Cotmania. Vol. IV. 1929-30

From the catalogue of G. D. Thomson's Show of Early English Water-colours at the Cotman Gallery, Birmingham, June 1930

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Equally personal was that rare genius John Sell Cotman whose perfect taste and sense of selection bring European Art in touch with the Art of the East and in these tapestry like drawings a feeling for design which has given us some of the most perfect things in English Art, and a distinction only equalled by J M W Turner.

J S Cotman
22 A Normandy Tower.
Signed Cotman, no. 1352.

J S Cotman, 1782 - 1842.
26 Landscape with Castle.
Signed by J S Cotman, no. 1330.

he bought it at Miss Geldart's sale in April for 5 1/2 g[uinea]s - is asking 12 gs.
J S Cotman, 1782 - 1842.
33 Pencil and Wash
A Swiss Lake, accomplished but not intimate.

J S Cotman, [[1814 - 1878.]]
46 Kirkham Abbey.
Framed - this is the watercolour illustrated in Connoisseur. Now belongs to Keen of B'ham.

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With a courage we must admire, the members of the London Artists' Association have arranged an exhibition in which their own landscapes and some by other living artists are shown side by side with paintings by such masters of the past as Richard Wilson, Gainsborough, and Constable.
The test would in any event be a severe one, and it becomes almost unfair competition here, where the examples of the dead are especially good, and those of the living are too frequently less good than we might expect. A gem of serene limpidity is Richard Wilson's "Backwater on the River Severn" (27), a perfect example of Italic textla peinture claireItalic text a century before the phrase was coined. It is a proof of the genuine originality of Wilson's mind when he forgot Italy and set about painting English landscapes. His "View on the Tiber" (18) is also lovely in quality, but while this classic composition ably continues a great tradition, the Severn picture heralds the development of a new movement in landscape painting.
Gainsborough is represented by the up-right "Pool" (12) and the horizontal "On the Orwell" (28), the latter being particularly rich in colour and decorative in its romantic arrangement. The Crome (10) - if it is a Crome - is disappointing, but Cotman's "Boy Fishing" (30) is an admirable example of that still underrated master, splendidly solid in its structure and with a tour de force of recession in its right-hand corner.
F Rulter, 'Sunday Times'
June 8. 1930.

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Among the Wilsons there is a light and airy "Backwater on the River Severn," there are several small Constables, and Cotman and Crome are represented by typical subjects. Nothing among the works of the living artists makes a more solid impression than "Sussex Weald," by Mr Duncan Grant, a harvest picture, with the principles of Cezanne completely domesticated by English painting. In "The Farm by the Sea," Mr Keith Baynes, the principles -possibly because the subject is French- appear to be more on the surface, but it is an excellent landscape, and Mr Richard Sickert, Mr. P. Wilson Steer, Miss Vanessa Bell, Mr. Mark Gertler, Mr Frederick Porter - who is the Crome of the present generation - and Mr Paul Nash are well represented.
The Times. June 9. 1930.