Cotman bicentenary

Magazine Antiques, May, 2005 by Miriam Kramer

John Sell Cotman was born in Norwich in 1782 and went to London in 1798 to become an artist. Over the next few years he traveled in Britain and made annual visits to Yorkshire from 1803 to 1805. The following year he settled in the city of his birth, establishing a school for drawing and design. In 1834 he was appointed professor of drawing at King's College in London.

Cotman was best known as an outstanding landscape and watercolor painter as well as one of the most important representatives of the Norwich school. He was prolific, and his work is in numerous public and private collections.

To mark the bicentenary of his last tour to Yorkshire, four institutions are mounting linked exhibitions this summer. Fittingly, the first display is at Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery where Cotman's works figure in two of the six exhibitions marking the bicentenary of the first exhibition of the Norwich Society of Artists. These shows are entitled Cotman in the British Museum: The James Reeve Collection and The Golden Age of Watercolours: The Hickman Bacon Collection. They can be seen until June 26. There are no publications.

The second exhibition, Sense and Sensibility: Cotman Watercolours of Durham and Yorkshire, is on view at the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, County Durham, from May 7 to July 31; it then moves to Harewood House in Leeds, where it will be on view from August 13 until October 30. A catalogue by David Hill accompanies this exhibition, and may be purchased by telephoning 44-133-218-1010. At Leeds City Art Gallery drawings by Cotman are on view from June 25 until October 1. There is no publication.

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