Cotmania. Vol. III. 1928-9

Dec: 13, 1928. Went with Sir Montague Pollock to visit Mrs We[l]ldon 3 South Park Rd an ardent collector of pictures. She has 2 Cotmans, a w.c. c 8x12 of the Windmill at Eye, late, very good: also a w.c. of the interior of a Chapel of a Church in Normandy. c 18x12 'J.S. Cotman 1830' a replica of Bob's Sepia. Some coarse passages but parts very beautiful. She has also a w.c. c 8x12 "St. Etienne" river scene, castle on left, boats & people. Picked up for 3s/- in a public house. It has many 'Cotmany' passages + a bit of Callow - Proust & Boyes thrown in. Her taste is most Catholic. Modern French. Tonks, Steer, Rex Whistler, Gainsborough, Bonington. etc. etc. altogether a very interesting collection.
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{Newspaper Clipping}
Monro was a physician on the staff of Bedlam who had a passion for watercolour, and was always on the lookout for young experimentalists in that medium whom he could help. They came to his rooms, worked for an hour or so at copying or at original drawing, and then had supper and half a crown. Or they would join the doctor at his country home, at Feltham, in Middlesex, or at Bushey, in Hertfordshire, and sketch from nature. Considering what the good doctor did for so peculiarly an English accomplishment as watercolour painting, I think it a shame that there is no tablet on his house to tell the world that here the young Girto, the young Turner, the young de Wint, the young Cotman, and the young Varley were encouraged and made ambitious. De Wint entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1809, and spent the rest of his placid happy life in teaching in London and painting the English countryside with extraordinary fidelity and clarity. He is buried in the Savoy Chapel ground. You may see what manner of head was his by looking that the façade of the Royal Institute of Painters in Piccadilly.
E.V. Lucas - 'Wanderer's Notebook' in the Sunday Times 16-12. 28.