Studio: international art (84.1922)

THE ETCHINGS OF JOHN SELL COTMAN

" LAUNCHING THE BOAT " (1833)
BY JOHN SELL COTMAN

by those who should have helped and
encouraged him, so that much of his work
is fragmentary and unequal, and the
number of his complete and triumphant
productions is distressingly small, as the
recent exhibition at the Tate Gallery
demonstrated, yet in everything that came
from his hand after the early years of his
apprenticeship there is the stamp of
original genius, and of a character of rare
beauty and compelling charm. 0 0

This gentle, sincere, and humble-minded
genius is a man we can love for his own sake.
And all the gifts and graces of mind and
character which endear him to us in his
drawings and paintings are present in his
etchings. These etchings are nearly always
translations of his water-colour drawings,
but they are translations made by the artist
himself. I cannot understand how any lover
of Cotman can fail to find delight in such
plates as Howden Church, Croyland Abbey,
in the Castle at Tancarville, Chateau

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Gaillard, Castle of Arques, and in dozens of
other plates in the Normandy series. In a
few etchings done for his own pleasure near
the end of his life Cotman adopted a freer
and less mechanical method of line, and then
he produced masterpieces like the delightful
little Two Windmills, Launching the Boat,
and The Girl at the Draw-Well. Harlech
Castle and The Parson's Bridge, Cardigan-
shire, are but two of the magnificent series
of soft-ground etchings which he included
in his " Liber Studiorum." 0 1

It is a pity that Cotman's etchings were
too often badly printed. But finely printed
impressions of his best plates are to be
found, and proofs of first and early states of
unexpected beauty and magnificence. The
more intelligent and alert collectors of
to-day are on the look-out for such things.
But even in the Bohn reprint of Cotman's
"Architectural Etchings," which was baldly
printed on poor paper, there is much to be
enjoyed and treasured. 000