Cozens and Gainsborough
18th-Century British Naturalistic Landscape Painters
Artists Alexander Cozens and Thomas Gainsborough are famous for their individual and unconventional styles in landscape painting.
Which artist was named:
1. The greatest genius that ever touched landscape (by John Constable)?
Alexander Cozens
Alexander Cozens (1717-1786) was the first British artist who worked solely as a landscapist in watercolor. His work helped to earn respect for the medium and today he is known as one of the leading watercolorists of the 18th century.
Cozens was a popular teacher and wrote several papers on his theories about art. His main paper was about the “blot-technique” theory first advanced by Leonardo da Vinci in which the artist places accidental landscape elements on drawing paper to help his imagination form a more-formalized landscape composition from their placement. Most of Cozens’ work was done in monochrome in which a design outlined in dark ink is washed in its entirety with a single hue.
John Constable (1776 -1837) was another brilliant British landscape painter. He preferred to paint directly from nature rather than following conventions popular in his day, and over the course of his career he slowly developed his own distinctive style. Thirty years after Cozens’ death, Constable made copies of etchings of cloud studies originally made by Cozens, thus showing his admiration for the work.
From all accounts Constable's greatest pleasure came from painting areas around his native Suffolk like Dedham Vale, the valley of the River Stour, and East Bergholt. Many of the scenes that Constable painted can still be visited and appreciated today, like Flatford Mill, once owned by Constable's father, and Willie Lott's Cottage which is depicted in Constable’s painting "The Hay Wain." Near Flatford Mill tourists can visit a museum based on the artist and his life.
2. The greatest colorist since Rubens (by John Ruskin)?
Thomas Gainsborough
Gainsborough (1727-1788) was an accomplished 18th-century Englishpainter of portraits, landscapes, and fancy pictures, one of the most individual geniuses in British art. He produced oil paintings as well as landscape drawings, some in pencil, some in charcoal and chalk, occasionally varnishing his drawings. Gainsborough painted in the traditions of the old masters yet developed a unique style using light and rapid brush-strokes and delicate, evanescent colors.
Like John Constable, Gainsborough painted more from direct observations of nature (and of human nature) than from blindly following formal academic standards of the day.
His landscapes were influenced by the example of Peter Paul Rubens, the famous classically-trained 17th-century Baroque artist very much influenced by the Venetian masters. Art critic John Ruskin declared Gainsborough an expert at color from whom even Rubens, reputed to be the greatest at using color, could learn something.
Gainsborough’s most famous paintings include “Portrait of Mrs. Graham” which today can be seen in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh and the enchanting “Mary and Margaret: The Painter's Daughters” which today hangs in the National Gallery in London.
Sources:
Bailey, Colin J. The Art Quiz Book: 2000+ Questions on Painters and Paintings. Station Press: Scotland, 1995.
Beckett, R.B. John Constable’s Discourses. Ipswich: Suffolk Records Society, 1970.
Grove Dictionary of Art. Oxford University Press, 2007.
