The Cotman Letters 1804-1833

TELEPHONE
NO. 91 CITY

50, ELDON STREET,
NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE.

27th August, 1935.

Dear Sir,

My cousin, Capt. Charlton of Hesleyside, has shown me your letter to him of 17th August. He is answering it himself, but I hope you will not mind my writing also to you on the subject of your letter.

I am interested in John Sell Cotman principally from his fine work on the Brasses of Norfolk and Suffolk, a pet subject of mine, and it is pleasing to know that my grandmother’s no mean skill as an artist was due to his tuition.

My grandfather (Capt. Charlton’s great-grandfather) William John Charlton, was born in 1784. He had no sisters and, as he did not marry Katharine H. Cholmeley till 1809, there cannot have been any Misses Charlton at Hesleyside in 1808. K. H. C. had two daughters, Mary and Catherine, born respectively in 1812 and 1817, who alone [survived?] infancy, so, if John Sell Cotman acted as drawing master to any Misses Charlton of Hesleyside, it must have been to them, but considerably later than 1808.

I hope Capt. Charlton will succeed in his quest for letters of sketches of J. S. C., but the contents of Hesleyside came under the hammer in 1880, so they may have been sold then.

Katharine H. Charlton lived at Orchard House, Gateshead, after her husband’s death in 1842, and died there in 1849. If she took away any personal belongings from Hesleyside, I do not know what became of them
on her death.

The Mr. Swinburne referred to was Edward Swinburne (born 1765), brother of Sir John Edward Swinburne of Capheaton. He was her cousin through both her father and her husband and was a well known and very capable artist. He made admirable drawings of innumerable places in