Cotmania. Vol. I. 1926-7

Outside public galleries there is nothing at the moment to equal in importance the exhibition of watercolour and other drawings by John Sell Cotman, forming the Bulwer Collection, at Walker's Galleries, 118 New Bond-street, and the occasion cannot be too widely know. Architectural subjects - which are in the majority - lend their own dignity, but it is not easy to think of any other artist, past or present, who could make such a solid impression with a collection of drawings alone, of which the greater number are in pencil or neutral wash, and mingled with enjoyment there must be some slight humiliation that Cotman had to wait so long for the full recognition of his genius. These drawings were made for the Rev. James Bulwer, born 1794, himself a talented artist, whose ruling passion was archaeology, particularly in relation to his native county, Norfolk. Their origin gives them a special interest, for they prove - if it needed proving - that the highest aesthetic qualities are compatible with a recording purpose. They knock the bottom out of the contention that any considerable artist need wait until he is "moved" by some discovery of his own, if he is a considerable artist the "moving" will come in the doing, no matter who set him the task, and it is the near-artist who has to wait for inspiration. In these drawings Cotman is soon to be an artist because he could not help it; it was when, emulating Turner, he tried to be "artistic" that he sometimes fell below himself. Of Cotman's powers of execution in pencil and water-colour it is hardly necessary to speak, beyond remarking the extraordinary perfection with which he was able to suggest surfaces and textures with very limited and simple means, and suggest them, moreover, when the principal aim of the drawing was the definition of form; but what strikes one freshly here is his genius as a composer. There is not a tuft of grass or a turn of a faintly trodden path but serves an aesthetic purpose. Look, for example, at the turn of the path and the placing of the sheep in "Gateway of Castle Rising Castle" (50), one of the very finest things in the collection and the foreground and right-hand groups of deer in "Kimberley Hall" (148). As an architectural draftsman - most of the drawings of Norfolk churches or their details - Cotman has never been surpassed , if equalled; he gives the "building" as well as the "architectural" character, the effect of weight and solidity and articulation with the ground; and the way his line hugs the settlements of masonry in such drawings as "Upton church, Norfolk" (1) and "Beechmanwell Church" (17) provokes a physical reaction. You suffer the fabric in your bones. It is to be hoped that every architect in London will see these drawings because, though they represent the buildings of the past as affected by time and weather, they show what architecture must be if it is to be anything more than filling-in a design. Of the works in colour Nos. 11, 21 and 22, may be selected for their organ-like music of sober tones. It is not surprising that examples are being secured for public collections. Mr Frank Rinder has bought Nos. 11, 21, 50 and 148 out of the Felton bequest for the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Nos. 139 and 145 are claimed by the Victoria and Albert Museum; and several others have been reserved for similar institutions. The Times. 5.6.26

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Mrs John S Cotman Byfleet (Stn). 152. The Old House, Pyrford, Surrey.