John Sell Cotman is mainly known for his groundbreaking retinal and neoclassical approach to landscape painting which showed him as an early precursor of Cezanne. In contrast, his huge body of etchings enjoys a rather bad reputation. It is said that his printed works, which he mainly executed in commission of his patron Dawson Turner, a banker and amateur antiquary, exhausted his creative and physical resources. Especially the one hundred etchings that he accomplished from 1817 – 20 for Dawson Turner´s “Architectural Antiquities of the Normandy” are made responsible for an outbreak of depressions. The degradation of Cotman´s printed work neglects the fact that his revolutionary painterly views mainly derived from his experiences as a graphic artist. His Normandy series, where he operated for the first time with the mobile camera lucida, show him at the crest of his artistic development. Brigitte Pallast and Hans Lukas Lang, collaborators of the Melton Prior Institute, picked up the rather bulky travelogue from the collection and visited some of the spots that Cotman had depicted nearly two hundred years ago. The pictorial shows the meeting of two types of mobile cameras, the digital and the lit room one.
John Sell Cotman working with his mobile camera lucida …
in the Abbey Church of Cerisy
Cotman sketching on site..
..of the Abbey Church …
..of Jumieges
The Abbey Church nowadays, under reconstruction
The Church of …
.. St. Peter ..
.. at Lisieux
The Chapel …
.. in the Castle ..
..of Caen.
Repair work …
… in the Church of St. Nicholas …
… at Caen.
Sidewing of ..
.. the Church of …
…St. Nicholas at Caen.
The artist …
.. sketching in the Abbey Church …
.. of the Holy Trinity at Caen.
The Castle …
.. of Arques.
Snap-shot at the main entrance ..
.. of Notre Dame ..
.. at Rouen
The Cathedral Church …
.. of Notre Dame ..
… at Seez.
The Church of …
… Oystreham ..
.. at present..
.. and once ..
.. and ….
.. forever