Cotmania. Vol. IV. 1929-30

Ashmolean Museum
Oxford
Department of Fine Art
Telephone No. 2522
4th Feb. 1930

Dear Kitson
I don't imagine that you care the classical "three skips of a louse" what I say, but I have an impulse which I cannot resist to tell you how struck I am with admiration at your most excellent paper in the O.W.S Club publication. It is without any sort of question the most important historical memoir of Cotman that has ever been published. The new facts throw a perfectly unequalled light upon the details of his life and artistic development and make it all more logical and comprehensible than it now named likely to appear. I am very jealous that it is published in that rather priceless picture-book instead of in a Walpole Society's volume, where it would have taken on, and itself imparted, added dignity. I wish that much inferior and gaseous critical matter had not spoiled the market and eaten up available illustration material (as well as the funds for reproducing it). For you might [like?] to expand the article into a book.
I hear you are off for another cruise of bridge against a Mediterranean background. I hope it will be a success.
Very sincerely yours
C. F. Bell