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Creator:
Alexander Cozens, 1717–1786
Title:
Mountainous Landscape
Date:
ca. 1780
Materials & Techniques:
Brown ink, black ink, gray wash, brown wash and pale brown ground on medium, slightly textured, cream laid paper
Dimensions:
Sheet: 9 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches (24.1 x 31.8 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:

Watermark: Fleur-de-lys

Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1975.4.1480
Classification:
Drawings & Watercolors
Collection:
Prints and Drawings
Subject Terms:
clouds | landscape | mountains | rocks (landforms) | trees
Access:
Accessible by appointment in the Study Room [Request]
Note: The Study Room is open by appointment. Please visit the Study Room page on our website for more details.
Link:
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:8721
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In the 1770s Cozens developed a treatise on landscape painting titled “The Various Species of Landscape Composition, in Nature”. Although the text is lost, we know he intended to argue that landscape compositions could convey feelings and ideas simply through the arrangement of forms. According to this theory, ideal landscapes could carry serious moral messages of the kind traditionally reserved to history painting (Rosenthal, 1993, p. 20). Although “Mountainous Landscape” does not match any of the designs in “The Various Species”, it is a purely imaginary composition that contains various stock elements found in Cozens’s classification of landscape scenery. The ideas Cozens associated with such landscapes could be esoteric, but here the barren mountain rising suddenly from a fertile plane evokes the awesome power of the sublime. He undoubtedly appreciated Edmund Burke's “Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful” (1757), which had argued that viewing awesome prospects like mountains inspired a thrilling sense of terror; Cozens concurred, believing that mountain prospects inspired “surprise, terror, superstition, silence, melancholy, power, strength” (Sloan, 1986, p. 56). One of Cozens’s pupils noted in 1781 that “he has for several years exhibited to the public, pictures of landscapes; attempting to perform them in the third degree of taste, that is the sublime” (unknown author, 1781, cited in Whitley, 1928, vol. 2, p. 319). The exclusion of color from Cozens's palette further distances this drawing from imitation of nature by forcing the viewer to focus on the landscape's formal properties. Similarly it is entirely devoid of human life, giving the landscape a universal significance rather than tying it to any particular time or place. Although Cozens earned a reputation as a blotter, his technique for finished drawings was a carefully controlled blend of fluid washes and hatched strokes, an approach perhaps influenced by the work of the English-based French engraver François Vivares (Wilton, “Cozens”, 1980, p. 9).

Matthew Hargraves

John Baskett, Paul Mellon's Legacy: a Passion for British Art: Masterpieces from the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, p. 251, no. 22, pl. 22, N5220 M552 P38 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA)


Described by his friend and patron William Beckford as being "almost as full of systems as the universe," Alexander Cozens had a strong pedagogical and theoretical bent. In his teaches as a drawing master and in a series of treatises - some published, others projected but never realized - he sought to establish a theoretical basis for a landscape art that was nether topographical nor simply reliant on copying forms of seventeenth-century Continental models. A New Method of Assisting the Invention of Landscape, published shortly before his death, illustrated the technique he had devised for using inkblots to stimulate the imagination in creating landscape compositions. Although not necessarily, and certainly not directly, blot derived, Mountainous Landscape represents the kind of fantastic landscape that could result from the process. Much misunderstood, A New Model earned Cozens the soubriquet "Blot-master General to the town."

Scott Wilcox


Wilcox, Forrester, O'Neil, Sloan. The Line of Beauty: British Drawings and Watercolors of the Eighteenth Century. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2001. pg. cat. no. N5220 M552 P38 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA)


Described by his friend and patron William Beckford as being "almost as full of systems as the universe," Alexander Cozens had a strong pedagogical and theoretical bent. In his teaches as a drawing master and in a series of treatises - some published, others projected but never realized - he sought to establish a theoretical basis for a landscape art that was nether topographical nor simply reliant on copying forms of seventeenth-century Continental models. A New Method of Assisting the Invention of Landscape, published shortly before his death, illustrated the technique he had devised for using inkblots to stimulate the imagination in creating landscape compositions. Although not necessarily, and certainly not directly, blot derived, Mountainous Landscape represents the kind of fantastic landscape that could result from the process. Much misunderstood, A New Model earned Cozens the soubriquet "Blot-master General to the town."

Scott Wilcox


Wilcox, Forrester, O'Neil, Sloan. The Line of Beauty: British Drawings and Watercolors of the Eighteenth Century. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2001. pg. cat. no. N5220 M552 P38 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA)

An American's Passion for British Art - Paul Mellon's Legacy (Royal Academy of Arts, 2007-10-20 - 2008-01-27) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Paul Mellon's Legacy : A Passion for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2007-04-18 - 2007-07-29) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

An American's Passion for British Art - Paul Mellon's Legacy (Yale Center for British Art, 2007-04-18 - 2007-07-29) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

The Line of Beauty : British Drawings and Watercolors of the Eighteenth Century (Yale Center for British Art, 2001-05-19 - 2001-08-05) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Oil on Water - Oil Sketches by British Watercolorists (Yale Center for British Art, 1986-08-26 - 1986-11-09) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

The Art of Alexander and John Robert Cozens (Yale Center for British Art, 1980-09-17 - 1980-11-16) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

English Landscape (Paul Mellon Collection) 1630-1850 (Yale Center for British Art, 1977-04-19 - 1977-07-17) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Katharine Baetjer, Glorious nature, British landscape painting, 1750-1850 , Zwemmer publisher, London, 1993, p. 20, ND1354.4 B34 1993 (YCBA) [YCBA]

John Baskett, English drawings and watercolors, 1550-1850, in the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon , The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, 1972, p. 22, no. 27, NC228 B37+ (YCBA) [YCBA]

John Baskett, Paul Mellon's Legacy: a Passion for British Art: Masterpieces from the Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, p. 251, no. 22, pl. 22, N5220 M552 P38 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Malcolm Cormack, Oil on water, oil sketches by British watercolorists , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1986, p. 25, fig. 16, ND467 C67 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Paul Mellon's Legacy : a passion for British art [large print labels], , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, v. 2, no. 22, N5220 M552 P381 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Kim Sloan, Alexander and John Robert Cozens, the poetry of landscape , Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1986, p. 56, NJ18 C83 S56 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Christopher White, English landscape, 1630-1850, drawings, prints & books from the Paul Mellon Collection , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1977, p. 15, no. 22, pl. lviii, NC228 W45 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

William Thomas Whitley, Artists and their friends in England, 1700-1799, Medici Society, London & Boston, 1928, p. 319 (v. 2), , N6766 W45 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Scott Wilcox, Line of beauty : British drawings and watercolors of the eighteenth century, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2001, pp. 60-61, no. 45, NC228 W53 2001 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Andrew Wilton, The Art of Alexander and John Robert Cozens, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1980, pp. 9, 30, no. 23, pl. 10, NJ18 C83 W55 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]


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