Cotmania. Vol. XI. 1935-6

with the public; but I don't think that it makes it clear - possibly nothing can make it clear - why with all his efforts & with all the violence that he did to his earlier ideas of art he never did work which satisfied anybody, either then or now, except possibly himself.
I think myself that the fault was in the time & the artistic ideas of the time; but the fact that Cotman failed to fit in with them is not due to his art being too good for or above them, but to some characteristic in his artistic nature which failed to conform to them for all his violent efforts. Consequently he neither had his own virtues not theirs, such as they were.
This doesn't seem to me very clear.