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Artist or Maker: John Sell Cotman (1782-1842)
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Provenance: The Rev. James Bulwer and by descent in the family to Henry Bulwer (d. 1952).
H.J. Bowden, 1953.
Dr. A.C. Hampson, 1973.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 5 June 1973, lot 122, where purchased by Leger Galleries.
with Leger Galleries, London, 1973.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 30 June 1981, lot 81, where purchased by the present owners.
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Exhibited: Possibly Norwich, Norwich Society of Artists, 1811, no. 62.
London, Walker's Galleries, The Bulwer Collection of Works by J.S. Cotman, 4 - 25 June 1926, no. 25.
New Orleans, Isaac Delgado Museum of Art; Jacksonville, Cummer Gallery of Art; Nashville, The Tennessee Fine Art Center, Landscapes of the Norwich School, 1967, no. 35.
London, Leger Galleries, Exhibition of English Watercolours, 21 November - 28 December 1973, no. 21.
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Literature: C.C. Bell, 'John Sell Cotman, The Bulwer Collection', Walker's Quarterly, nos. 19-20, p. 27, no. 25.
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Notes: Engraved by the artist for Miscellaneous Etchings, 1811, pl. 17; re-issued as the frontispiece to his Liber Studiorum, 1838.
Cotman executed several versions of this composition: there is a pencil and wash version of the composition dated 1820, and a drawing signed 'Cotman' and dated '1800' is mentioned in S. Kitson, The Life of John Sell Cotman, 1937, p. 22. A copy of the present watercolour is in The Cecil Higgins Art Gallery (see E. Joll, Cecil Higgins Art Gallery Watercolours and Drawings, Bedford, 2002, p. 75). A later atmospheric watercolour of the same view was offered in these Rooms on 5 March 1974, lot 181 in which the little house appears crumbling and fantastical becoming engulfed by the surrounded trees as it teeters on the edge of the riverbank before a stormy and forboding sky.
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