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Lot Essay
This remarkable watercolour is a previously unknown view of Crambe Beck Bridge, painted in 1805-6. It is a crucial addition to Cotman’s oeuvre in this key moment of his career, illuminating his final summer in Yorkshire and giving a fresh understanding of his working methods at this point.
Cotman spent the July of 1805 staying with the Cholmeley family at Brandsby, 11 miles north of Crambe Beck, before spending the whole of August around Rokeby, on the River Greta in the far north of the country, and returning to Brandsby in the autumn. The trip produced the most important work of his career to this point, which would shape British watercolour painting for centuries to come.
Crambe Beck Bridge carries the York to Scarborough road across the Crambe Beck, a tributary of the River Derwent. Built by John Carr of York in 1785, its three distinctive arches reach high above the stream. Between 17 and 20 July, Cotman made a short trip south of Brandsby, hoping to draw the ruins of Kirkham Abbey. While there, he discovered the recently built Crambe Beck Bridge which perfectly piqued his fascination with the interplay of architecture and landscape. A rapid, on-the-spot sketch, finished in watercolour, was acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1892 (fig.1), but did not receive the acclaim of other great works of this period such as Greta Bridge, acquired by the British Museum in 1902. This is in part because until Professor David Hill’s groundbreaking research in his 2005 Cotman in the North, the drawing was believed to show Chirk Aqueduct in North Wales. Cotman had made a tour of Wales in 1800, when he could have made a pencil sketch of the aqueduct on his return to England. A second tour in 1802 has also been proposed, but the watercolour does not look at all like any of the other works from 1800, or even 1802. Cotman’s development during his summers in Yorkshire – 1803, 1804 and 1805 – was so rapid that it is almost impossible to relate this work to an earlier date. Hill’s research identified the location of the Bridge, and in so doing re-dated the V&A watercolour to the Yorkshire tour, locating it within Cotman’s oeuvre and thereby redefining its importance.
The present drawing is a second, more finished version of the V&A watercolour. Whilst this is rare in Cotman’s practice, one other key example exists from this tour in the watercolours of A shady pool on the River Greta near Rokeby in Leeds Art Gallery and the National Gallery, Scotland. In comparing the present work and the V&A watercolour, we see Cotman moving towards the simplicity and flatness he is now so strongly associated with. The palette lightens, some details become looser, notably in the foliage, whilst others tighten, particularly in the rocks in the river. Cotman adds scratching out to the water, sharpening the edges – a technique rarely seen in drawings of this date, where he tended to use blocking out to create his white highlights. Intriguingly, a second waterspout is added to the parapet, seen in other artists drawings of the bridge at this date but not in the version in the V&A (fig. 2).
The shifts between the two versions are remarkably similar to those between the Leeds watercolour of A shady pool on the River Greta near Rokeby, with its darker, somewhat moody palette, and slightly overworked foreground, and that in Edinburgh, which is flatter, cleaner, and in a much brighter palette. This suggests that Cotman was working the two watercolours up at a similar time, and with similar aims in mind.
The importance of this group of watercolours both on Cotman’s career and the development of British watercolour painting cannot be overstated. In 1805, the Society of Painters in Water-Colours held its first exhibition, but Cotman did not get in to exhibit there until 1825, his experimental, shape-shifting style setting him apart from his contemporaries, but perhaps proving too challenging for the institution in its early days. It is in the later appreciations of Cotman’s Yorkshire works, and this image in particular, that we really see their importance. Because of the lack of understanding of the location and date of the V&A version of Crambe Beck Bridge, then known as Chirk Aqueduct, it was largely overlooked in the literature of the early 20th Century, not being mentioned by Laurence Binyon in his 1897 John Crome and John Sell Cotman or his 1903 essay on Cotman for The Studio Special Number, Masters of English Landscape Painting. Paul Oppé did not mention it in his The Studio Special Number, the watercolour drawings of John Sell Cotman in 1923, and nor was it included in the Tate Gallery’s monumental 1922 Exhibition of works by John Sell Cotman and some related painters of the Norwich School or in S.C. Kaines Smith’s 1926 monograph, Cotman.
By 1942 interest was rising, and in the issue of The Burlington Magazine dedicated to Cotman on the centenary of his death, ‘Landscape with viaduct (Chirk Aqueduct, North Wales)’ had pride of place as plate 1, with a full-page illustration, albeit given a more general title and talked about in terms of its composition rather than its subject. Iolo Williams in his 1952 Early English Watercolours described Chirk Aqueduct as ‘very beautiful’ and showing Cotman ‘very nearly at the height of his powers’ (I. Williams, Early English Watercolours, 1952, p.159). The enthusiasm of this period perhaps reaches its zenith in the words of the French Modernist scholar Henri Lemaitre, who described Cotman in his 1955 Le paysage anglais à l’aquarelle as ‘already on of the moderns, in the way we now understand the term’, while comparing him to Ingres and Gauguin. In Chirk Aqueduct, which Lemaitre places among Cotman’s finest works, he regards the artist as ‘already almost cubist’ (H. Lemaitre, Le paysage anglais à l’aquarelle, 1955, p. 267). Indeed, Paul Nash had explored Cotman’s use of watercolour in his Yorkshire watercolours in a 1937 essay for The Architectural Record, praising ‘a form of poetic expression peculiar to the English genius… Here… is architecture, a truly architectural us of watercolour painting; at which both Cotman and Girtin excelled beyond any artists of any period’ (P. Nash, ‘A characteristic’, The Architectural Record, July 1937, p.40). Nash’s pupils at the Royal College of Art were taught in the same building as the Victoria and Albert Musuem, and artists such as Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious were able to visit the Print Room and discover Cotman’s watercolours at first hand, shaping the watercolour practices of the mid-20th Century.
In 1967, the second volume of Martin Hardie’s Water-colour painting in Britain was published, with Chirk Aqueduct on the dust cover. Again, the focus was more on the very modern sensibility of the work than any attempt to fit it in to the chronology. In 1982, the Arts Council mounted a major bi-centennial exhibition of Cotman’s work, and Chirk Aqueduct was used for the poster. There was by now some doubt as to the location, and so the exhibition text focused on the formal properties of the composition, and their extraordinary modernism. By the time of David Hill’s reidentification of the location and date of the work, the importance of the composition as an example of Cotman’s modernist tendencies was clear, and the present rediscovery takes that even further, with its flattened colours, crisp lines and strong shadows.
Cotman spent the July of 1805 staying with the Cholmeley family at Brandsby, 11 miles north of Crambe Beck, before spending the whole of August around Rokeby, on the River Greta in the far north of the country, and returning to Brandsby in the autumn. The trip produced the most important work of his career to this point, which would shape British watercolour painting for centuries to come.
Crambe Beck Bridge carries the York to Scarborough road across the Crambe Beck, a tributary of the River Derwent. Built by John Carr of York in 1785, its three distinctive arches reach high above the stream. Between 17 and 20 July, Cotman made a short trip south of Brandsby, hoping to draw the ruins of Kirkham Abbey. While there, he discovered the recently built Crambe Beck Bridge which perfectly piqued his fascination with the interplay of architecture and landscape. A rapid, on-the-spot sketch, finished in watercolour, was acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1892 (fig.1), but did not receive the acclaim of other great works of this period such as Greta Bridge, acquired by the British Museum in 1902. This is in part because until Professor David Hill’s groundbreaking research in his 2005 Cotman in the North, the drawing was believed to show Chirk Aqueduct in North Wales. Cotman had made a tour of Wales in 1800, when he could have made a pencil sketch of the aqueduct on his return to England. A second tour in 1802 has also been proposed, but the watercolour does not look at all like any of the other works from 1800, or even 1802. Cotman’s development during his summers in Yorkshire – 1803, 1804 and 1805 – was so rapid that it is almost impossible to relate this work to an earlier date. Hill’s research identified the location of the Bridge, and in so doing re-dated the V&A watercolour to the Yorkshire tour, locating it within Cotman’s oeuvre and thereby redefining its importance.
The present drawing is a second, more finished version of the V&A watercolour. Whilst this is rare in Cotman’s practice, one other key example exists from this tour in the watercolours of A shady pool on the River Greta near Rokeby in Leeds Art Gallery and the National Gallery, Scotland. In comparing the present work and the V&A watercolour, we see Cotman moving towards the simplicity and flatness he is now so strongly associated with. The palette lightens, some details become looser, notably in the foliage, whilst others tighten, particularly in the rocks in the river. Cotman adds scratching out to the water, sharpening the edges – a technique rarely seen in drawings of this date, where he tended to use blocking out to create his white highlights. Intriguingly, a second waterspout is added to the parapet, seen in other artists drawings of the bridge at this date but not in the version in the V&A (fig. 2).
The shifts between the two versions are remarkably similar to those between the Leeds watercolour of A shady pool on the River Greta near Rokeby, with its darker, somewhat moody palette, and slightly overworked foreground, and that in Edinburgh, which is flatter, cleaner, and in a much brighter palette. This suggests that Cotman was working the two watercolours up at a similar time, and with similar aims in mind.
The importance of this group of watercolours both on Cotman’s career and the development of British watercolour painting cannot be overstated. In 1805, the Society of Painters in Water-Colours held its first exhibition, but Cotman did not get in to exhibit there until 1825, his experimental, shape-shifting style setting him apart from his contemporaries, but perhaps proving too challenging for the institution in its early days. It is in the later appreciations of Cotman’s Yorkshire works, and this image in particular, that we really see their importance. Because of the lack of understanding of the location and date of the V&A version of Crambe Beck Bridge, then known as Chirk Aqueduct, it was largely overlooked in the literature of the early 20th Century, not being mentioned by Laurence Binyon in his 1897 John Crome and John Sell Cotman or his 1903 essay on Cotman for The Studio Special Number, Masters of English Landscape Painting. Paul Oppé did not mention it in his The Studio Special Number, the watercolour drawings of John Sell Cotman in 1923, and nor was it included in the Tate Gallery’s monumental 1922 Exhibition of works by John Sell Cotman and some related painters of the Norwich School or in S.C. Kaines Smith’s 1926 monograph, Cotman.
By 1942 interest was rising, and in the issue of The Burlington Magazine dedicated to Cotman on the centenary of his death, ‘Landscape with viaduct (Chirk Aqueduct, North Wales)’ had pride of place as plate 1, with a full-page illustration, albeit given a more general title and talked about in terms of its composition rather than its subject. Iolo Williams in his 1952 Early English Watercolours described Chirk Aqueduct as ‘very beautiful’ and showing Cotman ‘very nearly at the height of his powers’ (I. Williams, Early English Watercolours, 1952, p.159). The enthusiasm of this period perhaps reaches its zenith in the words of the French Modernist scholar Henri Lemaitre, who described Cotman in his 1955 Le paysage anglais à l’aquarelle as ‘already on of the moderns, in the way we now understand the term’, while comparing him to Ingres and Gauguin. In Chirk Aqueduct, which Lemaitre places among Cotman’s finest works, he regards the artist as ‘already almost cubist’ (H. Lemaitre, Le paysage anglais à l’aquarelle, 1955, p. 267). Indeed, Paul Nash had explored Cotman’s use of watercolour in his Yorkshire watercolours in a 1937 essay for The Architectural Record, praising ‘a form of poetic expression peculiar to the English genius… Here… is architecture, a truly architectural us of watercolour painting; at which both Cotman and Girtin excelled beyond any artists of any period’ (P. Nash, ‘A characteristic’, The Architectural Record, July 1937, p.40). Nash’s pupils at the Royal College of Art were taught in the same building as the Victoria and Albert Musuem, and artists such as Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious were able to visit the Print Room and discover Cotman’s watercolours at first hand, shaping the watercolour practices of the mid-20th Century.
In 1967, the second volume of Martin Hardie’s Water-colour painting in Britain was published, with Chirk Aqueduct on the dust cover. Again, the focus was more on the very modern sensibility of the work than any attempt to fit it in to the chronology. In 1982, the Arts Council mounted a major bi-centennial exhibition of Cotman’s work, and Chirk Aqueduct was used for the poster. There was by now some doubt as to the location, and so the exhibition text focused on the formal properties of the composition, and their extraordinary modernism. By the time of David Hill’s reidentification of the location and date of the work, the importance of the composition as an example of Cotman’s modernist tendencies was clear, and the present rediscovery takes that even further, with its flattened colours, crisp lines and strong shadows.