High Tor, Matlock Derbyshire

Alexander Cozens was one of the earliest artists to depict the atmospheric beauty of Matlock Tor, a limestone escarpment overlooking the Derwent Valley, Derbyshire, that later also captured the imagination of Lord Byron, J.M.W. Turner and Joseph Wright of Derby, whose own renderings of the landscape some twenty years later are now generally recognised to have been influenced by Cozens. Benedict Nicolson proposed that it was from Cozens that Wright drew ‘his sense of sublimity’, and the confidence to experiment with the effects of dramatized natural light (Nicolson, loc. cit.). Furthermore, he suggested that Wright may have been led by Cozens in his inclusion of very small figures in the immediate foreground, which serve to maximise the impact of the imposing landscape they inhabit.

This painting and its pendant (sold Christie’s, London, 8 December 2023, lot 201) are rare surviving examples of Cozens’ work in oil; although no fewer than ninety of the artist’s oils were listed in his son John Robert Cozens’ sale at Greenwood’s in 1794, the vast majority still remain untraced.