 8 14."
Cotman's title-page represents, above, a scene at the dinner given on
the quay to eight thousand people ; the beef and plum-pudding are
arriving, and foaming tankards uproariously lifted : below, the donkey
races which followed. These festivities led up to the ceremonious
kindling of a huge bonfire, crowned by an effigy of Napoleon (the head
filled with gunpowder). This was also etched by Cotman, together with
a plan of the dinner-tables on the quay, and an elevation of the Funeral
Pile of the Buonapartean Dynasty, a picture of the Tyrant in the Devil's
clutches. Altogether, it is an amusing glimpse into that wonderful time
when Europe for a brief time breathed freely, and through Britain
especially all men were in a rapture of excited joy.

Prior's Entrance, Ely Cathedral. From the Etching by J. S. Cotman.

JOHN SELL COTMAN 71
It seems strange that while Crome took advantage of this opportunity
to visit Paris, Cotman should have remained at home. Three years
later he did cross the Channel, but it was on a different errand.

V. Visits to Normandy — Etchings (continued)
He went to Normandy, and to see architecture, not pictures. Dawson
Turner's account is that Cotman, while engaged in recording the archi
tectural antiquities of Norfolk, supposed to be of Saxon origin, was
struck with the apparently Norman character prevailing in them, and
wished to satisfy himself by studying Norman architecture in the land of
its birth. It may be that this was rather Dawson Turner's own design
than Cotman's. But at any rate Cotman agreed to accompany him and
his wife on this first tour in 18 17. He made a second tour in 18 18,
and a third, this time alone, in 1820. The result of these visits was the
great series of 100 etchings, published in 1822.
These etchings are more interesting architecturally than as drawings ;
and avowedly so. For Dawson Turner, in his introduction, says
expressly that the buildings selected were chosen principally for certainty
as to date. He tells us that many much more beautiful subjects might
have been selected, but that these were excluded ; and significantly adds :
" An artist accustomed by his habits to the contemplation of the beautiful
and picturesque, requires above all men to be warned on this head."
Still, some of the plates, especially those in which the building is made
the centre of a landscape, are noble and impressive compositions. The
British Museum Print Room possesses Dawson Turner's copy of the
Normandy ; it contains proofs of each plate in every state, some additional
prints, and an unpublished portrait of Cotman etched by Mrs. Turner
after J. P. Davis.
The Crypt of the Abbey Church of the Holy Trinity at Caen, here
reproduced (p. 73), occurs in the second volume. It illustrates the
powerful drawing of architecture which the whole series exhibits, together
with a pictorial effect which is wanting in most of the etchings. But the
most interesting plates are in volume iv. The two views of Chateau

7 2 JOHN SELL COTMAN
Gaillard, one from below, the other from above, with the massive ruins
standing desolate on their rocky solitudes ; Tancarville Castle with its
fringed cliffs reflected in the sunny stream ; Falaise rising steeply above
headlong boulders; and Mont St. Michel, surrounded by infinite sand
and sea, are all seen as only Cotman would have seen them, and portrayed
with a fine appreciation of their grandeur.
Before this work was issued, Dawson Turner brought out in 1820
his Account of a Tour in Normandy, the plates in which were etched by
his daughter, mostly after Cotman's design. Indeed, besides the actual
drawings for the Antiquities, Normandy supplied Cotman with an immense
amount of material. It also seems to have given a fresh impetus to his
art, and in particular to have set him working on new and more daring
experiments in colour. Whether the journey to Normandy was the
cause or the occasion of this new departure is hard to say. But it is
certain that after 1820 Cotman began to conceive his paintings in a far
higher key of colour, aiming at audacious effects, in which he often
succeeded and sometimes failed. The change in his art is nearly parallel
with that wrought in Turner's art by his first visit to Italy. This latter
case one can understand. But why Normandy, more than other places,
should have revealed to him new skies and a new sunshine, is not easily
explained. Perhaps, after all, it was not the place itself, but the shock of
change, and the freedom which he enjoyed there, away from the drudgery
of teaching. Even had he remained at home, it was inevitable that his
art should develop on such lines ; one feels the change coming after the
first settling at Norwich ; and the Normandy journeys did but hasten
this necessary development.
The Normandy etchings were by no means the only published
product of this most industrious time. In the years 18 16-18 Cotman
etched fifty plates — decidedly architectural in character, many of them
fonts and doorways — which were not regularly published, it is said,
but circulated among his friends. They made a small folio, under
the title Specimens of Norman and Gothic Architecture in the County
of -Norfolk. A single etching of 18 17 deserves a mention. It represents the
Nelson Column, which every one who has visited Yarmouth will
remember rising from the sands, and of which the foundation-stone

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• JOHN SELL COTMAN 75
was laid in this year. Cotman etched in an effective sky, in which
phantasmal battleships tower with great sails among the clouds.
In 1 8 19 appeared Antiquities of Saint Mary's Chapel at Stourbridge,
near Cambridge : Published by John Sell Cotman, Yarmouth. Dawson
Turner's copy of this, with all the states of the ten plates, is, like the
similar copies of the Norfolk Antiquities and the Normandy, in the
Print Room. The etching of the Prior's Entrance at Ely Cathedral,
here reproduced, is a happy specimen both of Cotman's etching and
of his architectural drawing. The feeling of the stone is there ; it does
not look like pastry, as with so many draughtsmen ; there is scrupulous
precision, but no dulness or harshness of outline, and the copper is
effectively bitten. Besides all these works, and the Sepulchral Brasses,
a publication of 1818-19 contains a great number of illustrations,
many of which, though not etched by Cotman, were engraved after
his designs. Many of these little engravings are as admirable as the
drawings.

VI. Second Residence in Norwich
The twelve years of residence at Yarmouth, which were the most active
and well-filled of Cotman's life, comprise, roughly speaking, the period
of the architectural etchings. Henceforward Cotman gave himself up
to painting. Not that these years had been by any means unfruitful in paintings.
Of the drawings made before the Normandy towns we have already
spoken. Some of his finest sea-pieces, both his oil and water-colours,
must be referred to this time. The oil pictures may, for convenience
'sake, be dealt with in a separate section. At present it will be enough
to observe in the beautiful composition reproduced as a plate, which
dates from about 1820, how admirably Cotman could seize the motion
of a boat and render the effect of moonlight broken on rough water.
With the publication of the Normandy, in 1822, Cotman's anti
quarian labours came to an end. A family of five children, a daughter
and four boys, the eldest of whom, Miles Edmund, was now twelve,
was growing up round him ; and a sixth child, a daughter, was born

76 JOHN SELL COTMAN
in this same year. Dissatisfied with what he had hitherto been able
to earn, and becoming, with increasing claims upon him, anxious for
the future, he sought for some way of bettering his position ; and
he determined to return to Norwich. There, he thought, he would
have more scope, and at the same time he hoped to keep his Yarmouth
pupils. So, full of anticipations, which were to be little realised, he came
back early in 1824 to his native city, and took a large red brick house
on St. Martin's Palace Plain, opposite the bishop's palace. The house
has a wrought-iron ornamental gate, in which Cotman doubtless took
pleasure ; and before it across the " plain," as Norfolk people, like the
Dutch, call a square or place, is a group of trees for which he found
use in his compositions.
In this house, before he left it, twelve years after, there was amassed
a fine collection of prints and books and armour ; for Cotman, like
Rembrandt, and like many another artist before him, could never resist
the temptation to buy beautiful things and have them round him.
Moreover, as he was now no longer in daily sight of shipping, he had
a collection of models of every sort of craft, " from a man-of-war
to a coble."
To herald his return to Norwich he had, in 1823, contributed
again, a number of drawings, nineteen, to the Norwich Society's
exhibition. Most of these were Normandy subjects. The Entrance into
Falaise, lately belonging to Lady Eastlake, may be taken as a specimen
of this date. A gush of vivid sunlight over the foreground plays on
the trees and touches the entrance of the town, most of which is still
in the blue shadow of retreating storm. It is a daring attempt in
contrasted colour, such as Cotman in these later years became too
fond of.
The Dieppe at South Kensington Museum, painted about the same
time, is also a fair example of the drawings done from sketches in
Normandy. In both of these, as also in the fine and characteristic
Windmill (p. 85), the reed pen was used for outlines. Before this
time Cotman does not seem to have used it.
But among these Normandy drawings none is more lovely than
Mr. Reeve's Chdteau in Normandy (p. 83), a drawing which is full

JOHN SELL COTMAN

77

of summer, delicate yet bold in colour, succeeding perfectly in the
effect of indolent sunshine and blue sky.
This same composition was used, in 1 8 3 1 , for another probably later
drawing of fuller tone, which the writer has not had the opportunity of
seeing, — Mr. Pyke Thompson's Blue Afternoon.
To the exhibition of 1824 Cotman sent fifty-two works, some in oil.

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From the reproduction published by the Autotype Company.
Mr. Bridgman's View from Tarmouth Bridge (see p. 91) was among the
oil pictures, and an Old House at St. Albans} also painted by Mulready,
whose picture of it is at South Kensington.
There was also a pair of drawings entitled : " A Landscape,
with the Fable of the Judgment of Midas, and a view of Whitby,
Yorkshire, part of a series of designs intended to illustrate a work now
publishing on landscape composition." This is interesting as showing
that the book of etchings afterwards called Liber Studio rum was now
Exhibited recently at. Messrs. Dowdeswells'.
78 JOHN SELL COTMAN
occupying Cotman, for the Midas and the Whitby are two of the subjects
in it. The etchings were not actually published, however, till 1838.

VII. Cotman joins the Water-colour Society — Depression
The Norwich Society was suspended for a time after the exhibition
of 1825, the last held in Sir Benjamin Wrench's Court. But from this
year begins Cotman's connection with the Water-colour Society, and he
now became a regular exhibitor in London.
From letters by Miss Turner and her sister, Mrs. Palgrave, written in
January of this year and quoted in Mr. Reeve's Memoir, it appears that
it was chiefly on their suggestion that he joined the Society. But the
members were themselves anxious that he should exhibit with them.
" They would be proud," Charles Wild the treasurer had said, " to
admit him."
The result was that Cotman sent three Normandy drawings, which
had been done as commissions, to the exhibition of this same spring.
One was Dieppe, already noticed ; another, Mont Saint Michel, one of
several he painted of this subject ; and a third, the Abbatial House of
St. Ouen, Rouen, possibly the drawing now belonging to Mr. Colman.
This last is a splendid instance of Cotman's later architectural drawings.
The house, ornate and stately in itself, is appropriately set off by the
gay groups of richly-dressed ladies and cavaliers. Mr. Roget's Framling-
ham Castle, a small but impressive drawing, is another example of
Cotman's later treatment of architecture ; it is dated 1828.
In this last year, when the Norwich Society, reorganised, began again
to hold exhibitions, Cotman sent drawings to both societies and continued
to do so for some years.
To this period belong most of a class of drawings by which Cotman
is sometimes unfairly judged. These are the water-colours made by him
from sketches by W. H. Harriott. They represent scenes and places
never visited by Cotman ; and their inferiority is very palpable when
placed beside drawings which are entirely his own. As a rule, the
consciousness of an intermediary vision between him and the subject,
the loss of grasp and intimate comprehension, are sought to be atoned

JOHN SELL COTMAN

79

for by daring and brilliance of contrasted colour ; never quite successfully.
The Cologne, in Sir Charles Robinson's collection, lately exhibited at the
Guildhall, is an example. It is to be hoped that those who saw this
drawing, the only Cotman in the exhibition, did not imagine it to be
representative. And what of the artist himself, who had been producing his work

Postwick Grove. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of J. Reeve, Esq.
From the reproduction published by the Autotype Company.
with such unflagging industry? Of a temperament fine-strung in the
extreme, and continually passing from high spirits or exaltation to fits
of profound melancholy, he felt with ever - increasing keenness the
wearing anxieties of his position. And conscious as he must have
been of powers far superior to those of most of his contemporaries, he
endured doubtless much bitterness in his comparative want of success.
He got very few commissions ; his pictures and drawings sold ill ; he
was more and more under the yoke of the drudgery of teaching. His
income did not increase, and was inadequate to his needs ; and his mind

86 JOHN SELL COTMAN
gave itself up to gloomy apprehensions. In 1826, disappointed of the
hopes with which he had returned to Norwich, and encumbered with the
large house which he had taken, his depression approached despair.
Dawson Turner exhorted him to look the facts in the face, to examine
his circumstances carefully, and if it were necessary, retrench, and take a
smaller house. His letter is printed in Mr. Reeve's Memoir, and from
it we learn that Cotman had made £200 by teaching in the previous year.
But Cotman was difficult to comfort, and Dawson Turner then wrote
to his father, urging him to persuade his son to get rid of his large house
and if possible return to Yarmouth. This, however, Cotman refused to
do ; his pride was roused, he felt it would be to retreat, to surrender ;
and he resolved to make fresh efforts, to harden his heart and conquer.
Fortune, however, did not mend.
A letter, dated June 26, 1829, refusing an invitation from a friend,
reveals the depth of gloom into which he had fallen.
My views in life are so completely blasted, that I sink under the repeated and
constant exertion of body and mind. Every effort has been tried, even without the
hope of success ; hence that loss of spirits amounting almost to despair.
My eldest son, who is following the same miserable profession with myself,
feels the same hopelessness ; and his powers, once so promising, are evidently
paralized, and his health and spirits gone. My amiable and deserving wife bears
her part with fortitude. But the worm is there. My children cannot but feel
the contagion. As a husband and father, bound by every tie human and divine to
cherish and protect them, I leave you to suppose how impossible it must be for
me to feel one joy divided from them. I watch them, and they me, narrowly ; and
I see enough to make me broken-hearted.
In another letter there is an even more tragic disclosure of the state
of Cotman's mind, brooding over a casual saying of one of his children, —
Why, Papa smiled, — with self-reproach and horror at what he had allowed
to be seen upon his face, and tormented with his own imagination.

VIII. Cotman appointed Professor of Drawing at King's College —
Sale 0/1834
Yet even from such dejection he could at times rally ; not, indeed,
without a feverish brightness that tells of uncertain moods.

Missing Page

Missing Page

Gunton Park. By J. S. Cotman. By permission of Mr. Palser.

JOHN SELL COTMAN

83

Only six months after writing the just-quoted letter, he was writing
in great elation about a conversazione held by the artists of the Norfolk,
and Suffolk Institution. " It was the most brilliant thing ever witnessed
for Norwich Art, and not one thing went amiss. We, the Artists, have
reason to be perfectly satisfied. It was as far beyond my expectations as
possible, and I was one of the most sanguine upon the subject of any."

Chateau in Normandy. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of J. Reeve, Esq.
From the reproduction published by the Autotype Company.

Even in this little fragment from a letter, one has a glimpse into
Cotman's nature ; easily persuading itself of good, and easily of evil ;
not the sort of nature which, in the happiest of circumstances, is best
fortified against melancholy, but feeling joy and pain with equal intensity.
Work was his great refuge ; pencil and brush were scarcely ever out of
his hand. But his anxieties did not decrease, until at last an event

84 JOHN SELL COTMAN
occurred which showed him at least that he had friends eager in his
behalf, and that his painting had won for itself a certain recognition.
More than this, there seemed to open a prospect of better times.
The professorship of drawing at King's College had fallen vacant ;
and in January 1834 Cotman was appointed to the post. Cotman's
name was originally suggested, it would seem, by Lady Palgrave. In a
letter to her, quoted by Mr. Roget (vol. ii. p. 35), Cotman expresses his
gratitude. Dear Lady Palgrave (he writes) — The final arrangement is made. I am
to have one guinea per annum beyond the annual sum of j£ioo for every pupil
beyond 100. The numbers amount to from 170 to 180, consequently an income
beyond the highest sum originally fixed. As you are the first spring or mover
in this delightful plan for me, you will, I hope, excuse my eagerness in laying my
happiness before you. Present my most respectful compliments to Sir Thomas
Palgrave. — Most respectfully your devoted servant, J. S. Cotman.
Two of my sons are to be placed in the school, one free of expense.
A powerful seconder of Lady Palgrave's exertions was J. M. W.
Turner. Several of the governors approached him to ask whom he
would recommend. To each he replied, " Why, Cotman, of course,"
appearing impatient at last that any one should admit a doubt upon so
clear a question.
Turner's admiration had begun long ago, when they worked together
at Dr. Monro's ; and we have other evidence that it had not decreased,
besides being reciprocated.
Turner's Liber Studiorum appeared 1807-19, and Cotman made
from it a number of exquisite copies in pencil, now in Mr. Reeve's
collection. Whether Turner saw these, we do not know ; but he
certainly saw a copy that Cotman had made of one of the subjects in the
Rivers of France. He liked it so much that he wished to have it. It
was given him ; and a few years afterwards he gave it away again as his
own ! When the owner had it remounted, he found on the back : "By John
Sell Cotman ; presented to my old and esteemed friend, J. M. W. Turner."
This emphatic championship on Turner's part must have gladdened
Cotman. His spirits were roused too at the new prospect opening before
him, and he occupied himself eagerly with the business of the change. It
was necessary to arrange for the move at once.

JOHN SELL COTMAN 85
The eldest son, Miles Edmund, was to continue his work as teacher
at Norwich. Before bringing his family to London, he took lodgings

Windmill. By J. S. Cotman. By permission of Mr. Palser.

there himself with his son John Joseph in Gerrard Street, and finally
took a house at No. 42 Hunter Street, Brunswick Square.

86 JOHN SELL COTMAN
All this meant expense. And for this and other reasons it was
determined that the collections formed in the house at St. Martin's Palace
Plain should be sold.
The sale took place in September ; it lasted three days, from the
ioth to the 1 2th, and fetched £569 : 6s. Besides engravings, etchings,
paintings, and drawings, the entire library and the collections of models,
of boats, casts, and armour were included. The books, nearly all fine
illustrated works, numbered about a thousand ; the prints, among which
were etchings of Rembrandt and the other Dutchmen, and — special favour
ites of Cotman — some of those brilliant Bolswerts and Vorstermans after
Rubens, numbered about 5000. Among the drawings Guido, Vande-
velde, Ostade, and Zucchero were represented. Cotman's own drawings
were not sold, but kept for use in London. But there were several
oil pictures of his, framed, which were sold, the highest price gained being
five guineas for The Mishap, now at Carrow House.
As the catalogue of this sale gives us evidence for the date of
these pictures, some of which can be traced to their present owners, this
may be an appropriate place for gathering up such clues as can be found
about Cotman's production of oil pictures, intermittent and fragmentary
as it had been up to the present period.

IX. Oil Paintings
Cotman was always haunted by the desire of painting in oils, but his
other occupations never left him free to pursue it regularly, ambitiously,
with the devotion that he wished. And not only his other occupations,
but lack of purchasers. He must have had very few commissions in all
his life. One instance of a commission is known ; and in this case
Cotman received £io, with the price of the canvas and colours. This
was not a great sum, but it was twice as much as was fetched by any of
the oil pictures at the sale of 1 8 34. Among them was the Fishing Boats off
Yarmouth (p. 89), now in Mr. Colman's possession, — perhaps Cotman's
masterpiece in oils, — and this had hung unsold for years in his house at
St. Martin's Palace Plain.
It is obvious from these considerations, as well as from the scarcity of

The Waterfall. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of J. J. Colman, Esq.
From the reproduction published by the Autotype Company.

88 JOHN SELL COTMAN
leisure allowed by a drawing-master's duties and the incessant production
of water-colours and etchings, that Cotman could not have painted a
great number of oil pictures. We have it also on his son's authority
that he never painted a large picture ; a somewhat vague statement, but
one that confirms what one would surmise.
Probably, therefore, the list of oil pictures sold in 1834 comprises
most of those painted during the second residence in Norwich ; some
may date from the Yarmouth time, when Cotman certainly took up oils
more earnestly than he had hitherto.
The Waterfall (p. 87), for which Mr. Reeve has the first sketch,
must be fairly early, dating from about 1 8 1 5 perhaps. It is rather flat,
designedly, and in a cold key of colour, but painted with a full, fat brush,
like nearly all of Cotman's oil pictures, and very characteristic in com
position. This was not in the sale of 1834 ; but another picture of the
same period, Wherries on Breydon, the picture now in the National
Gallery, was in the sale, and fetched 18 s. It was since sold as a Crome,
and is not in its original condition. Nevertheless, it remains very
beautiful ; boldly simple in design, direct in execution. Nowhere surely
has the poetry of sails been more perfectly expressed.
Of the Galliot in a Gale, also in the National Gallery, it may be
enough to say that whoever imagines that in this picture he sees a repre
sentative or fine Cotman, errs. Cotman could draw boats with mastery,
and waves with mastery ; but this boat is superficially painted, these waves
are stage waves, and though a wave is striking the boat, the boat is
evidently unwetted. Contrast all this with the Fishing Boats off Tar
mouth. Here the boat rides in the swinging mass of the swell ; the masts
and rigging of the two anchored smacks strain in the wind, the air is dim
with fine scattered spray ; all is wet and wild, blown cloud and living sea.
These pictures were painted before the visit to Normandy. After
wards, Cotman took to painting on a warm yellow ground, and the later
pictures have a warmer and more glowing tone. The Mishap (p. 91)
is one of these. In an earlier picture of trees, the Alder Car, in the
possession of Dr. Cotman, the painter's grandson, the foliage has a dark,
sombre colouring, which makes the beautiful painting seem a little heavy ;
in The Mishap the trees are brightly touched with golden, almost ruddy
hues. This little picture fetched the highest price at the 1834 sale —

Missing Page

Missing Page

Fishing Boats off Yarmouth. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of J. J. Colman, Esq.
From the reproduction published by the Autotype Company.

JOHN SELL COTMAN

91

£5 : 5 s., and its companion, The Baggage Waggon, ^5. Slighter but
somewhat similar to these are two pictures owned by Mrs. Gunn ; one, a
charming piece, with delicate soft trees ; another, a composition of trees,
founded on the view from Cotman's window on St. Martin's Palace Plain.

The Mishap. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of J. J. Colman, Esq.
From the reproduction published by the Autotype Company.
One or two characteristic little compositions, for which Mr. Reeve
has sketches, are, or were, in Messrs. Dowdeswells' possession.
But more important than these is Mr. Bridgman's very beautiful

9 2 JOHN SELL COTMAN
View from Tarmouth Bridge, looking towards Breydon, just after Sunset,
in which there is more subtlety of atmospheric effect than is usual
with Cotman, yet not less simplicity and largeness. The flush is just
beginning to fade from a glowing summer evening, and from the sails
upon the peaceful water. This is one of the very finest of Cotman's
works in oil. It was exhibited at Norwich in 1824. The companion,
also owned by Mr. Bridgman, Dutch Boats at Tarmouth, is splendid and
luminous in colour, but less wonderful.

X. Residence in London — Last Works and Death
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, it is interesting to recall, was Cotman's pupil
at King's College School, doubtless the most illustrious pupil he ever had.
Cotman had been some five years at the school when Rossetti entered it,
and for some few years more he taught Rossetti drawing. In W. M.
Rossetti's life of his brother (vol. i. p. 73) there is a vivid glimpse of the
artist in this later time. " An alert, forceful-looking man, of moderate
stature, with a fine well-moulded face, which testified to an impulsive
nature somewhat worn and wearied. He seemed sparing of speech, but
high-strung in what he said," with " a rather abrupt and excitable manner."
It is such a face as we see in the water-colour portrait by H. B. Love
in Mr. Reeve's possession, wrought upon by time and care, yet with the
nervous energy behind it intensified in expression, since the early portrait
of his youth.
Just now, however — it was not for some few years that Rossetti joined
the school — Cotman was in cheerful spirits ; the lifting of his anxieties
by the prospect of a better income made him look forward with something
like happiness to his new life. Letters to Miles Edmund show us the
whole family occupied drawing in the evenings for the college. The
studies made by the sons and daughter were included among Cotman's
drawing copies, and sometimes the work of a promising pupil would be
honoured in the same way.
In 1835 Miles Edmund came to London, and at the end of 1836 was
appointed to assist his father when John Joseph returned to Norwich to
continue the teaching there. Letters to the latter give us glimpses of

JOHN SELL COTMAN

93

Cotman's busy life and his amusements. He writes of the pleasure which
had been given him by a mention of him in a book by an old pupil, and
again of a party at his house, and the old friends who came.
He now saw more of brother artists than he had done since his

The Baggage Waggon. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of J. J. Colman, Esq.
From the reproduction published by the Autotype Company.

early time in London. Stark was living now in Chelsea ; Cattermole
and Prout, too, from whom there are letters to Cotman that have been
preserved, were his friends ; and Varley, who came to visit him once
when he was ill at Norwich a few years before this, and prophesied his

9+ JOHN SELL COTMAN
living for another ten years ; and David Cox. With Cox, who admired
his work excessively, he was to have made an excursion to Birmingham
in August 1838, but something or other prevented.
Cotman had drawings by some of these painter friends. At a sale
at Christie's in May 1836 a number of Cotman's drawings, with others
by Varley, Prout, Cox, Cattermole, Miiller, and Copley Fielding, which
belonged to him and had been made up into lots with his own, were
sold. It was a miscellaneous sale, the chief feature of which was a
number of sketches by Wilkie. Neither the Coxes nor the Miillers
fetched so much as the Cotmans, one of which, a Tarmouth Sands,
brought no less than £2 : 10s. What days for collectors were those !
This and the former sale at Norwich doubtless taught Cotman that
money was not to be made by his painting. Yet he continued to
produce, even though his labours at the college were tyrannously
exacting of his hours. The work was, in fact, too much for him ; it
was wearing him down. His health began visibly to weaken. But he
had fewer anxieties than heretofore, and wrote cheerful letters. He
felt himself appreciated in London, and was easily gratified with little
things. In 1836 he was made honorary member of the Institute of
British Architects, a tribute to the knowledge and antiquarian enthusi
asm of his architectural works.
Two years later the whole of the etchings were published by Bohn
in five parts, the fifth of which was the Liber Studiorum, also published
separately. Cotman's Liber, once, it seems, intended to illustrate, like
Turner's, all kinds of composition in landscape, though the scheme was
never carried to completion, remains a valuable index to his mind. It
contains nearly all his favourite themes. The etchings, called bv Bohn
" early efforts," seem to date mostly from Cotman's maturity, and the
second residence in Norwich. They are nearly all on soft ground.
As Mr. Roget has pointed out, it is remarkable that there is no sea-
subject among Cotman's etchings. But otherwise his versatility is well
represented. The Bamborough is a fine example of his drawings of old
castles, planted firmly on rocky heights. And The Devil's Bridge (p. 97)
is a variation of a favourite subject for which Cotman's name was Height
and Depth. Mr. Colman has a drawing with this title. Some of the larger
plates are classical compositions with graceful trees and figures, such as

JOHN SELL COTMAN

95

The Judgment of Midas, which dates from 1824. Cotman's own copy of
the Liber is in the British Museum ; it contains a few unpublished plates.
The water-colours of this last period are not very numerous,1 but
some are of large size and ambitious.
Figures had before this, about 1830, begun to play a larger part
than hitherto in Cotman's pictures ; and some of these later drawings
are frankly "historical," with a landscape scarcely secondary even. The
King John and Prince Henry at Swinstead Abbey and The Duke of Tork
and the Earl of Sandwich hoisting signals prior to an action with de

Bamborough Castle. From a soft-ground Etching by J . S. Cotman.
Ruyter, both of 1833, are examples. Mr. Colman's Spruggins Hall is
also of 1833, and with another drawing, Sir Simon Spruggins, represents
Cotman's protest against a contemporary satire in which pedigrees and
armorial bearings were irreverently scoffed at. But the one which
Cotman himself seems most to have set his heart on was a very large
water-colour- — "a whacker" he calls it — representing a piece of imaginary
history — the Presentation of a Rose and Sword to the Lady of the Manor
at Flixton Hall. This is a splendid failure; charged with colour, a
1 He had only one drawing at the Water-colour Society in 1838, four in 1839,
after which year he exhibited no more. Mr. Roget (vol. ii. p. 37) tells us that his
average for fifteen years was scarcely three drawings a year. ' .

96 JOHN SELL COTMAN
festal scene with figures in rich attire, and against the intense blue of
the sky a magnificent banner luxuriantly unfolding its rosy silk above
the battlements. The glow, the pomp, the gorgeous unreality of
romantic art are here. One is reminded of Delacroix.
This was painted in 1838. Cotman, writing in the ardour of
creation, says that he will charge sixty guineas for it, perhaps more, if
it comes well. But it remained unsold till his death.
Was it reaction from such work as this, cloying with its exotic
luxury, that in the last few remaining years he turned back to simpler
methods and a fresher contact with the earth and sky, the sun and wind?
Whatever the cause, it is certain that in the sketches of 1839 to 1842
we find Cotman in a new phase. He returns to nature, intent, as he
had rarely been before, on seizing the essential spirit of a scene, not
preoccupied with weaving the matter of his vision into his own schemes
of form and colour, but submitting his mind to the aspect of things,
bent on piercing to the heart of them. He works now with the aim
which was habitual to David Cox.
Every year in his holidays Cotman visited Norwich. He loved the
place always. And it was on these visits that the drawings just men
tioned were made. One of 1839 *s tne sketch °f a Doat upon the Yare,
the bows leaping a wave ; a delightful sketch of motion. But most
date from 1841. In the autumn of this year (the last autumn that
Cotman was to see) he went down to Norfolk in flood-time. He went
in an impressionable temper. He saw pictures everywhere. His eye
was alert and his hand active.
Two wonderful sketches, Below Hardley Cross and Below Langley,
were made on the same day of October, the 19th. The latter, to
which Cotman gave also the happy title of The Wold Afloat, is one of the
most masterly sketches ever made. It has that intensity of imagination
which makes the actual means of expression seem to partake of the
material on which it works. The record is brief, but haunting. The
listless wetness of the beaten branches, the drooping sedges, the empty
sky, the blowing wind ; how keenly is it all brought to the senses, as
with the keenness of physical contact, yet expressed on the gray paper
with a few black chalk lines. Only less powerful in effect is the
companion sketch, with its forlorn willows standing chilly in the wind.

JOHN SELL COTMAN 97
Une day in November Cotman rode over Mousehold Heath to dine
with his father at Thorpe. A hailstorm was pouring down, but he was

The Devil's Bridge. From u soft-ground Etching by J. S. Cotman.
"obliged," he says, "to stop and sketch a magnificent scene" — one of
the same series of sketches. "Oh, rare and beautiful Norfolk," he adds ;
" but Norfolk is full of such scenes." G

98 JOHN SELL COTMAN
Another sketch was made at the house at Thorpe ; the place to
which his father had retired in his old age. It had a garden overhanging
the Yare with poplars and sloping lawn, to which Cotman in his sketch
has added peacocks on a terrace.
This same month he went to Wolterton, to see the famous picture
of The Rainbow by Rubens. And, strangely, just as he reached the
house, a rainbow appeared on a retreating storm, and Cotman sketched it
hanging bright above the woods. Yet another storm-effect is recorded
in a sketch at Cromer of this same November ; a most original com
position, of the sea spread vast, with huddling white waves to the sky,
and diminutive watching figures of men upon the shore.
Some of these sketches were intended by Cotman to be made into
oil pictures. One such picture, now owned by Mr. Holmes, is from a
sketch dated December 28. Another was from a drawing of a wood,
with a great fallen tree. Mr. Reeve possesses the tracing used to transfer
the composition to canvas, and on it Cotman wrote : " Commenced the
picture December 17,1 841 ." But the picture is now unknown, or perhaps
no longer exists. Lastly, the View from my Father's House at Thorpe
was transferred to canvas. This unfinished picture, now in the Norwich
Museum, is dated January 18, 1842. It is interesting, apart from its
beautiful composition, as it shows Cotman's method of working. The
design is lightly sketched in black and white over a warm yellow ground.
It would have been a beautiful picture.
And this is the last we know of Cotman's painting. The fresh
impulse to his art of this final autumn was but the last leap of the flame.
Before the summer was over it was quenched.
July found Cotman ill. It was no serious disorder, but a mortal
languor had settled upon him. He had no will to struggle ; worn out,
he desired peace. " If he would only take his proper food," wrote his
daughter to her brother, " he would soon be better. He always
expresses himself as though he hoped it would be the last time he should
have to take anything." On the second day after this was written, he
was dead. " Natural decay," says the register, was the cause of death ;
and indeed his spirit had quite worn out his body. He was buried in
the cemetery behind St. John's Wood Chapel. In the May following
there was a two-days' sale of his pictures and drawings ; but though there

The Wold Afloat. By J. S. Cotman. Collection of J. Reeve, Esq.
From the reproduction published by the Autotype Company.

ioo JOHN SELL COTMAN
were close on three hundred lots, all went for the miserable amount of
£219:17:6. On the 6th, 7th, and 8th of June his prints and library
were sold, and these fetched £307 : 10 : 6.
There remains to be mentioned the set of eight etchings published at
Norwich after Cotman's death in 1846 by Charles Muskett. These are
interesting as showing Rembrandt's influence, and are very different in
style from the early etchings. Four are figure studies, one of which
looks like a study after Terburg ; but the best are The Windmills, the
Beach at Fecamp, and the Fishermen at Tarmouth. These, if they had
but been richly printed, would be effective and successful etchings.
XI. Characteristics
Cotman's time has not yet come ; he still awaits his due of fame.
Many things have hindered the right appreciation of his genius ; but
chiefly that his work is so little known. All his finest water-colours are
in private hands ; hence a widespread misconception of his work, based
on very insufficient knowledge. According to Redgrave, " his colour is
rich, but a hot yellow predominates." One knows the kind of Cotman
which produces such an impression ; drawings with strong contrasted
blues and yellows, especially the drawings made after Harriott's sketches.
But to make such an absolute statement about Cotman's work as a whole
is ridiculous. Mr. Reeve's collection is the largest and finest that exists,
and it represents Cotman at every stage of his career ; yet there is scarcely
a single drawing in the collection which could justify Redgrave's descrip
tion. Cotman was, in fact, wonderfully various and versatile. Enough
has been said already, in recording the successive phases through which he
passed, to indicate the lines of his development. To a certain extent it
was parallel with that of Turner. But there are differences to be noted.
Cotman's individuality was earlier disengaged. His youthful architectural
work is less rich in minute observation than Turner's, but freer, broader,
more personal in style, and with richer harmonies of colour. Cotman
is at this time more akin to Girtin, though never Girtin's imitator.
Again, his devotion to composition marks him at a very early stage ; the
sketching club drawings and several beautiful water-colours of the

JOHN SELL COTMAN

101

London period abundantly show it. And all through his life Cotman
kept up the two strains in his art side by side ; taking refuge often from
severe labour at patient architectural work in compositions of freest
fancy and sometimes extravagant colour. These colour-dreams look as
if inspired by Turner ; yet dates seem to show that Cotman was here the
earlier in point of time. Cotman's first essays in these glowing contrasted
effects date from before 1820.

Landscape Composition with Figures. By J . S. Cotman. Collection of J. J . Colman, Esq.
From the reproduction published by the Autotype Company.
But it is not these which represent Cotman at his finest. They are
the offspring, it seems to me, of his melancholy, luxuriating in a richness
as of " globed peonies " and " rainbows." They remind one of some of
Shelley's lyrics ; and indeed, in his untiring and brilliant production,
without recognition, with scarcely any appreciation, Cotman resembles
Shelley; "stanzas written in dejection" by the shores of a visionary
beauty, that haunts the mind but is beyond possession.
It is rather in such a drawing as Breaking the Clod that Cotman is

102 JOHN SELL COTMAN
seen at his happiest. For here there is no attempt to escape from the
actual, no revolt; only the distillation of what is loveliest in an actual
scene, without effort or vehemence, accomplished with the quietness of
power. It seems, indeed, almost as if the scene had created itself upon
the paper ; so unconscious, so lost in its subject, has been the working of
the artist's mind. The drawing, once seen, haunts the memory ; it
overflows with its own atmosphere ; it is scented with the dawn ; one
hears the labourer's cry to his team in the early stillness, in the shadow
of the sleepy elms ; one feels all the charm of the " sacred morning " :
the Greek epithet suggests itself appropriately before a creation that recalls
the Greeks in the sanity of its beauty. Whoever sees this drawing must
think at once of Corot and of Millet, for it combines the dominating
sentiment of the work of each of them. Yet it was made probably not
later than 1 8 1 5 ; it belongs to Cotman's earlier work. Slight as it is, in
an obvious sense, this is a production of high importance. And very
important also are those wonderful sketches of the last year of Cotman's
life, The Wold Afloat and its companions, in which, as Mr. Wedmore has
said, he anticipated the impassioned force of David Cox's later time.
Cotman's work in oils is, we have seen, inconsiderable compared with the
rest of his work ; but were he represented at the National Gallery by a
few pictures equal to the Fishing Boats off Tarmouth, The Mishap, or
Mr. Bridgman's After Sunset, he would be seen to take rank with the
greatest of our landscape artists. As a water-colour painter he has few
equals. Turner apart, there is no one in our fine English school, of
imagination so rare, of achievement so various.

INDEX

ACKEEMAN, 51
Arnold, Matthew, 20, 48
Barker of Bath, 13
Barwell, H. G., 26, 37
Beechey, 10-12, 17
Berney, Mary, 14
Berney, Phcebe, 14
Bridgman, G., 77, 92, 102
Brooke, Rajah, 38
Burnet, J., 38
Callcott, 52
Callot, 24
Carpenter, W. H., 16
Cattermole, 93, 94
Cholmeley, Francis, 54, 56
Claude, 24, 45
Colman, J. J., 18, 37, 56, 78, 86
Constable, 33, 45
Coppin, 28
Cornish, B., 53
Corot, 102
Cotman, Dr., 6, 60, 88
Cotman, Works referred to —
Abbatial House, Rouen, 7 8
Alder Car, 88
Baggage Waggon, 91
Below Hardley Cross, 96
Below Langley, 96
Blue Afternoon, 77
Breaking the Clod, 63, 101, 102
Bridgnorth, 52
Byland Abbey, 67
Cader Idris, 64
Cambridgeshire Antiquities (etchings), 75
Centaur, 54
Chateau in Normandy, 76, 77
Cologne, 79
Crome, Portrait, 58
Croyland, 56
Dewy Eve, 63
Dieppe, 76
Draining Mill, Lincolnshire, 63
Duke of York and the Earl of Sandwich, 95
Duncombe Park, 58
Durham Cathedral, 56
Dutch Boats at Yarmouth, 92
Etchings, 64-75
Falaise, 76
Fishing Boats off Yarmouth, 68, 86

Cotman, Works referred to —
Flixton Manor, 95
Framlingham Castle, 78
Greta Bridge, 58
King John at Swinstead, 95
Liber Studiorum (etchings), 60, yy, 94
Mare and Foal, 63
Mishap, 86, 88, 102
Mont St. Michel, 78
Mousehold Heath, 63
Norfolk Antiquities (etchings), 67, 75
Normandy Etchings, 71, 72, 75
Old,, House at St. Albans, 77
Old Houses, Mill Lane, 50
Postwick Grove, 64
Sepulchral Brasses (etchings), 68, 75
Shadowed Stream, 64
Sir Simon Spruggins, 95
Sketching Club Compositions, 53
Spruggins Hall, 95
Trentham Church, 63
Twickenham, 58, 60, 63
View from my Father's House, 98
View from Yarmouth Bridge, 77, 92, 102
Waterfall, 68, 88
Weird Scene — Moonlight, 54
Wherries on Breydon, 88
Windmill, 76
Wold Afloat, 96, 102
Yarmouth Sands, 94
Cotman, J. J., 92
Cotman, M. E., 75, 92
Cox, David, 94, 96, 102
Cristall, 52
Crome, F., 41
Crome, J. B., 14, 21
Crome, M. S., 34
Crome, Works referred to —
Avenue at Chapel Fields, 47
Back of the New Mills, 48
Blacksmith's Shop, 20, 21
Boulevard des Italiens, 29
Boulogne, 29, 30
Boy keeping Sheep, 33
Carrow Abbey, 18
Composition in style of Wilson, 20
Cow Tower, 20
Dawn, 47
Etchings, 24-26
Grove Scene, 37
Grove Scene at Marlingford, 30
Mousehold Heath, 30, 33, 46, 47

104

INDEX

Crome, Works referred to —
Mousehold Heath (small), 33
Oaks in Kimberley Park, 22
On the Yare at Thorpe, 37
09tend River, 33, 34
Poringland Oak, 33, 34, 45, 48
Sketch in Gainsborough's manner, 20
Slate-Quarries, 18
Temple of Venus, after Wilson, 20
Water-colours, 27
Willow, 37
Yarmouth Beach, 37
Cunningham, Allan, 23
David, 28
Davis, J. P., 71
Delacroix, 96
De Loutherbourg, 13
Denham, J. C, 52
De Wint, 52
Dowdeswells, 6, yy note, 91
Enclefield, Sir H. C, 64
Fielding, Copley, 94
Francia, Louis, 52
Freeman, Mr., 28
Gainsborough, 10, 12, 13, 20, 21, 42, 45
Geddes, Andrew, 24
Girtin, 51, 52, 53, 100
Glover, J., 28
Grimaldi, 27
Gunn, Mrs., 30, 91
Gurney, Hudson, 64
Gurneys of Earlham, 16, 17
Harriott, W. H., 78
Harvey, T., 10, 16
Hay ward, 53
Hobbema, 10, 22, 34, 37, 42, 45
Hogarth, 12
Holmes, G., 37, 98
Hoppner, 13
Huth, L., 30
Jessopp, Dr., 38
Ladbrooke, R., 8, 10, 17, 33
Leeds, W. C, 18
Louis XVIII., 28
Love, H. B., 92
Matchett, Rev. J., 38
Millet, 102
Mills, Ann, 60
Monkhouse, C, 6, 18 note
Monro, Dr., s '
Miiller, 94
Mulready, 77
Munn, P. S., 53
Murphy, 26
Murray, P. S., 52
Muskett, C, 100
Muther, 42

Napoleon, 27, 28, 68
Neer, A. van der, 34
Neill, 53
Opie, 13, 17, 50
Orrock, J., 22
Paget, Sir J., 41
Paget, S., 41
Palgrave, Lady, y%, 84
Palgrave, Sir R., 6, 27
Percy, Dr., 53
Piranesi, 64, 67
Porter, Jane, 50, 52
Porter, R. K., 52
Prout, 93, 94
Redgrave, 49 note, 100
Reeve, J., 6, 27, 38, 50, 52, 54, 56, 58, 63, 76, 78,
80, 84, 91, 92, 98, 100
Rembrandt, 12, 24, 76, 100
Rigby, Dr., 8
Robinson, Sir J. C, 27, 79
Roget, J. L., 6, 27, 78, 84, 94, 95 note
Rossetti, 92
Rubens, 98
Ruysdael, 22, 25, 34, 45
Samuel, G., 52
Sharp, Michael, 34, 42
Shelley, 100
Stannard, J., 30, 33
Stark, 23, 24, 37, 42, 46, 93
Steward, Rev. C. J., 34
Terburg, 100
Thirtle, 33, 50
Thompson, J. Pyke, 77
Turner, Dawson, 7, 22, 23, 25, 26, 41, 54, 64, 6~,
71,80
Turner, Mrs., 71
Turner, Miss, 78
Turner, J. M. W., 24, 41, 42, 51, 52, -2. S4. 94,
100, 101, 102
Underwood, T., 52
Vandyke, 56
Varley, J., 52. 53,93, 94
Velazquez, 20
Vincent, 16, 23, 42
Webster, ^ 3
Wcdmore, F., 6, 102
Whisler, 8
Wild, C, 78
Wilkic, 24, 94
Wilson, Richard, 10, 13, 1^, i(>, 19, 20. 42. 45
Wodderspoon, ", 38
Wordsworth, 20, 52
Worthington, T., 52
Vetts, W., 30

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