Cotmania. Vol. I. 1926-7

{Morning Post cutting} CROWLAND ABBEY - A PENCIL STUDY BY JOHN SELL COTMAN In Monday's Morning Post appeared a photograph of a newly discovered underfloor and steps to the ancient Lincolnshire Abbey. The drawing of the Abbey, by the eminent artist, John Sell Cotman, is reproduced by permission of Messrs Brown and Phillips, of the Leicester Galleries.
{Kitson's notes} Morning Post 4-9-26. bought 20.IX (11).26 from Brown & Phillips for R.H.K for 36.15.0. They had also an 'East front of Howden, Yorks' - p[aid] , slightly smaller - 30 guineas.

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{Kitson's notes above press cutting} From a short story, called 'the garden of Eden' by R.H.Mottram. published in the London Mercury - Jan. 1927.
{London Mercury cutting} At the end of the room, under the wide gallery that had been built for musicians, was a little space railed off for a Loan Exhibition of Past Members, and it was here that Dormer stopped before a largish water colour, the prevailing tone of which was a deep russett, and read the title. " 'The Garden of Eden' !" "Yes!" Skene confirmed, and said no more, marvelling at Dormer's intelligence at picking out one of his (Skene's) favourites. "Cotman?" Dormer enquired. "Not quite. Cotman manner, and it is not certain thatCotman never touched it . Perfect was his pupil, Impossible to say how much he foresaw the oxidisation which has added so much!" "Where is it?" Skene came swiftly down from the clouds. Of course Dormer was merely trying to be intelligent, didn't really care how the picture was done or what the painter felt. To him a picture was the equivalent of a photograph, colour added, but exatitude sacrificed. Skene was sensible enough to accept this, as being the natural and general state of things. "It's gone now!" "I must have seen it, sometime!" "Of course you did. It used to standat the Quayside, where the wall of The Close comes down to the river."
[ ... ]
railway, with Peace abroad and Reform in politics at home, came the first of the really leisured class with safe permanent incomes. Among these people there lodged the sort of culture - accompanied by none of the expense - which a few years earlier was the close preserve of Grand Seigneurs. It was for this new public that Cotman and his pupils worked. Perfect discovered the 'Garden of Eden.' It had all the qualities that were necessary to a painter of the period - it was picturesque, shapely, local - and suggested no abstract idea whatever. In that curious way it earned immortality - not for what it was, but precisely for what it wasn't. Its builder, and the various owners certainly could never have guessed for what it would be remembered. So that was the end of the 'Garden of Eden' and here you see its apotheosis!"