Cotmania. Vol. X. 1934-5

{Extracts from The Annual Review of the V&A Museum}
An early Cotman drawing, signed and dated 1803, of the Ouse Bridge, York (fig.5), is of particular interest to students of English water-colour. Cotman is known to have visited York in the first week of July 1803 in the company of his friend P.S. Munn. A drawing by the latter artist of Ouse Bridge, York-July 6-1803 is in the British Museum, while the Victoria and Albert Museum already possesses a more distant view of the same bridge by Cotman, dated July 5. In the diary kept by Mrs. Cholmley of Brandsby Hall near York is the following entry:
"July 7, 1803. Mr Munn and Mr. Cotman came."
The beautiful drawing just acquired was probably done in London, after Cotman's return from Yorkshire, from a pencil drawing made on the spot. One of the two works by J.S. Cotman is a view od Dieppe Harbour, signed and dated 1823, probably the original of the replica exhibited at the Old Water Colour Society in 1825 and acquired by the Museum in 1876 in the William Smith Bequest. The other is a large painting of the Maison Abbatiale (or Logis Abbatial) of the Abbey of St. Ouen, Rouen, a building which was demolished in 1816. Other similar drawings by or after Cotman are known. Cotman does not seem to have seen the building before its demolition, and the drawings are presumably based on an engraving. Cotman exhibited the present drawing at Norwich in 1824, having painted it for Archdeacon Burney. Mr. Sydney L. Kitson has communicated, with other information, a quotation from the Norfolk Chronicle, of the 14th August 1824, referring to the exhibition of the Norwich Society, which says that "Of Mr. Cotman's views in France it would be difficult to select a more exquisite model of architectural delineation or one that more advantageously shows his originality and freedom of manner than that which offers itself in no.94, 'Abbatial House at Rouen'. We dwell with pleasure on the good taste, the elegant style and the appropriate adaptation of costume with which he has introduced his groups of figures into this subject".
{Kitson note}
Extracts from The annual Review of the V&A. Museum from 1934