The Cotman Collection | Whitlingham Lane, Norwich

John Joseph Cotman

Whitlingham Lane, Norwich
1873

Artist: John Joseph Cotman, 1814 - 1878
Title: Whitlingham Lane, Norwich
Date: 1873
Object name: Watercolour
Medium: Graphite and watercolour on wove paper
Support: White, wove paper
Dimensions: Support: 208 mm x 334 mm
Reference: LEEAG.1952.0005.0238
Credit Line: Bequeathed by Agnes and Norman Lupton, 1952

This is a good-sized studio watercolour of a landscape view, looking along a broad, earthen lane. There is a tinker or pedlar making his way towards us in the centre foreground, walking with a stick in his right hand. Mature hedgerow trees flank the left side of the road with a field gate opening onto a rising, newly ploughed field. The right side of the road is bounded by a drainage ditch crossed by planked bridges, leading to rough gates opening onto grazing polders. A couple of men are working in the middle distance right. In the distance is a range of low blue hills crowned by various buildings and churches. The watercolour has been signed and dated lower left by the artist in graphite, 'J J Cotman 1873'.

The viewpoint may be identified as Whitlingham Lane, looking west towards the city of Norwich, with the rectangular block of Norwich Castle in the centre, the tower of St Peter Mancroft Church to its left, a windmill seen through the fork in the tree to the left and the spire of Norwich Cathedral to the right. The river Yare runs at the far side of the meadows to the right. The line of the lane may still be followed, but the meadows have been dug away to leave a large lake. Norwich Castle Museum has an oil painting of a similar subject (but lacking the distant buildings) by John Joseph's brother, Miles Edmund Cotman (NWHCM: 1951.235.631), and a watercolour by John Joseph that appears to show the same site, but looking in the opposite direction (NWHCM: 1928.82). Leeds has two graphite sketches of the view of Norwich Castle from closer viewpoints, near Foundry Bridge, one by John Sell Cotman (LEEAG.1949.0009.0033) and another by John Joseph (LEEAG.1949.0009.0484).

The foreground figure is closely related to two sheets of studies of itinerants in the Leeds collection (LEEAG.1949.0009.0486/491). The first was listed in the Leeds Concise Catalogue of 1976 (et seq) as by Miles Edmund and the second as by John Sell. Both have a similarly blockish quality that is not typical of John Sell, and the relationship with the present watercolour strongly suggests an alternative attribution to John Joseph. The figure here is most closely related to the central figure in 491(b) and the figure lower right in 486 (b).

The date of 1873 places the watercolour towards the end of John Joseph's career. Despite suffering from depression and alcoholism, his drawing in the later years is adventurous and bold. Here it is as free, inventive and full of bravura as at any time in his career. His use of colour is equally adventurous. The brilliant blues in the middle distance and the highlight of red in the foreground figure remember well his father's principles. In other work - see, for example a brilliant watercolour sketch also in the Leeds collection (LEEAG.1949.0009.0470) he pushes his handling to levels of abstraction that begins to resemble the contemporary work of the French impressionists. In truth, it is only an old-fashioned approach to composition that weakens the present work.

John Joseph's signature is quite distinctive, often underlined but with a characteristically exaggeratedly long horizontal stroke to the 't'. A proper collation of the signatures, and more generally the handwriting styles of members of the Cotman family, would certainly prove useful.

A variant of this composition called 'Traveller on a country road', 225 x 330 mm, also signed and dated 1873, was sold by Sotheby's, London, 5 June 2008, lot 229.

David Hill, November 2017