John Sell Cotman (1782-1842) [Aw91]
RUINED DOORWAY AT MINTLYN, NORFOLK, c. 1810–1815
Watercolour over pencil; signed and numbered lower left: JS Cotman 1269 (H. 27 cm, W. 20 cm)
This watercolour is one of a large number of architectural studies made by Cotman in the 1810s. Many were drawn in preparation for publications such as the Architectural Antiquities of Norfolk (1812–1818), and the Antiquities of Normandy (1819–1822). These works catered to a growing public interest in the material remains of Europe’s medieval past, and they reflected the antiquarian interests of Cotman’s main patron in this period, the Yarmouth banker Dawson Turner. Cotman’s style was well-suited to the recording of architectural detail, but his work also conveyed the romantic associations of medieval remains. In this scene, the figures of the woman and her dog create a contrast between the faded grandeur of the church building and the humble rural existence carried on around its ruins.
The village of Mintlyn in Norfolk was gradually abandoned in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By the time Cotman visited, the church was without a roof or windows, but its twelfth-century south porch remained in a good state of preservation. The decorative features of the doorway are characteristic of the Romanesque style of architecture, which was first clearly distinguished and appreciated at the beginning of the nineteenth centuy. Indeed, it was a Norfolk acquaintance of Cotman’s, the Revd William Gunn, who in 1812 coined the term ‘Romanesque’.
It is not certain when Cotman painted this watercolour, or whether it was originally intended for publication. The inscribed number indicates that it formed part of the artist’s ‘circulating collection’ of drawings for his pupils to copy. It was first reproduced in a series of etchings entitled Specimens of the Castellated and Ecclesiastical Remains in the County of Norfolk. A small number of impressions were printed around 1817, but it was not until 1838 that they received wide circulation as part of a collected edition of Cotman’s architectural publications. Cotman’s study of Mintlyn, like many of his architectural records, now has considerable documentary significance. By the middle of the twentieth century, the ruins of church had become increasingly dilapidated as the building was overgrown with vegetation. In the 1980s, the remains of the collapsed doorway were removed to the Kings Lynn Museum.
Published: Engraved for Specimens of Castellated and Ecclesiastical Remains in the County of Norfolk, vol. 2 (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1838), pl. 29
Exhibited: Sotheby’s, London, Watercolours from Winchester College, 1988, no. 20
Literature: C.F. Bell, John Sell Cotman in the Bulwer Collection (London, 1926), p. 30, no. 39
Provenance: Revd James Bulwer (1794–1879) and thence by descent; Walker’s Galleries, London, 1926; gift of Harry Collison, 1940