2024-03-29T09:40:13Zhttp://harvester-bl.britishart.yale.edu/oaicatmuseum/OAIHandleroai:tms.ycba.yale.edu:87542024-03-28ycba:pd
YCBA/lido-TMS-8754
http://www.cidoc-crm.org/cidoc-crm/E22_Human-Made_Object
Human-Made Object
300033973
drawing
300078925
watercolor
300015636
landscape
300033973
Drawing & Watercolor
Fantastic Landscape
Inscribed on back on mount in graphite upper center: (circled) "N"; in graphite center: "32"
Signed on mount in pen and gray ink lower left: "Alexr. Cozens."; in graphite lower right: "ALEXANDER COZENS: LANDSCAPE"
500303557
Yale Center for British Art
http://britishart.yale.edu
B1977.14.139
Not on view
Yale Center for British Art
41.3080060, -72.9306282
15 3/4 x 20 3/4 inches (40 x 52.7 cm)
height
cm
40.0
width
cm
52.7
Mount
12 1/4 x 17 3/8 inches (31.1 x 44.1 cm)
width
cm
44.1
height
cm
31.1
Sheet
8754
300054713
production
Alexander Cozens, 1717–1786, British
ycba_actor_1565
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n80153768
http://vocab.getty.edu/ulan/500115417
https://viaf.org/viaf/49196261
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2610149
https://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6c83fw5
Alexander Cozens
Cozens Alexander, 1717–1786
Alexander Cozens, 1717–1786
Alexander Cozens, 1717–1786
7000874
7018214
7011781
1000080
British
1717
1786
male
300025103
Artist
300154308
theorist
300025136
painter
300112172
draftsman (artist)
landscape painter
300025529
teacher
300025492
writer
300111159
British
1780 to 1785
1780
1785
22
18th century
Gray wash, black wash, graphite and buff ground on medium, slightly textured, cream laid paper, mounted on medium, slightly textured, cream laid paper
300011098
graphite
300015297
ground (material)
300014184
laid paper
gray wash
black wash
Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2008-06-09 - 2008-08-17)
500
https://britishart.yale.edu/node/647
300054766
exhibition
Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art
Yale Center for British Art
Yale Center for British Art
ycba_actor_1281
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6352575
http://vocab.getty.edu/ulan/500303557
https://viaf.org/viaf/155449049
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n77005277
British Art Center
BAC
YCBA
Yale Center for British Art
1977
0
66
Lender
2008-06-09 - 2008-08-17
2008-06-09
2008-08-17
Yale Center for British Art
ycba_actor_1281
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n77005277
http://vocab.getty.edu/ulan/500303557
https://viaf.org/viaf/155449049
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6352575
Yale Center for British Art
New Haven
7014210
New Haven
300435424
Great British Watercolors brought together eighty-eight outstanding works in the medium from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Center, including masterpieces by J. M. W. Turner, John Constable, William Blake, Paul Sandby, John Robert Cozens, Thomas Girtin, Thomas Gainsborough, and others. The exhibition was organized as part of the 2007 celebrations commemorating both the Center’s thirtieth anniversary and the centenary of the institution’s founder, Paul Mellon, one of the greatest cultural philanthropists of the twentieth century.
In a period of a little over fifteen years, beginning in the early 1960s, Mr. Mellon assembled one of the world’s greatest collections of British drawings and watercolors. As part of his extensive collecting of British art, he purchased several distinguished private collections of British watercolors, enriching and expanding them with astute purchases reflecting his own taste. In his memoirs he praised “the beauty and freshness of English drawings and watercolors, their immediacy and sureness of technique, their comprehensiveness of subject matter, their vital qualities, their Englishness.” — —
Great British Watercolors spanned more than a century of British artistic production, from the emergence of watercolor painting in the mid-eighteenth century to its flowering in the early nineteenth century. The exhibition highlighted the diversity of British watercolor painting, showing both landscapes and figurative works by some of the principal artists who worked in the medium. Paul Mellon’s collecting activity helped to revive the study of British watercolor. — —
Venues — —
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond: — —
July 11–September 30, 2007 — —
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia: — —
October 23, 2007–January 13, 2008 — —
Yale Center for British Art: — —
une 10–August 17, 2008 — —
Credits — —
Organized by the Center in association with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Great British Watercolors was curated by Scott Wilcox, Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Center; Mitchell Merling, Paul Mellon Curator and Head of the Department of European Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; and Matthew Hargraves, Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Paintings and Sculpture at the Center.
Yale Center for British Art
Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (The State Hermitage Museum, 2007-10-23 - 2008-01-13)
500
https://britishart.yale.edu/node/647
300054766
exhibition
Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art
Yale Center for British Art
The State Hermitage Museum
ycba_actor_6557
Olga Ilmenkova
The State Hermitage Museum
0
0
300311675
Borrower
2007-10-23 - 2008-01-13
2007-10-23
2008-01-13
The State Hermitage Museum
ycba_actor_6557
The State Hermitage Museum
Sankt-Peterburg
7010273
Sankt-Peterburg
300435424
Great British Watercolors brought together eighty-eight outstanding works in the medium from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Center, including masterpieces by J. M. W. Turner, John Constable, William Blake, Paul Sandby, John Robert Cozens, Thomas Girtin, Thomas Gainsborough, and others. The exhibition was organized as part of the 2007 celebrations commemorating both the Center’s thirtieth anniversary and the centenary of the institution’s founder, Paul Mellon, one of the greatest cultural philanthropists of the twentieth century.
In a period of a little over fifteen years, beginning in the early 1960s, Mr. Mellon assembled one of the world’s greatest collections of British drawings and watercolors. As part of his extensive collecting of British art, he purchased several distinguished private collections of British watercolors, enriching and expanding them with astute purchases reflecting his own taste. In his memoirs he praised “the beauty and freshness of English drawings and watercolors, their immediacy and sureness of technique, their comprehensiveness of subject matter, their vital qualities, their Englishness.” — —
Great British Watercolors spanned more than a century of British artistic production, from the emergence of watercolor painting in the mid-eighteenth century to its flowering in the early nineteenth century. The exhibition highlighted the diversity of British watercolor painting, showing both landscapes and figurative works by some of the principal artists who worked in the medium. Paul Mellon’s collecting activity helped to revive the study of British watercolor. — —
Venues — —
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond: — —
July 11–September 30, 2007 — —
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia: — —
October 23, 2007–January 13, 2008 — —
Yale Center for British Art: — —
une 10–August 17, 2008 — —
Credits — —
Organized by the Center in association with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Great British Watercolors was curated by Scott Wilcox, Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Center; Mitchell Merling, Paul Mellon Curator and Head of the Department of European Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; and Matthew Hargraves, Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Paintings and Sculpture at the Center.
Yale Center for British Art
Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2007-07-11 - 2007-09-30)
500
https://britishart.yale.edu/node/647
300054766
exhibition
Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art
Yale Center for British Art
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
ycba_actor_1286
https://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6991x8v
https://viaf.org/viaf/148748621
http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q4013975
http://vocab.getty.edu/ulan/500310718
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79046025
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
0
0
300311675
Borrower
2007-07-11 - 2007-09-30
2007-07-11
2007-09-30
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
ycba_actor_1286
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79046025
http://vocab.getty.edu/ulan/500310718
http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q4013975
https://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6991x8v
https://viaf.org/viaf/148748621
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Richmond
7013964
Richmond
300435424
Great British Watercolors brought together eighty-eight outstanding works in the medium from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Center, including masterpieces by J. M. W. Turner, John Constable, William Blake, Paul Sandby, John Robert Cozens, Thomas Girtin, Thomas Gainsborough, and others. The exhibition was organized as part of the 2007 celebrations commemorating both the Center’s thirtieth anniversary and the centenary of the institution’s founder, Paul Mellon, one of the greatest cultural philanthropists of the twentieth century.
In a period of a little over fifteen years, beginning in the early 1960s, Mr. Mellon assembled one of the world’s greatest collections of British drawings and watercolors. As part of his extensive collecting of British art, he purchased several distinguished private collections of British watercolors, enriching and expanding them with astute purchases reflecting his own taste. In his memoirs he praised “the beauty and freshness of English drawings and watercolors, their immediacy and sureness of technique, their comprehensiveness of subject matter, their vital qualities, their Englishness.” — —
Great British Watercolors spanned more than a century of British artistic production, from the emergence of watercolor painting in the mid-eighteenth century to its flowering in the early nineteenth century. The exhibition highlighted the diversity of British watercolor painting, showing both landscapes and figurative works by some of the principal artists who worked in the medium. Paul Mellon’s collecting activity helped to revive the study of British watercolor. — —
Venues — —
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond: — —
July 11–September 30, 2007 — —
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia: — —
October 23, 2007–January 13, 2008 — —
Yale Center for British Art: — —
une 10–August 17, 2008 — —
Credits — —
Organized by the Center in association with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Great British Watercolors was curated by Scott Wilcox, Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Center; Mitchell Merling, Paul Mellon Curator and Head of the Department of European Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; and Matthew Hargraves, Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Paintings and Sculpture at the Center.
Yale Center for British Art
The Art of Alexander and John Robert Cozens (Yale Center for British Art, 1980-09-17 - 1980-11-16)
589
300054766
exhibition
The Art of Alexander and John Robert Cozens
Yale Center for British Art
Yale Center for British Art
ycba_actor_1281
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6352575
http://vocab.getty.edu/ulan/500303557
https://viaf.org/viaf/155449049
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n77005277
British Art Center
YCBA
BAC
Yale Center for British Art
1977
0
300025633
Curator
1980-09-17 - 1980-11-16
1980-09-17
1980-11-16
Yale Center for British Art
ycba_actor_1281
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n77005277
http://vocab.getty.edu/ulan/500303557
https://viaf.org/viaf/155449049
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6352575
Yale Center for British Art
New Haven
7014210
New Haven
8754
16904677
NX440 .A785 2018 Oversize (YCBA)
1077770135
5464
300054686
publication event
^Art : The Definitive Visual History^, DK Publishing, New York, 2018, p. 276, NX440 .A785 2018 Oversize (YCBA)
Yale Center for British Art
DK Publishing
ycba_actor_24803
DK Publishing
300025574
Publisher
2018
2018
2018
New York
8754
579312
NJ18 C83 W55 OVERSIZE (YCBA)
756826316
2784
300054686
publication event
Andrew Wilton, ^The Art of Alexander and John Robert Cozens^, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1980, pp. 30-1, no. 25, pl. 11, NJ18 C83 W55 OVERSIZE (YCBA)
Yale Center for British Art
Andrew Wilton
ycba_actor_1892
Wilton Andrew
300025492
Author
Yale Center for British Art
ycba_actor_1281
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n77005277
http://vocab.getty.edu/ulan/500303557
https://viaf.org/viaf/155449049
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6352575
Yale Center for British Art
300025574
Publisher
1980
1980
1980
New Haven
8754
300157782
acquisition
Yale Center for British Art
ycba_actor_1281
YCBA
BAC
Yale Center for British Art
British Art Center
1977
0
300203630
Owner
1977-01-01
1977-01-01
1977-01-01
300138913
gift
Alexander Cozens discouraged his students from copying nature directly, urging them to create ideal landscapes from the imagination instead. To do this he developed a notorious drawing system that consisted of making random marks, or “blots,” on a sheet of paper until a landscape gradually began to take shape. This view of an imaginary island was almost certainly worked up from a blot drawing. The monochrome palette and indistinct forms required the viewer to take an active part in imaginatively completing the landscape, something Cozens thought was a “singular advantage” of his method.
--- --- Gallery label for Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2008-06-09 - 2008-08-17)
8754
300048722
Gallery label
2008-06-24
The other watercolor by Cozens represented here, Fantastic Landscape, illustrates the blot method in action. The drawing is almost entirely composed of short, sometimes feathery brushstrokes, but by allowing them to bleed into one another Cozens created an indistinct landscape, as if the island were seen through haze. It is likely that this view of an imagi nary island was first developed in blot sketches and then gradually worked up into a finished composition. ---
Although there are a few traces of human habitation on the island's shoreline, Cozens's monochrome palette and indefinite style allow the viewer considerable freedom when interpreting the island. For example, the hatched strokes can be read either as tracks of rich forest or as meager scrub on a rocky and desolate outcrop. Cozens thought this " singular advantage" of his method because the experience of viewing a watercolor became one of real intellectual engagement." He promoted watercolor blotting over simple pencil sketching by arguing that "to sketch is to delineate ideas; blotting suggests them." Since the resulting blots are inherently ambiguous, "one artificial blot will suggest different ideas to different persons." But this indistinct style also resonates with Burke's influential ideas on the nature of the sublime in painting. In his Philosophical Enquiry, he argued that ---
in painting a judicious obscurity in some things contributes to the effect of the picture; because the images in painting are exactly similar to those in nature; and in nature dark, confused, uncertain images have a greater power on the fancy to form grander passions than those have which are more clear and determinate.---
By painting in this way, Cozens was aspiring to create genuinely sublime objects, although he had been using an indeterminate style long before Burke wrote his Philosophical Enquiry; no doubt he noted Burke's argument as a gratifying confirmation of his own intuition. Nevertheless, the demands Cozens placed upon viewers meant that his art was primarily aimed at a narrow group of learned spectators who enjoyed an active role in completing one of his images with the aid of imagination. Whether his preference for subjective response on the part of the viewer contradicted his plan to articulate a universal language of landscape in The Various Species is a moot point. ---
Cozens stands at the beginning of the process that transformed the status of watercolor painting and helped watercolor artists be perceived as painters rather than mere draftsmen. He even went so far as to argue that proficiency in watercolor should be part of the repertoire of the academic history painter. Since an idea in the artist's mind has to be reproduced quickly, he insisted, the force of the initial inspiration would either be diminished or lost entirely by slow and laborious execution. The speed with which watercolor could be painted allowed for a close relationship between the mind and the hand, whereas the protracted task of mixing oils would only stifle invention. It was through his emphasis on the intellectual component of painting, especially the painting of landscape, that he had a long-term influence on British painting. For Constable and J. M. W. Turner (cat. nos. 43-49), Cozens's insight that landscape com positions could carry serious moral messages was to assume central significance in their art.
--- --- Matthew Hargraves
--- --- Hargraves, Matthew, and Scott Wilcox. Great British Watercolors: from the Paul Mellon collection. New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 2007, p. 16, no. 3
8754
300111999
Published catalog entry
ycba_actor_7112
Matthew Hargraves
300025492
Author
2007
300008777
ycba_term_17558
hills
300404733
ycba_term_2053004
rocks (landforms)
300015636
ycba_term_149705
landscape
Art : The Definitive Visual History, DK Publishing, New York, 2018, p. 276, NX440 .A785 2018 Oversize (YCBA)
16904677
NX440 .A785 2018 Oversize (YCBA)
1077770135
5464
related to
Andrew Wilton, The Art of Alexander and John Robert Cozens, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1980, pp. 30-1, no. 25, pl. 11, NJ18 C83 W55 OVERSIZE (YCBA)
579312
NJ18 C83 W55 OVERSIZE (YCBA)
756826316
2784
related to
300055603
500303557
Yale Center for British Art
https://britishart.yale.edu
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
300055598
Public Domain
300435434
https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
8754
300133025
Item
500303557
Yale Center for British Art
http://britishart.yale.edu
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:8754
oai:tms.ycba.yale.edu:8754
https://manifests.collections.yale.edu/v2/ycba/obj/8754
https://manifests.collections.yale.edu/ycba/obj/8754
IIIF manifest
Yale Center for British Art
500303557
Yale Center for British Art