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John Sell Cotman (1782-1842) was an English landscape watercolourist and etcher of the Norwich school. He saw in nature the classic effect of precise, austere pattern and expressed this effect by eliminating detail through controlled, flat washes of cool colour.
About 1798 Cotman went to study in London, where he met the painters J.M.W. Turner and Thomas Girtin. From 1800 to 1806 he exhibited watercolours at the Royal Academy, and some of his works of this period are considered among the finest English landscape paintings of the time. Greta Bridge (c. 1805), probably his best-known work, is typical of the work he produced while he lived at Greta in Yorkshire. It is composed almost entirely of broad planes of colour, avoiding chiaroscuro and linear design. Late in 1806 Cotman left London and returned to Norwich, where he worked as a drawing master and exhibited regularly with the Norwich Society of Artists. In 1812 he moved to Yarmouth and began a long period of work as an archaeological draftsman, evident in this etching. He returned to Norwich in 1823 and to London in 1834. In his last years his style changed completely, and he mixed rice paste with his watercolours to get a rich impasto effect. Most of his etchings were soft-ground, simulating chalk and pencil drawings.
Cotman's depiction of the Gothic west front of St Mary's Church, Snettisham, is an accurate if romantic depiction of what Sir Nikolaus Pevsner has called 'the perhaps the most exciting decorated church in Norfolk'. Its spectacular 72-metre tower and spire have been omitted, but the great west window is evident in all of its traceried glory. This is the subject of a separate wash drawing of 1818 (Yale Center for British Art). The highly deferential inscription where Cotman refers to himself as an 'obedient servant', reveals the etching is dedicated to Henry Styleman of Fakenham (1754-1819) who was 'lord of the manor' of Snettisham.
See: Encyclopedia Britannica, 'John Sell Cotman British Painter', https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Sell-Cotman
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art April 2018