Cotman, John Sell (1782–1842)

Aquaduct at Chirk, a watercolour by English landscape painter John Sell Cotman. Cotman and other members of the ‘Norwich School’ realized their subtle landscapes by the broad use of colour in well-defined blocks, as in the sunlit arches of this canal aqueduct at Chirk in Wales.

An early watercolour of 1803, entitled Ruins of Rievaulx Abbey, by English landscape painter John Cotman, shows the artist's links with the Romantic painters and their love of atmosphere. Cotman later became an archaeological draughtsman, and his understanding of such work is clear, though his later paintings carry a more geometrical simplicity.

English landscape painter. With John Crome, he was a founder of the Norwich School. His early watercolours were bold designs in simple flat washes of colour; Greta Bridge, Yorkshire (about 1805; British Museum, London) was a classic in the art.

In the simplification of design to broad, expressively silhouetted areas, he was highly original and unlike any of his contemporaries. Time spent on drawing antiquities for his patron in Norfolk, Dawson Turner (1775–1858), was largely wasted, and his later work is unequal, but it included oil paintings in his own distinct manner as well as some drawings.

Of his two painter sons, Joseph John Cotman (1814–1878) and Miles Edmund Cotman (1810–1858), the latter is the more distinguished for his river and sea views.