JOHN SELL

See also:

• JOHN SELL COTMAN (1782-1842)

COTMAN (1782-1842)  , English landscape-painter and etcher, son of a well-to-do silk mercer, was born at Norwich on the ,6th of May 1782 . He showed a talent for art and was sent to London to study, where he became the friend of Turner, T . Girtin and other artists . He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1800 . In 1807 he went back to Norwich and joined the Norwich Society of Artists, of which in 1811 he became president . In 1825 he was made an associate of the Society of Painters in Water-colours; in 1834 he was appointed drawing-master at King's College, London; and in 1836 he was elected a member of the Institute of British Architects . He died in London on the 24th of July 1842 . Cotman's work was not considered of much importance in his own day, and his pictures only procured small prices; but he now ranks as one of the great figures of the Norwich school . He was a fine draughtsman, and a remarkable painter both in oil and water-colour . One of his paintings is in the National Gallery . His fine architectural etchings, published in a series of volumes, the result of tours in Norfolk and Normandy, are valuable records of his interest in archaeology . He married early in life, and had five children, his sons, Miles Edmund (1810-1858) and Joseph John (1814-1878), both becoming landscape-painters of merit; and his younger brother Henry's son, Frederic George Cotman (b .

185o), the water-colour artist, continued the

family reputation .