Alexander Cozens

With Leger Galleries, London, by 1995,

where acquired by Diane A. Nixon

Alexander Cozens occupies an integral place within the history of British art as a theorist and pioneer of imaginative landscape painting. Born in Russia to British parents, Cozens was in England by circa 1746, having spent several years in Italy. By the early 1750s he had secured a position as ‘drawings master’ at Eton College, where he advocated to his pupils – many of whom were to become important patrons of the arts - for the liberation of landscape painting through the rejection of the notion that artists should merely attempt to imitate nature.

The present drawing has been dated to circa 1759, around the time that Cozens wrote his influential teaching manual: An Essay to Facilitate the Inventing of Landskips, which developed this theory and also discussed other radical ideas such as his ‘blot’ method – whereby random ink blots were used to stimulate the imagination and generate original compositions. This manuscript was not published within Cozens’s lifetime but hand-written copies survive in both the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg and in the Victoria and Albert Museum (D.1193–D.1200-1887).