FDA-D.152-2010
Parts
Object number
FDA-D.152-2010
Object type
Identification
Title
Landscape with Buildings on a Hill
Pilkington
Pilkington
Title Type
assigned by cataloguer
collection
collection
Comments
Alexander Cozens was born in Russia, where his father was a shipbuilder. He was sent to England to be educated in 1727, and seems to have received some artistic training before returning to Russia around 1740. In 1746 he went to Italy, where he came to know Claude-Joseph Vernet, then the leading landscape painter in the French classical tradition. On his return to England, Cozens worked as Drawing Master at Christ’s Hospital from 1749-54, one of the first such appointments in a private school. He taught regularly at Eton from around 1763 until 1768, but never as a member of staff; pupils made an additional payment for lessons, and were taught in a room above a barber’s shop in the town. It was later claimed that Cozens invented his ‘blot method’ of creating landscape compositions as a means of amusing his young charges. While this may have formed part of his teaching method at Eton, surviving albums and sketchbooks suggest that he also followed the more conventional methods of setting pupils to copy from prints. Long before he came to teach at the school, Cozens supplied a drawing for one of the finest eighteenth-century prints of Eton, engraved by John Pine in 1742; an oil painting of the same view also in the College collection may also be an early work of his.
Other number
Pi 55
A 21215
A 21215
Description
Dimensions
height (actual size): 159mm
width (actual size): 200mm
width (actual size): 200mm
Inscription
Signed 'Alex Cozens' (on the mount); inscribed on bottom of mount 'Cozens and Girtin who may be called the Van Eyck and Cimabue of painting in watercolours: Times 17 Apr. 1857'
Materials & techniques note
Pen & ink, with wash, on the artist's original mount
Production
Person
Cozens, Alexander, 1717 - 1786 (Artist)
Date
c. 1750
History and association
Object history note
Exhibited: 'A Genius for Watercolour', Christie’s, London, 6 to 24 January 2003, catalogue number 4; 'Watercolours from the Eton College Collections', Verey Gallery, Eton College, 24 November 2018 to 24 February 2019
Previous ownership
Pilkington, Alan, 1879 - 1973: With Colnaghi, London; purchased by Alan Pilkington and bequeathed to Eton, 1973. At Eton from 1963
References
• Wilcox, T., A Genius for Watercolour; Watercolours from the Eton College Collection, Christie's exhibition catalogue, London, 2003 (p. 12, no. 4)
• Quarrie, P., Treasures of Eton College Library: 550 years of collecting, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, 1990 (p. 113, no. 225)
• Quarrie, P., Treasures of Eton College Library: 550 years of collecting, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, 1990 (p. 113, no. 225)
