DOI Heft:
No. 287 (February 1917)
DOI Artikel:Gibson, Frank: The art of Alexander and John Robert Cozens
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.24576#0012
The Art of Alexander and John Robert Cozens
artist was on his way to England in 1746, and
were recovered by his son in Florence thirty
years later. All these works, and also the very
interesting collection of his drawings now dis-
played at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, show to
the full his abilities as an artist. Thev prove
him to be a clever and capable draughtsman
in the style and manner of his time, with a
sense for the composition of a scene, and also
a considerable amount of poetical and personal
feeling for natural landscape. His subjects
vary, and his methods range from careful and
elaborate pen-drawings, often as rigid as line-
engravings, to rapid impressions of landscapes
in pen and wash, or pen alone. Others with
faint pencil outlines, which are almost obscured
by washes, often possess luminous and aerial
qualities. He attempted colour occasionally,
but it is rather of a timid quality, and his water-
colours in this manner are more like tinted
drawings than anything else. Indeed his mono-
chromatic works suggest colour better than his
coloured ones. In this way he is much inferior
to his son John, who on the top of a mono-
chrome foundation could express wonderfully,
with a very few tints, space, atmosphere, and
colour. In the line-drawings of the elder Cozens
the pen and sometimes the brush is used with a
firm, broad touch, and if elaborate in detail the
result is often mechanical, though it seems less so
when he reinforces his lines with washes. The
two drawings entitled View near Rome and
Forest Scenery, in the Dyce Collection at the
Victoria and Albert Museum, and which are
here reproduced, show this. When he works with
pure wash he often succeeds in giving atmo-
spheric effects and a sense of vast distances,
revealing the fact that he had a genuine sensi-
bility for the beauty of light as it plays over a
wide expanse of landscape, which is well shown
in the drawing here illustrated and entitled
Lake and Mountains.
In the many studies he made of rocks and
trees he reminds us very much of similar draw-
ings by Claude, exhibiting the same facile,
confident use of the medium and perception
of the relations of light and shadow. He is
like Claude, too, when he makes elaborate land-
scape compositions in pen and wash, yet the
touch of Cozens is not so nervous or expressive
as that of the older master, but is heavy and
mechanical in comparison. Cozens is far more
personal in his rapid impressions seen and noted
down when travelling than in these careful but
"AN ITALIAN VALLEY”
6
[In the Collection of Thomas Girtin, Esq.)
iBY JOHN ROBERT COZENS
artist was on his way to England in 1746, and
were recovered by his son in Florence thirty
years later. All these works, and also the very
interesting collection of his drawings now dis-
played at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, show to
the full his abilities as an artist. Thev prove
him to be a clever and capable draughtsman
in the style and manner of his time, with a
sense for the composition of a scene, and also
a considerable amount of poetical and personal
feeling for natural landscape. His subjects
vary, and his methods range from careful and
elaborate pen-drawings, often as rigid as line-
engravings, to rapid impressions of landscapes
in pen and wash, or pen alone. Others with
faint pencil outlines, which are almost obscured
by washes, often possess luminous and aerial
qualities. He attempted colour occasionally,
but it is rather of a timid quality, and his water-
colours in this manner are more like tinted
drawings than anything else. Indeed his mono-
chromatic works suggest colour better than his
coloured ones. In this way he is much inferior
to his son John, who on the top of a mono-
chrome foundation could express wonderfully,
with a very few tints, space, atmosphere, and
colour. In the line-drawings of the elder Cozens
the pen and sometimes the brush is used with a
firm, broad touch, and if elaborate in detail the
result is often mechanical, though it seems less so
when he reinforces his lines with washes. The
two drawings entitled View near Rome and
Forest Scenery, in the Dyce Collection at the
Victoria and Albert Museum, and which are
here reproduced, show this. When he works with
pure wash he often succeeds in giving atmo-
spheric effects and a sense of vast distances,
revealing the fact that he had a genuine sensi-
bility for the beauty of light as it plays over a
wide expanse of landscape, which is well shown
in the drawing here illustrated and entitled
Lake and Mountains.
In the many studies he made of rocks and
trees he reminds us very much of similar draw-
ings by Claude, exhibiting the same facile,
confident use of the medium and perception
of the relations of light and shadow. He is
like Claude, too, when he makes elaborate land-
scape compositions in pen and wash, yet the
touch of Cozens is not so nervous or expressive
as that of the older master, but is heavy and
mechanical in comparison. Cozens is far more
personal in his rapid impressions seen and noted
down when travelling than in these careful but
"AN ITALIAN VALLEY”
6
[In the Collection of Thomas Girtin, Esq.)
iBY JOHN ROBERT COZENS