John Sell Cotman

The Ploughed Field
c. 1805

---

This is a studio watercolour of a landscape scene looking over a freshly ploughed field that occupies the lower half of the composition. There is a figure standing in the field to the left, and several crows tied to sticks in the right foreground and at intervals across the field. The furrows descend towards a shallow valley running across the middle distance, with a line of trees curving into the distance, a path climbing an open grassy field right of centre, and chalk wolds rolling away to distant hills under a line of grey cloud. The watercolour is mounted on a larger backing sheet of cream wove paper, possibly by the artist, for the verso has an ink inscription 'Mr Cotman' presumably written by its (as yet unidentified) original owner.

The landforms and marl are typical of (but not exclusive to) a chalk wolds landscape. The season is autumn, with the trees still in full leaf and the fields being ploughed for winter wheat. Amongst the areas with which Cotman is associated, such a scene would be typical of the Yorkshire Wolds, but also of north and west Norfolk.

Corinne Miller (Leeds 1992) makes the suggestion that 'The Ploughed Field' is based on sketches made in the vicinity of Brandsby Hall, the Yorkshire home of Cotman's patrons the Cholmeley family, about ten miles north of York. No sketches or studies, however have yet been identified that correspond exactly to this subject. The Leeds collection includes a pencil sketch of a similar landscape (LEEAG.1949.0009.0018) but this has no specific correspondence with the present subject, and although it is possible that it represents a subject in the vicinity of Brandsby, its exact location is uncertain.

Hill 2005 treats it as a Brandsby subject sketched in September 2005 without offering any precise suggestion of a viewpoint. There is similar scenery looking towards the Pennines from the Brandsby to Byland Road near the village of Yearsby, and Cotman must have travelled that route several times, but nowhere has yet been found that answers exactly.

'The Ploughed Field' is one of the most exhibited of all Cotman's watercolours, and certainly one of the most widely lent objects from the collections of Leeds Art Gallery. It appears, however to have been entirely unknown until 1923, when it appeared with the Palser Gallery in London where it was bought by Leeds City Art Gallery. It was fourth Cotman to enter the collection, the first (Pont Aberglaslyn) having been bought only the previous year, the second (Falaise) bought shortly before this and the third (Coalbrookdale) given at almost the same time by Sir Michael Sadler.

It was feted from its arrival at Palser's. At that time, the Cotman scholar and collector Paul Oppe was writing a monograph on Cotman for 'The Studio', and reproduced 'The Ploughed Field' full-page and in colour while it was still in the possession of the dealer. He spoke about it only in passing, but his colour reproductions served as the definitive guide to the best of Cotman for a generation, and has only been surpassed in recent times. Three years after Oppe, Solomon Kaines Smith, the curatorr of Leeds City Art Gallery, published the first full-length critical analysis of Cotman, and reproduced 'The Ploughed Field' as its frontispiece, and spoke about it as the one of the epitomes of Cotman's perfection of the formal values of the medium of watercolour. After that it has been relentlessly on the road, never resting for more than a few years before being despatched. Looking through its exhibition history, it does seem a rather hectic schedule for such a retiring object.

It continues to define Cotman's uniqueness as an artist. Corinne Miller (Leeds 1992) comments: 'In terms of subject matter and composition it is both revolutionary and in advance of its time. While the juxtaposition of the cultivated and the natural landscape was familiar to an audience whose countryside had been carved up and tamed by agrarian enclosures, the devotion of one third of the composition to the steeply receding furrows of the plough are without precedent and firmly establish this watercolour as one of the earliest examples of a romantic naturalism which was to take over from a 'picturesque' sentiment where there was no place for 'worked' land'.

The non-descriptness of its subject is also part of its unique quality. Miklos Rajnai (V&A 1982) observes 'it has come to represent the quintessence of what is best in Cotman's first Norwich period' and quotes Kitson (Life 1937) in his claim that it is 'one of the loveliest glimpses of an imaginative landscape ever created by Cotman's mind and hand', and assertion that 'it marks the summit of Cotman's contribution, in his earlier and less sophisticated phase to the art of watercolour painting'.

In 1805 Cotman turned dramatically away from the bold and dramatized landscape sublime that was popularised by Turner, to an alternative, simplified pastoral. This was entirely deliberate, yet far too radical for the public taste. Hill 2005 explores the story more fully, but even Cotman's friends and patrons found the shift difficult to comprehend. 'The 'Ploughed Field' may be taken as the exemplar of his turn towards reticence and understatement. Its size, soft and velvety texture, completely quotidian subject, yet extraordinary subtle arrangement of shape, colour, contour and light, in both surface and depth - notice, for example the sweep of the cloud shadow across the field - is the supreme exercise in undemonstrative refinement and subtlety of its time. It represents the complete antithesis to the strident, clamouring competition that for the most part was art in exhibition in the early nineteenth century: So antithetical, in fact as to exceed all context for its age, and it continues to challenge expectations in a visual environment that has taken a taste for the histrionic to hyperbolic levels.

David Hill, June 2017

• Provenance

  The Palser Gallery, London, 1923, from whom bought by Leeds City Art Gallery using funds bequeathed by Alfred Bilbrough (1842 - 1915);

  Leeds City Art Gallery, accessioned 1923;

• Published References

  Paul Oppe, 'The Water-Colour Drawings of John Sell Cotman, (London: The Studio, Special Autumn Number, 1923) p.xi, pl.xii;

  Solomon C Kaines Smith, Cotman (London: Philip Allan & Co. Ltd, 1926) pp. 144, 148-9, and repr. frontispiece;

  Sydney Decimus Kitson, 'John Sell Cotman', in The Old Water Colour Society's Club, Seventh Annual Volume, ed Randall Davies, 1930, p.10;

  Laurence Binyon, 'English Water-Colours' (London: A & C Black Ltd, 1933) p.146;

  Sydney Decimus Kitson, 'The Life of John Sell Cotman' (London: Faber & Faber, 1937) pp.111-12, fig 52;

  Adrian Bury, 'The Gentle Genius. John Sell Cotman of Norwich', in The Connoisseur, July 1937, repr. p.29;

  Martin Hardie, 'Cotman's Water-Colours: The Technical Aspect', in The Burlington Magazine, Cotman number, July 1942, p.172, pl.111, fig.C;

  Victor Rienaecker, 'John Sell Cotman, 1782-1842' (Leigh-on-Sea: F. Lewis Publishers, 1953) pp. 24, 45, pl.28, fig.54;

  Henri Lemaitre, 'Le Paysage Anglais a l'Aquarelle 1760-1851' (Paris,: Bordas, 1955) pp. 267, 280, n.3;

  Adrian Bury, 'The Leeds Art Gallery: Some Important English Water-colours and Drawings', in The Old Water-Colour Society's Club, Volume 35, 1960, p.19;

  Jonathan Mayne, 'Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin', New York, vol.20, 1962, p.246, fig 10;

  Norman L Goldberg, 'America Honours the Norwich School', in The Connoisseur, February 1967, repr;

  Martin Hardie, Water-Colour Painting in Britain, Volume 2: The Romantic Period (London: Batsford, 1967) p.84, pl.73;

  Graham Reynolds, 'A Concise History of Watercolours' (London: Thames and Hudson, 1971) fig 65;

  Michael Pidgley, 'John Sell Cotman and the Romantic Subject Pictures in the 1820s and 1830s', unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of East Anglia, 1975, p.148;

  'Leeds City Art Galleries: Concise Catalogue', (Leeds, Leeds City Council, 1976) cat. 508/23;

  Country Verse anthology, Batsford Limited, 1977

  Andrew Gouche, The Human Impact, 1980

  Michael Rosenthal, English Landscape Painting, 1981

  Miklos Rajnai (and others), 'John Sell Cotman 1782-1842', (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1982) no.76;

  Christopher Finch, 19th century watercolours, Abbeville Press 1990

  David Boswell and Corinne Miller, 'Cotmania and Mr Kitson' (Leeds: Leeds City Art Galleries, 1992) no.19;

  Leeds Arts Calendar, 115, 1994 p14, ill

  David Hill, 'Cotman in the North: Watercolours of Durham and Yorkshire' (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005) p.144, repr. pl.146;

• Exhibition History

  Brussels, Musee Moderne, 1929, 'Retrospective Exhibition of British Art, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries' no.42;

  London, Royal Academy, 1934, Exhibition of British Art, c.1000-1860, no.733;

  Bucharest, British Council, Muzeul Torua Steliar, 1936, '37 Desnul si gravura Engleza (secolele XVIII-XX)' no.69;

  Manchester, Whitworth Art Gallery, 1937, 'Watercolour drawings by J R Cozens and J S Cotman', no.37;

  Paris, Louvre, 1938, 'La Peinture Anglaise XVIIIe et XIXe Siecles', no.181;

  Arts Council, Leeds, Hull, Harrogate, Derby, Cardiff, Bristol, 1947, 'English Romantic Art', no.46;

  Paris, Orangerie des Tuileries, 1953, Le Paysage Anglaise de Gainsborough a Turner', no.24;

  Geneva, Le Musee Rath and Zurich, Le Cabinet des Estampes, 1955-6, 'L'Aquarelle Anglaise 1750-1850';

  London, Agnew's, 1960, 'Watercolours and Drawings from the City Art Gallery, Leeds', no.78;

  Washington, National Gallery and New York, Metropolitan Museum, 1962, 'English Drawings and Watercolours from British Collections', no.17;

  Jacksonville, Florida, Nashville, Tennessee and New Orleans, Louisiana, 1967, 'Landscapes of the Norwich School', no.33;

  London, Royal Academy, 1968-9, 'Royal Academy of Arts, Bicentenary Exhibition', no.543;

  Paris, Petit Palais, 1972, 'La peinture romantique anglaise et les preraphaelities', no.70;

  Dortmund, Museum fur Kunst und Kunstgeschichte, 1979, 'Englische Acquarelle von der Samlung der Leeds City Art Gallery', no.4;

  Arts Council, Sheffield, Graves Art Gallery, Cheltenham Art Gallery, Swansea Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Southampton Art Gallery and Wakefield Elizabethan Exhibition Gallery, 1980-81, 'More than a Glance', no.;17;

  London, Victoria and Albert Museum 1982, 11 August-24 October [afterwards touring to the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester and Bristol Museum and Art Gallery] 'J.S.Cotman, 1782-1842', no..76;

  Leeds, Leeds City Art Galleries, 1992, 25 November 1992-24 February 1993, 'Cotmania and Mr Kitson', no.19;

  Barnard Castle, Bowes Museum and Leeds, Harewood House, 2005, May-July and August-October 2005, 'Sense and Sensibility: Cotman Watercolours of Durham and Yorkshire', repr. Hill 2005, pl.146;

• Related Objects

  A view to a plain over rolling fields, possibly near Brandsby Hall, Yorkshire. Called 'Landscape Study: c.1805'.', Leeds Art Collection, LEEAG.1949.0009.0018;

• Alternate Numbers

  Other number: 508/23
  Negative Number: 797/3 (12)