View of Howth and Ireland's Eye

John Sell Cotman is one of the most important artists from the golden age of English watercolour painting. The present watercolour dates from the 1830s when Cotman’s work was again innovative and exciting and is in exceptionally fresh condition. It combines Cotman’s key qualities of a romantic response to the picturesque along with his almost abstract vision for design, conveying representational information with a daring economy of means using flat plains of colour. Cotman’s best work, as seen in the present watercolour uses a textured colour palette, realised by his experimental and distinctive technique of mixing watercolour and flour paste in order to achieve the desired intensity of mood and colour which captures both the prevailing weather and the essence of the landscape, giving a density and luminosity rarely achieved in watercolour. Cotman’s ability to capture fleeting atmosphere into which he interweaves man’s relationship with his surroundings is rivalled only by his great contemporary, J.M.W. Turner, R.A. (1775-1851).

Like his contemporary Turner, Cotman worked for the physician and patron Dr Thomas Monro (1759-1833), see lot 223. While visiting Dr Monro’s house in the Adelphi, off the Strand, London, Cotman came under the influence of Thomas Girtin (1775-1802), and the latter's influence can be seen in Cotman’s early work. However, Cotman's later work demonstrates a startlingly original approach.

The present watercolour is based on a sketch by Cotman’s patron James Bulwer (1794-1879). Cotman often used his own or other artists’ earlier sketches as the basis of these atmospheric later watercolours. The Reverend James Bulwer, a Norfolk cleric was born in Aylsham in 1794 and as a young man took drawing lessons from Cotman who started a drawing school in Norwich in 1809. Bulwer was a talented artist himself and a dedicated antiquarian. After his MA at Cambridge circa 1821, he was appointed Perpetual Curate of Booterstown, Dublin in 1823 and is recorded as living in Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin by 1826, presumably his sketch of the view from Howth (untraced) dated from this period when he was living in Dublin. Bulwer's eldest son Archibald Redfoord Bulwer (1821- 1904) who inherited this watercolour was born in Ireland in September 1821. After serving in the West of England and London Bulwer returned to Norfolk in 1839 where he remained until his death. Bulwer was noted in putting together several detailed collections recording the history, topography and architecture of a particular region: ‘Grangerising’ a published history of the area, including his beloved Norfolk[1].

The watercolour descended through the Bulwer family and was exhibited by James Bulwer’s son, JR Bulwer in 1888 at the first exhibition of Cotman’s work in Norwich. His collections were subsequently divided between JR Bulwer’s sons, the present watercolour going to Walter whose branch of the family emigrated to Vancouver, British Columbia. The great Cotman scholar Kitson noted in his diary, 1 May 1928, that he had visited the Misses Bulwer, the sisters of Henry Bulwer in May 1928 and transcribes a letter from Henry Bulwer of June 1928, who appears to state that he still the present watercolour of Howth, ‘I have still 2 beautiful watercolours by Cotman done from sketches by grandfather - one (11¼ x 11¼) of [Howth?] Harbour (exhibited Norwich 1888, lithograph illustration) & one of Madeira (10 x 15½) Cape San Lorenzo (Exhibited Norwich 1888, lithograph illustration) both unsigned but [hall-marked?] …’.[2] The watercolour of Cape San Lorenzo entered into the collection of Sydney Kitson and was gifted to the Victoria and Albert Museum under the terms of his will.

Cotman has dramatized the popular view of Ireland's Eye, the small uninhabited island off the coast of County Dublin, Ireland directly north of Howth village and harbour with a broad vista of sky and sea, both painted in a rich blue colour set against the sculptural forms of the hillside painted in warm earth tones which skilfully detail the steep Howth hillside receding into the middle distance and the quaint fishing village with its narrow streets, looked down upon by picnicking figures. Cotman’s technique is very close to that used un Entrance to the Valley of Lauterbrunnen, formerly in the Fitch collection, which is based on a drawing by Joseph Geldart (1808-1882) which is dated 1831 and the disposition of some of the figures are almost identical, Just visible as an accent on the island is the Martello tower, built in 1803 or 1804 as part of the programme of construction of defensive towers around the Irish, and parts of the British, coasts, to defend against the threat of Napoleonic invasion. Also prominent is the Howth lighthouse, designed by John Rennie the Elder (1761-1821) and completed in 1818.

Cotman’s best work, as seen in the present watercolour possesses a modernity of form and his legacy to British artists working in the first half of the 20^th Century was noted. Laurence Binyon, Curator at the British Museum, wrote of Cotman in 1903, ‘there was no need to invoke Cézanne, for Cotman was there to show the way by his mastery of structural design’. Cotman was given his first retrospective at the Tate Gallery in 1922 (at that date neither Turner or Constable had received this honour) and the Times reviewing the exhibition commented, ‘There is no English landscape painter-perhaps no English painter at all except Hogarth- so interesting to the modern artist.’[3]

[1] For an account of James Bulwer’s life see Sir Hugh Gladstone, Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society, vol. 23, 1945, pp. 5-15 cited in Betty Elzea, Frederick Sandys 1829-1904. A catalogue raisonné, 2001, Appendix II.
[2] See Cotmania vol. II 1927-28 (Leeds City Art Gallery) cotmania.org/archives/sdk/1⁄2/1⁄2/48
[3] The Times, April 1922, quoted in T. Wilcox, ‘Questions of Identity: the Place of Watercolour in British Art’, Great British Drawings, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 2015, p. 36.

We are grateful to Timothy Wilcox for his help in preparing this catalogue entry.