Cotmania. Vol. IV. 1929-30

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ENGLISH PAINTINGS
Though it contains examples of Gainsborough and Constable, the exhibition of 22 eighteenth and nineteenth century English paintings at the Independent Gallery, 7A, Grafton Street, represents rather "the brown" of the school, and so serves a very useful purpose. It is true that art knows no boundaries, but it is also true that the closer we get to native characteristics, particularly in landscape and portraiture, the more reason we have to be proud of English painting, and there is a good as well as bad meaning to provincialism. What the exhibition suggests, no doubt fallaciously, is an intelligent gleaning from smaller country houses, rectories, and so forth, where a few good pictures, originally acquired for subject rather than name, have been secluded rather than displayed for several generations. Most of the pictures are small, and none of them looks as if it claimed to more than a domestic purpose. It is, in short, an exhibition with an atmosphere, to which pleasant speculation about the circumstances of past ownership adds its contribution.
Artistically the jewel of the collection is the little "Landscape with Church," by Gainsborough. It has the familiar characteristics of his Ipswich period, the sandy bank and the dead tree, but concentrated, so that emphasis is thrown upon the design, which has a Cotmanesque boldness and simplicity. Though it represents an East Anglian worthy, the small "Portrait of Rev. Samuel Uredale(sic.) [Samuel Uvedale is correct title], Rector of Barking, Suffolk," is painted with the light hatching stroke of Gainsborough's later period. The earlier picture is balanced by a charming little grey "Landscape" by Constable, with a tree standing aside, as it were, to let the eye travel over the country. There are three Wilsons, "Landscape with Ruins" being the most complete as a classical composition, and two of the rare oil paintings of Peter de Wint, deep in tone and rich in colour. If memory can be trusted, "Battle of Fort Rock," by Turner, with its tangle of trees, represents material that is used in one of his more famous paintings - the one with the coils of a snake, or dragon. The most "swagger" picture in the collection is a half-length "Portrait of an Officer," by Alan Ramsay. "The Thames, London from Southwark," by W. Marlow, suggests a combination of Samuel Scott and Constable, and there are attractive small landscapes by S D Colkett, J Saunders, A Stannard, and F W Watts. The brilliant "Charles V visiting Francis I after the Battle of Pavia," by Bonington, is a watercolour study for the picture in the Wallace Collection.
The Times.
May 12. 1930

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Cotswold Gallery Exhibition.
May 1930.

20 Composition of Old Buildings at Conway
John Varley
Dated 1807.

21 On Woolwich Common. Paul Sandby

22 An Old Cottage. J. Sell Cotman
No. 22 was sold at Christie's on 28.3.'30

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Morning Post - 23.5.30
It is exhilarating in these drab days of art and nature to see a collection of water-colours by Turner, which includes examples of his finest work.
Usually one has to wait for such opportunities until Messers. Agnew's annual show opens, but at the homely Cotswold Gallery, 59, Frith Street, Soho, is now on view the eighth exhibition of English watercolours, in which there are excellent Turners. One of them is a supremely beautiful work painted in 1836, when he and his great patron, Munro of Navar, were travelling in the romantic Aosta Valley. This jewel-like drawing seems to be the beau geste of a magician's wand not the deliberate effort of a Royal Acadamician. It is effortless, a vision of spontaneous creation.
The "Chalet Argent, Val d'Aosta," also is impressive, but in a more theatrical way, though quite natural, as we see by actual photographs of the famous valley and slight Turner sketches. More sensitive in look and exquisite in expression are the lovely "Schloss Eltz, on the Moselle," and "A Fishing Boat at Sea," which represents the kind of day when we sigh for what is not.
Next to these works by Turner may be placed the gracious "Old Cottage" by I. [sic] Sell Cotman, and, if more ordinary, the drawings by David Cox, Samuel Prout, Joseph Farington, Paul Sandby, Edward Dayes, and John Varley are in the main quite charming.