Research Guide
The Cotman Collection and Kitson Archive
Prepared by Prof. David Hill, Jane Speller and Theodore Wilkins
Published: Jan 2018
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Getting Started
This is a brief guide to the nationally important collection of works by John Sell Cotman (1782 - 1842) at Leeds Art Gallery. Cotman is one of Britain’s most important artists and known worldwide for his watercolours and drawings. Leeds Art Gallery has one of the best collections of his work, including some of his finest watercolours and an unrivalled number of his sketchbook drawings.
The majority of the works were collected by Leeds architect Sydney Decimus Kitson (1871 - 1937) and bequeathed by him to Leeds. Kitson devoted his retirement to researching Cotman’s life and work and in 1937 published ‘The Life of John Sell Cotman’. Kitson also gave Leeds his archive of notebooks, correspondence and research materials. He called it ‘Cotmania’.
This website is an online catalogue of both The Cotman Collection and Kitson Archive. The catalogue has been arranged as a 'single search' platform where you can query both the works of art and archive material together as one repository. If you are new to using museum collections online please see our Search Guidance Notes.
John Sell Cotman (1782-1842)
Cotman was born in Norwich, the son of a shopkeeper who turned from hairdressing to haberdashery. He came to London to further his artistic education in 1798, and soon became a leading member of the circle of watercolour artists gathered around Thomas Girtin (1775-1802), despite having little formal training. From 1803-5 he made annual visits to Yorkshire as drawing tutor to the Cholmeley family; the sketches and studies made there provided the basis for many of his best-known watercolours. On the formation of the Society of Watercolour Painters in 1804, some personal animosity prevented Cotman from joining, and he returned soon afterward to Norwich, where he became a popular teacher; he lent out monochrome and coloured drawings for students to copy from a 'Circulating Library' which came to number over 1,000 works.
Image: 'Bridge and Cows', Jon Sell Cotman (1782-1842)Cotman issued the first of his sets of etchings in 1811. The next decade, when he lived in Yarmouth on the Norfolk coast, was devoted almost exclusively to printmaking, inspired in part by the antiquarian interests of his patron and employer, the banker Dawson Turner. In 1817 Cotman made the first of three tours of Normandy, which resulted in two folio volumes of etchings, published in 1822. Following his return to Norwich in 1823, Cotman took up painting again with renewed energy, in watercolour and in oil; he exhibited more frequently in the city and also in London. In 1834, he was appointed Drawing Master at King's College School in London, and lived in Hunter Street, Bloomsbury. He made a final, extended visit to Norfolk in the autumn of 1841, not long before his death in London in July 1842.
Text: The British Museum (https://www.britishmuseum.org/pdf/Cotman.pdf). (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Video: 'British Masters: John Crome & John Sell Cotman', Norfolk Museums Service, 2012.Sydney Decimus Kitson (1871 - 1937)
Sydney Decimus Kitson was the tenth child of the celebrated Leeds Locomotive engineer James Kitson. During an active life he contributed both practically and financially to an impressive number of public institutions and private organisations. His special loves were art, architecture and antiquarianism, but he is chiefly remembered for his devotion to the work of nineteenth century watercolour artist John Sell Cotman (1782-1842).
Sydney's parents were James I Kitson (1807-1885) and Elizabeth, née Hutchinson (1833-1913), a Nottinghamshire vicar's daughter and James' second wife. James was a self-made man from Hunslet, Leeds. The company started in 1835 at the Airedale Foundry, off Pearson Street, Hunslet, with Charles Todd as a partner. Initially, the firm made parts for other builders, until it was joined in 1838 by David Laird, a wealthy farmer who was looking for investments, and the company became Todd, Kitson and Laird. That year saw the production of the company's first complete locomotives for the North Midland and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. However, Todd left almost immediately to form Shepherd and Todd, and the company was known variously as Kitson and Laird or Laird and Kitson.
James, formerly of Hyde House, Clarendon Road, Leeds, bought Elmet Hall in Roundhay from the Nicholson family for £17,000 in 1865. It was here that Sydney was born on 26th June 1871. Sydney was of the same generation as his nephews, Edwin Kitson Clark (1866-1941) and Robert Hawthorn Kitson (1873-1947), with whose families and artistic interests those of his own were closely interlinked.
Robert's father was a director of Kitson & Co. until his premature death in 1899 and Edwin was the managing director until the firm was taken into receivership in 1934. The presiding entrepreneur throughout the firm’s heyday was Sydney's eldest brother, James l l Kitson (1835-1911). James Kitson was a Liberal Party politician. He was knighted as first Lord Mayor of Leeds in 1887 and was MP for Colne Valley from 1892-1907, when he was created the first Lord Airedale. He was elevated to the peerage in 1907. He was a prominent Unitarian in Leeds.
Sydney completed his education at Charterhouse and then at Cambridge where he entered Trinity College in 1889 and obtained his baccalaureate in 1892 and his Masters in 1896. Unlike most of the male Kitsons, Sydney did not join the family firm, choosing to qualify and practise as an architect instead. Robert, whose family had succeeded to Elmet Hall on James l's death, followed reading Natural Sciences. Like Sydney, he too rejected the family firm in favour of becoming an artist. At Cambridge, Sydney formed many of the friendships that sustained his active social and professional life in later years: the Trevelyans, the Runcimans, F. B. Malim BA, MA (1907-1911) later headmaster of Haileybury, and Henry Martineau Fletcher (1870-1953).
Image: Sydney D. Kitson (left) and H. M. Fletcher (right) at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Sydney served his articles with the London based architect Edward John May (1853–1941), a student of Norman Shaw who designed much of Bedford Park, the West London garden suburb at Turnham Green. He commenced independent practice in Leeds in 1897.
In 1896, Kitson and Henry Martineau Fletcher (1870-1953) a fellow architect and friend, embarked on an architectural sketching and study tour of the Veneto, the Dalmatian coast and Greece. Sydney gained experience of ecclesiastical architecture in the busy architectural practice of William Douglas Caröe (1857-1938) a major figure in the Arts and Crafts Movement, before returning to Leeds where he entered into partnership with architect Francis W. Bedford (1866-1904) from 1897 until Bedford left for London in 1904. Bedford was like Kitson the son of a successful Leeds manufacturer, in this case of chemicals and dyestuff. He was the star of his year, winner of the Royal institute of British Architects (RIBA) Ashpitel prize in 1890 and the Owen Jones studentship in 1891. He had been articled in Leeds to W. H. Thorp, the architect of the Leeds Art Gallery (1886-88), who was for many years an active member of the Leeds Fine Arts Club and the Art Gallery sub-committee of the City Council. The work of Bedford and Kitson was regularly reviewed and illustrated in the architectural press from 1893 and, except for some offices in the centre of Leeds; most of the buildings survive with at least their external features intact.
Image: 'Leeds College of Art and Design' designed by Francis W. Bedford and Sydney D. Kitson in 1902.
© Leeds Library & Information Services.Sydney lived at Hillside, Glashow Lane, Leeds, from 1901-1915. On 21st February 1903, aged 31, Sydney married Margaret Winifred Tetley (1879-1932) of the Tetley brewing family, at St. Michael’s Church in Headingley, Leeds. Following the marriage, and the birth of their two daughters, Elisabeth and Barbara, in 1905 and 1907, he began alterations of Hillside making one room of the whole front of the ground floor and building on a modern dining room and nursery.
By 1914, Sydney had a successful architectural practice and a new partner James Parish. Sydney was elected a fellow of RIBA in 1906 and a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1907. He was President of the West Yorkshire Society of Architects from 1910-1912 and during this time, served on the RIBA council. In 1911Sydney was co-opted onto the Art Gallery sub-committee of Leeds City Council from which he only resigned due to ill health in 1934. Sydney’s service in the Great War from 1914-19 was with the Yorkshire Hussars, rising from Captain in 1914 to Major in 1919.
Robert Kitson was an annual exhibitor with the Leeds Fine Arts Club, an association of gifted amateur artists, from 1898. Ina Kitson-Clark, his cousin Edwin's wife, was an executive committee member for the Arts and Crafts Exhibition from 1903. Robert was co-opted onto the Art Gallery sub-committee in 1904 and served until 1945. From 1922, his sister, Beatrice Jesse Kitson (1877-1975), kept their home in Leeds at Stonegates above Stainbeck (now Gledhow Grange). The Arts and Crafts exhibitions, in which the Kitsons were actively involved, were jointly arranged with Alfred Orage's (1873-1934) Leeds Art Club, a much more radical and philosophical association than those normally patronised by the Kitsons.
Robert had a passion for English watercolours and through sketching with Sir Alfred East and Brangwyn and later Philip Wilson Steer and Sir George Clausen, he became an accomplished painter. With his close friend, Cecil A. Hunt (1873-1965) he went sketching almost every year in ltaly, Sicily, Southern France and to North Africa, where he wintered in Kairouan and Luxor. Both were elected to the Royal Society of British Artists and exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Fine Art Society, and the Redfern Gallery. Hunt was Vice-President of The Royal Water-Colour Society from 1930-1933.
James Reeve was one of the first to recognise the importance of John Sell Cotman's watercolours and his efforts to establish Cotman as a major artist were endorsed by the British Museum who purchased a substantial part of his collection which Laurence Binyon assessed in 1897. Post-war interest in the artist was rekindled in a comprehensive exhibition of work by the Cotman family at the Tate Gallery in 1922 with a linked display in the British Museum Print Room. In that year Leeds Art Gallery bought its first work by Cotman, a watercolour of ‘Pont Aber Glaslyn’. The second, ‘A Coal Shaft at Coalbrookdale’ then called 'The Brick Kilns', was presented by Sir Michael Sadler on leaving the position of Director at Leeds Art Gallery for Oxford in 1923, and in the same year a third water-colour, ’The Ploughed Field’, was purchased.
Image: 'The Ploughed Field', John Sell Cotman, c. 1805
Solomon Kaines-Smith, who was appointed Director of the Leeds Art Gallery in 1924, was another enthusiastic admirer of English watercolours. It was Kaines-Smith who instituted a policy of forming a ‘fine watercolour collection' and recruited Robert Kitson to help relaunch the Leeds Art Collections Fund. The sub-committee also authorised Robert to buy from the Bilborough Bequest in 1924 and 1925 and he and Cecil Hunt selected works to be sent up on approval from Barbizon House and the Beaux Art Galleries in London. In 1926 Kaines-Smith published a small book on Cotman in which the artist's oil paintings were positively re-evaluated. Another influential, publication was collector Paul Oppé's contribution to the ‘Studio’ magazine special edition in 1923 which was devoted to John Sell Cotman.
Sydney’s architectural practice flourished with new partners, W. A. Ledgard and later N. R. Pyman, joining the firm. After Sydney was invited to modernise and refit Goldsborough Hall near Knaresborough for Princess Mary and Viscount Lascelles in 1922-1923, he opened a second office in London. The main office remained in Leeds where it continues today as Kitson and Partners in Vicar Lane. Although he continued to accept commissions, such as the War Memorial at the Shireoak outside St. Michael's, Headingley of which his father-in-law, C. F. Tetley, was church warden, most of them were personal favours for friends and relatives, and his own architectural work petered out when he suffered the first of several severe haemorrhages, resulting from tuberculosis, in 1923. He was taken to the sanatorium at Mundesley Bay in North Norfolk where Robert Kitson began the first of his annual visits to visit Sydney and drive around with him, enjoying and sketching the architecture and the landscape, visiting friends and viewing private collections of English watercolours.
John Sell Cotman's work no doubt appealed to Sydney Kitson, as it cut across so many of his own interests and activities. Cotman's most acclaimed early watercolours had been painted on visits to North Yorkshire, to which county Sydney was devoted. From 1919-20 he was the President of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society and, with Edwin Kitson Clark, supported the gift of its Museum to the City. He wrote a much reprinted guide book to Temple Newsam in 1927 and was active in the Thoresby Society. For many years he sat on the Council of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, designed its bookcases in 1925, and presented a collection of 157 meticulously measured plans of Yorkshire Churches, emblazoned with relevant heraldry by his daughter Elisabeth. Cotman, in a different way, had recorded the antiquities of Norfolk for patron and friend Dawson Turner.
By 1923, ill health had forced Sydney to give up his practice and he retired to Thornbury House on the edge of Kidlington near Oxford. It was here that he amassed a collection of Cotman’s work, a quest which took him through the many public and private collections of English watercolours to locate and transcribe letters, or copy and often buy drawings. Thornbury house accommodated many fellow Cotmaniacs and Sydney's expanding collection together with his research material and his notes, many of which were contained within the 12 ‘Cotmania’ volumes that Sydney kept from 1926. He utilized this collection to write his biography, 'The Life of John Sell Cotman’ which was published by Faber and Faber in 1937.
What may have contributed to Sydney becoming a major collector of Cotman's work, as it certainly did Robert who bought 50, was the sale of the Canadian part of the Bulwer Collection at Walker's Gallery in New Bond Street in 1926. Both Sydney and Robert Kitson supported the development of the Leeds City Art Gallery's watercolour collection, giving advice on purchases, lending from their own collections, presenting works and encouraging others to do the same. After the death of Lady Sadler (1852-1931), Sir Michael invited Sydney to select three watercolours by Constable, Cotman and Wilson Steer for presentation to Leeds in her memory. C. F. Bell had already selected Cotman's’ House end - a ruin’ for the Ashmolean, so he picked the ‘Refectory of Walsingham Priory’ and two works by Steer.
Despite his illness, Sydney Kitson was remarkably active and sustained by his daughters, especially after the sudden death of his wife in February 1932. Throughout much of his quest for Cotman, he also served as the Honorary Secretary of the RIBA from 1928 with two annual extensions until 1934 when illness forced him to relinquish such duties in London and Leeds although he continued his task of sorting out the collections deposited in the RIBA library.
Image: Cartoon of dinner guests at RIBA dinner, 1 July 1931, Tatler
The last years of Sydney Kitson's life were primarily devoted to completing his biography of Cotman, 'The Life of John Sell Cotman,' a massive task and a remarkable achievement owing much to its specific attention to the many works themselves, to documentary evidence from the time of their execution, and to the identification of Cotman's subject matter. The biography was published by Faber and Faber in February 1937. After a final holiday in Blakeney, a coastal village in Norfolk, Sydney died on 1 July 1937.
The task of distributing the bulk of Sydney Kitson's collection on his death fell to Sir Henry Mendelssohn Hake CBE FSA FRHistS (1892-1951), Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London. Lengthy negotiations took place as Hake worked to identify and allocate over 1,000 works of art by Cotman and others, attempting to honour the wish of Kitson to make his native Leeds the main beneficiary. In the end the disposal of the Kitson collection was kept almost entirely within the five institutions named in his will, namely: Leeds Art Gallery, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Robert Kitson actively supported Leeds's claim to receive Sydney's collection, which had been clearly intimated to his daughters by their father. Over the autumn and early winter of 1937-38 Robert was in regular correspondence with Leeds Art Gallery Director, Philip Hendy.
Source: 'Cotmania and Mr Kitson', Leeds Art Gallery, Corinne Miller (1992).
The Cotman Collection
The Cotman Collection at Leeds is one of the best collections of works by John Sell Cotman, including some of his finest watercolours and an unrivalled number of his sketchbook drawings.
The most obvious impression is of the intimate character of the work. The majority of the works in the Leeds collection are informal sketches, made to serve as rough thoughts and references at the heart of Cotman’s imaginative processes. It is widely understood Leeds collection is unique in this respect. Although similar material may be found in other collections, nowhere is there such a sustained body.
Cotman devised a system in his studio for organising his sketchbook drawings and reference material into categories which was posthumously dismantled and hitherto a largely unknown characteristic of his practice. During the course of a recent research programme funded by The Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund we have been able to work out a means of reconstructing the original sheets on which the original groups of sketches were mounted. This has already revealed several interesting aspects of Cotman’s approach. For one thing, he was surprisingly (even ruthlessly) unsentimental about his sketches. He would quite happily sacrifice a major drawing on one side of a sheet for something relatively minor on the other, where one still held artistic potential. For another he could be remarkably oppositional in his choice of subject-matter, for yet another he set remarkably high standards of visual discrimination. The result is that his drawings have merits and subtleties only perceptible to the most expert of viewers.
It is clear that the sketches in the Leeds collection contain much material to interest specialists in many areas. Quite apart from the wonderful topographic and architectural material that can be expected, the largest group of subjects studied thus far are ships and boats. Cotman was a man of the Norfolk Broads, and knew the river traffic well, but he was also an amateur sailor, quite capable of venturing onto the open sea. He lived for twelve years in a house overlooking the port of Great Yarmouth and he made sailing tours with his sons down the Suffolk Coast to London, the Thames and the Medway. As a result the collection contains a fairly comprehensive visual encyclopaedia of North Sea vessels, both working and naval. This is a rich collection for the marine historian or enthusiast.
Other areas of specialist interest include a fine group of drawings of coaches and carriages for example, that will be valuable to the transport historian. There are numerous studies of farmyards, carts, waggons, tools and implements that will be valuable to the agricultural historian. There are also dozens of lively and characterful figure studies that will interest anyone interested in social history.
There are also dozens of studies of works by other artists. We have been able to identify the subjects of these, many for the first time. These document Cotman’s artistic framework, and greatly amplify his imaginative and technical context. One theme that emerges very strongly through this aspect is his focus on colour. Very many of his sketches have extensive annotations, and these almost exclusively concern colour. It is evident that Cotman was acutely sensitive to the poetry of colour both in its most subtle combinations and patterns, and also in its most powerful.
Many of the sketchbook drawings in the Leeds collection relate to works in other collections and in Cotman’s wider oeuvre. The sheer number of sketchbook drawings make it possible to associate works with sketches elsewhere, to begin to assemble groups of related works across collections, and also to find very many instances of sketches at Leeds providing the basis of finished compositions, or details in finished compositions elsewhere.
The Kitson Archive
The Kitson Archive is comprised of material generated and accumulated in the course of Sydney Decimus Kitson’s life, namely, as a scholar and collector of the artist John Sell Cotman.
At the core of the archive are twelve bound volumes, which Kitson named ‘Cotmania’. These contain his research notes from 1926 up to his death on 1 July 1937. The volumes represent an extensive body of correspondence with a wide range of art historians, collectors, dealers, curators, artists and relatives of artists. In most cases these are in-letters only, but a few copies of Kitson’s own outgoing letters are included. The volumes also contain small sketches of Cotman drawings by Kitson, press and magazine cuttings, and other ephemera.
There are also a number of notebooks created by Kitson which contain detailed lists (and in some cases) sketches of Cotman collections, for example Cotman in Normandy, Cotman Sketches and Cotmans in the Bulwer Collection at the British Museum. Other self-generated material includes Kitson’s typescript catalogue of his extensive art collection; and his writings on Cotman, including chapters of the manuscript copy of his biography of John Sell Cotman, The Life of John Sell Cotman, which was published by Faber and Faber, London, 1937.
Correspondence comprises letters to Kitson from family and friends, such as Sydney’s nephew Robert Hawthorn Kitson and his friend Norman Darnton Lupton; the Trevelyans, the Runcimans, F. B. Malim BA, MA, and Henry Martineau Fletcher; as well as professional contacts such as collectors, dealers, art historians and curators, such as Paul Oppé, Laurence Binyon, James Reeve and Solomon Kaines.
The archive includes research material collected by Sydney which relates to Cotman’s professional and private lives. For example, four Cotman Letter Books (1804-1864) which contain transcriptions of letters to and from Cotman; and a bound volume of original letters from Arthur Dixon to his friend Cotman’s son, John Joseph Cotman (1804). Collected material contemporaneous with Kitson includes the catalogue of the 1922 Tate Gallery Cotman exhibition and the Norwich Art Society Cotman exhibition catalogue of 1927.
There is some information about Kitson’s life as an architect, mainly in terms of his involvement in the RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) where he served the Honorary Secretary from 1928, with two annual extensions until 1934. This material appears in the Cotmania volumes and includes cartoons of RIBA dinners.
In addition, is a quantity of material which post-dates Kitson’s death and relates to his bequest. These records include the correspondence and inventories of Sir Henry Mendelssohn Hake CBE FSA FRHistS, then Director of the National Gallery, London, who was detailed to administer the distribution of Kitson’s art collection. Lengthy negotiations took place as Hake worked to identify and allocate over 1,000 works of art by Cotman and others, attempting to honour the wish of Kitson to make his native Leeds the main beneficiary. In the end the disposal of the Kitson collection was kept almost entirely within the five institutions named in his will, namely: Leeds Art Gallery, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
Overall, the archive is a significant resource for the study of John Sell Cotman, his professional life and times. The Cotman Letters Books give vivid insights into the day to day life of Cotman. The detailed correspondence reveals Cotman’s relationships with his patrons such as Cholmeley family of Brandsby Hall in North Yorkshire and Dawson and Mary Turner of Yarmouth; with fellow artists such as Paul Sandby Munn and Joseph Geldart; as well as with his family, particularly his sons, Miles Edmund and John Joseph, and his daughter Ann. The ‘Sales and Exhibits’ volume details Cotman’s selling and exhibiting activity, including the sale of the contents of the Cotman home in Norfolk in 1836.
In addition, the archive gives some insight into sexuality, gender roles and social mores over the period of the life of Cotman. Women had little independence outside of the home unless they were women of means. For example, Mary Dawson Turner (neé Palgrave) was an artist in her own right. She was tutored by John Sell Cotman and was married to Cotman’s friend and patron, Dawson Turner; Theresa Cholmely another pupil and patron of Cotman; and Ann Cotman Jnr, only daughter of John Sell and Ann Cotman (nee Miles) who was a talented artist, working alongside her father during his time as drawing master at King’s College, London.
Personal Names: Sydney Kitson, Robert Hawthorn Kitson, John Sell Cotman, Miles Edmund Cotman, John Joseph Cotman, Alfred Cotman, Cholmeley family, Arthur Dixon, Mary Dawson Turner (neé Palgrave), Dawson Turner, Paul Oppé, Laurence Binyon, Ann Cotman (neé Miles), Ann Cotman jnr, Norman Darnton Lupton, Agnes Lupton, James Bulwer, Russell James Colman. Hannah Maw, Paul Sandby Munn, Norton family, Fred Meatyard, FB Malim, James Reeve, Sir Michael Sadler, Solomon Kaines Smith, Trevelyan family, Tetley family, C.F. Bell, Sir Henry Charles Englefield, Sir Henry Medleson Hake, Joseph Geldart, Cecil A. Hunt, Dr. Monroe, Thomas Girtin, JWM Turner, John Varley, Michael Clarke.
Arrangement of The Kitson Archive
The papers are arranged in two main groupings based on provenance: SDK/1 comprises the papers of Sydney Decimus Kitson relating to his collecting of works by watercolour painter John Sell Cotman (1782-1842) and his biography of the life of Cotman which was published by Faber and Faber in 1937; and SDK/2 comprises posthumous papers relating to the bequest of Kitson's collection of Cotman works, along with some related documents. Within these two groupings, the material is arranged in series based on format or provenance, as follows:
Useful Tip - Archives and Hierarchies
The way The Kitson Archive is organised – its hierarchy (or levels), and where your record sits within this hierarchy - will give you additional information about the record’s meaning.
The level refers to archival hierarchy. This can be quite complex, with several levels. Here we have provided three main filter levels:
Collection
This is the 'top level' of description and typically describes a whole collection, e.g. the Sydney Decimus Kitson Archive and its ‘creator’. The 'top level' may exist on its own in isolation; but often there are 'lower levels' of the collection, such as series, contributing to the whole description.
The ‘creator' is the individual or organisation responsible for the creation, accumulation, or assembly of materials into an archive. An archive collection usually has a common provenance or point of origin, and therefore a recognised creator or creators. For example, the creator of the Sydney Decimus Kitson Archive is Sydney Decimus Kitson, although he did not write or create all the individual items within the archive.
Series
This is the 'middle tier' between the top level and an individual item level description, e.g. the ‘Posthumous Papers’ (of Sydney Decimus Kitson). Typically it is a series, sub-series or file. The description may or may not then have lower individual item level descriptions.
Item
This is typically the lowest level of description. An 'item' within an archive typically represents one single physical entity. Sometimes files are described as individual items. This is not an exact science due to the complex nature of archives and the choices made as to how to represent the hierarchy. For example, in the Kitson Archive Cotmania Volumes each individual page has been catalogued (and transcribed) to item level.
Search Guidance Notes
This catalogue has been arranged as a 'single search' platform where you can query both the works of art and archive material together as one repository.
Start your search here https://cotmania.org/search. Enter your search term(s) to begin. As you type you will see the search results instantly update. Your search term(s) are shown inline with the results, highlighted in yellow. This helps you to see how your search term(s) have been used within the context of the catalogue and quickly assess the relevance of the results.
You can choose to search for a phrase by adding quotation marks to your search to find both terms in the specified order, for example:
"Colman Collection"or"art historian".Pro Tips
Our search engine has been developed with a typo tolerance and allows for some synonyms. This is a work in progress however. For a successful search try variations of terms. The typo tolerance is disabled when searching for a phrase surounded by quotation marks
If you are looking for a specific item and know its reference or accession number enter the number using quation marks, for example:
"LEEAG.1922.0300"or"SDK/1/3/3/10".Prohibit Operator and Stop Words
By default our search engine performs an AND search, so
brandsby and cholmeleygets the same results asbrandsby cholmeley.You can exclude records from the results containing specific term(s) by entering the prohibit operator, the
-symbol, before the term(s). For example: the queryColman - Collectionwill retrieve records containing the term Colman but not Collection.Very common words without relevant meaning such as the, if, a, and, at, of... are intelligently handled and removed from the query before searching. For example, a search for
hickman of thonockorhickman thonockwill get the same results, as willthonock of hickman. Add quotation marks to get an exact phrase match, for example:"hickman of thonock".Display
There are two options with which to display the search results. The first, by default, is the Gallery View that shows the results as a lightbox. The second is the List View that emphases the textual details over the image of the items/works.
Click the and icons towards the top right of the search results to switch between the views.
Filter the Search Results
Our search engine provides a number of filtering options, so that you can perform a broader search using term(s) and then narrow the results using dynamicly defined criteria.
Click the icon towards the top left of the search results to begin filtering your search.
The filter options are prioritised by the number of occurrences against your search term(s). For example if there are more instance of John Sell Cotman over Joseph Mallord William Turner, Cotman will surface at the top of the list. As you refine your search the options will be instantly revised against the search results.
Using the filter options you can filter the search results by date. Click and drag the Date Range slider to narrow and expand the search period.
Search by Person
The Cotman Collection and Kitson Archive are name rich, i.e. they are full of the names of people and organisations. Locally, we describe these as Constituents. It is a continual project to index every constituent, a project which continues even today. However, many constituents have been identified and indexed against the collection.
Look for and click the icon towards the top right of the search results to explore the collection by constituents.
Here you can see every named person and organisation in the collection thurs far indexed. This list can be narrowed by entering search term(s) or explored by simply scrolling through the list. Click the constituent to see their profile and a small selection of items relating to them. Here you can build a new search using the constituent as the primary criteria. Just click the link to search for works of art and archive items linked to the constituent.
Searching for Women
Searching collections and archives for women can be problematic. Most women’s names appear with surnames and titles only, and no first name, i.e. Mrs or Miss (or Misses if referring to several unmarried women) and so. This can make it harder to search for them. Once a woman marries her maiden name disappears, again making it hard to trace her. Where possible our cataloguers have added in women’s first names and maiden names.
Search by Place
In many instances where the viewpoint for a work of art is identifiable we have recorded the latitude and longitude to map the collection and allow for geospatial search.
Look for and click the icon towards the top right of the search results to explore the collection by place.
You can explore the map using the or in the lower right corner to zoom in or out. Touch capable devices pinch two or more fingers together, or spread them apart, to adjust the zoom. To pan press and hold the mouse button (left button for Micorsoft Windows users) whilst moving the cursor. With touch capable devices use two fingers to pan. Click on the icons to reveal the works and click the work's title to see its full catalogue entry.
Access the original works of art and documents
Both the Cotman Collection and Kitson Archive are held by Leeds Art Gallery and can be accessed in the Study Room by anyone, free of charge. You will need to make an appointment well in advance of your visit with the reference / accession numbers of the items you wish to see. Please note that in accordance with the Data Protection Act, some items from the Kitson Archive may not be available to view.
All applications to undertake research should be made in the first instance to the Collections Team at Leeds Art Gallery by email (city.art.gallery@leeds.gov.uk).
Additional Resources
You may find these resources and further readings useful for your research:
Collections:
The British Museum, London
Tate Britain, London
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Castle Museum, Norwich
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, USAArchives:
Robert Hawthorn Kitson Archive, Special Collections, University of Leeds
Cholmeley Family Archive, North Yorkshire County Record Office
James Bulwer Archive, Library and Archives, National Gallery of Canada
Further Reading:
Arts Council of Great Britain 'John Sell Cotman 1782-1842'. Touring exhibition, 1982
Binyon, Laurence 'The Art of John Sell Cotman'. The Portfolio, April 1897
Binyon Laurence 'Life and work of John Sell Cotman. Masters of English Landscape Painting'. The Studio, Special Number, 1903
Holcomb, Adele 'John Sell Cotman'. British Museum Publications, 1978
Kitson, S.D. 'The Life of John Sell Cotman'. Faber & Faber, 1937
Moore, Andrew 'John Sell Cotman 1872-1842'. Norfolk Museum Service, 1982
Norwich Arts Circle Ninth Exhibition. 'Drawings by the late John Sell Cotman'. July 1888
Popham, A.E. 'The Etchings of John Sell Cotman' . The Print Collectors' Quarterly, Oct 1922
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